NDDC: The coven

A once Boardless Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) now has a Governing Board. Chaired by ex-Presidential aide, Lauretta Onochie, the Board is already pelting at predecessors, pointing to a torrid past of locusts who feasted on what was meant for the good people of the Niger Delta region.

The new Board is singing. But it’s not a new song. There’s no freshness in the hymn. Neither any redemptive fervour in the tenor of their voices. Reason: the NDDC has always been a conclave of corruption. A coven of heist. A carapace of the thieving mob. Each time NDDC trends, it’s not for what it did to develop the Niger Delta region. It’s usually for how its purse was pillaged and ravaged by swarming locusts from the Presidency, National Assembly and their partners in crime: a tribe of fly-by-night contractors whose offices are their briefcases and swanky hotel rooms; no expertise, technical competence or any known track record of capacity and proficiency on the job. Yet, they are the ones that get the juiciest contracts.

Historically, NDDC has been a conclave of fraudulent contracts handed out by larcenous officials to their lecherous partners of looters in the Presidency, National Assembly and other emergency project handlers. The forensic audit captured as much in its final report, which the Buhari government has refused to make public so Nigerians, especially the Niger Delta people, will know who their enemies really are. Sadly, among this tribe of NDDC contract crooks are notable sons and daughters of the Niger Delta, some of them notorious for their ceaseless pontifications and self-righteous vituperations against the Federal Government on national television and any available media space. They rave and rage at the central government for neglecting the Mother Hen called the Niger Delta, but they are worse than the federal agents. They are leeches feasting on their own bodies. A self-harm clan.

Right from OMPADEC (Oil Minerals Producing Areas Development Commission) days in 1992 to the present NDDC (established in 2000), money spent or unspent on the region and its people has always been subject of debates. While some persons allege over-invoicing of contracts, others allege non-execution of contracts, some of them paid upfront. In recent years, such expenditures have stirred upheaval in a manner never before witnessed. Why? The answer is forensic audit. The guilty are already afraid. First, they failed to stop the audit. They wanted to abort the process.

Needless repeating the obvious. NDDC has been a messy tale of sleaze and skulduggery. No Nigerian leader has had the gumption to ask questions of the elite rogue clan of the region and their cohorts from outside the region who administered the funds over the years. Only Buhari did. And for this, he deserves a medal of courage.

The forensic audit was to determine how a chunky N15 trillion (Some reports say N12 trillion) was spent. Former Minister of the Niger Delta ministry, Obong Godswill Akpabio, was determined to pull through the audit against the wishes of some elements in the National Assembly. The audit covered a period of 19 years during which the worst plunder of any agency of government took place, unchecked.

To fully appreciate the grand racketeering and graft that hallmarked NDDC within these 19 years, let’s hear from Dr. Cairo Ojougboh, then Executive Director Projects of the NDDC and Interim Management Committee (IMC) Chairman, Contract Verification Committee: “In just seven months of 2019, the commission awarded a total of 1,921 emergency contracts valued at N1.070 trillion.

“In 2017, NDDC awarded a total of 201 emergency contracts valued at N100.4 billion while in 2018, a total of 1,057 emergency contracts valued at N162.69 billion were awarded.

“We are talking about a total of over N1.3 trillion in less than three years. The yearly budget of NDDC is hardly above N400 billion.

“A situation where contracts that do not qualify for emergencies were fraudulently awarded to over N1 trillion in less than one year, this amounts to not only stealing from the pulpit but stealing the entire pulpit.”

Again, hear from Joi Nunieh, another sacked Acting Managing Director of the NDDC and head of the IMC. She made her own damning revelation: “Some contract award letters were found to be fake; some of the companies were not registered while some were registered after they had been given contracts.

“Also, some of the companies do not have the requirements prescribed in the Public Procurement Act to handle such projects. We also found out that some individuals have 50 to 100 different (contract) award letters under different names.”

Nunieh was not so lucky. She served as Acting Managing Director of NDDC from June 2019 to February 19, 2020 before she was booted out under questionable circumstances.

Away with the circumstances of the ouster of Nunieh and Ojougboh or any other actor from the commission. The enduring substance in the NDDC bogey is the eternal presence of the silhouette of corruption that has refused to pale away.  This is the challenge before Onochie and the new board. Will she sink NDDC deeper into the cesspit of depravity or rescue it from the claws and fangs of the invading army of contract leeches?

Onochie should know that having an extant Board does not guaranty immunity from corruption, neither does it put a seal of probity on the commission. Most of the worst lootings visited on the NDDC were hatched under the supervision of past Boards.

So much is expected from Onochie and the new Board. But first, can she and the Board summon the courage to publish the full report of the forensic audit? Nigerians and especially the people of the Niger Delta region deserve to know. The culprits should be named and shamed. They are not spirit. They are humans, Nigerians, who stole the patrimony of a people.

This ought to be the take-off point of the new Board. Publish the forensic audit report on the NDDC website for posterity. Covering the looters of yesteryears amounts to being complicit in the crime.

Beyond that, NDDC must break from the contract bazaar of the past. Give contracts to only corporates and persons with capacity, not politicians or some so-called revered statesmen. Niger Delta project contracts should not become kola nuts that must be offered to elders of the land. The region is bleeding. The people still live in dire conditions.

Onochie stands on the precipice of history. She needs to return NDDC to the anvil and beat it to shape. The mission is clear. NDDC is an interventionist agency established to: “Offer a lasting solution to the socio-economic difficulties of the Niger Delta region and to facilitate the rapid and sustainable development of the Niger Delta into a region that is economically prosperous, socially stable, ecologically regenerative and politically peaceful.” This is not yet the situation in the region that has sustained the economic life of the nation. Is Onochie the one to make this happen? Both time and the region await Onochie and her team. She must disembowel this coven of its innards of graft, greed and fiscal miasma.