For stating that “people should reduce the agitation on board and work with the current management of the NDDC,” foremost group, Niger Delta United Congress (NDUC) has come down hard on Effiong Akwa, Sole Administrator of Niger Delta Development Commission, describing his utterances as “the height of impunity, disrespect, and affront on President Muhammadu Buhari who personally promised to inaugurate the substantive Board of NDDC on completion of the NDDC forensic audit.”
The group also remarked that the “current management” Akwa is referring to is just him administering the Commission as Sole Administrator and thereby combining all the roles of Managing Director; Executive Director of Finance and Administration; and Executive Director of Projects; respectively, which are meant to be separated to ensure the required checks and balances as stipulated in the NDDC Act.
In a statement by Ebizomor Brisibe, President, and Edem Archibong, Secretary, of NDUC, the group also flayed Akwa for what it described as his “well-orchestrated subterfuge of strenuously striving to try and perpetuate the ongoing illegality that he represents by impetuously dropping the name and revered office of President Buhari to speak on matters of government policy that are clearly beyond him.”
NDUC also flayed Akwa for what it described as a “contrived phantom ‘webinar’ with non-existent youths to arrogate to himself an illusory authority to speak for the Niger Delta, a region he and his masters have consistently denigrated, deprived of much-needed development and equitable representation in NDDC in the past three years of illegality in the Commission.”
As was reported in THISDAY and other national dailies on Monday, June 6, 2022, under the headline “Trust Buhari On Niger Delta Devt, NDDC Boss Urges Stakeholders,” the group lamented that “in an unrestrained show of disregard for the office of the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Effiong Akwa, had the effrontery to state that “the Act establishing the commission was undergoing required reviews, we can no longer rely on the existing Act,” and that “people should reduce the agitation on board and work with the current management of the NDDC.”
Brisibe and Archibong recalled that President Buhari, on June 24, 2021, while receiving the leadership of Ijaw National Congress (INC) at the State House in Abuja, promised that the NDDC Board would be inaugurated as soon as the forensic audit report is submitted. They recounted that at that occasion, President Buhari said that ‘‘Based on the mismanagement that had previously bedeviled the NDDC, a forensic audit was set up and the result is expected by the end of July, 2021. I want to assure you that as soon as the forensic audit report is submitted and accepted, the NDDC Board will be inaugurated.”
NDUC stated that the President had not only not fulfilled his promise nine months after, the Ijaw National Congress (INC), an “authentic stakeholder in Niger Delta, which he received in audience when he made the above promise to Nigerians has been compelled to describe the delay in the inauguration of the NDDC Board as a “clear betrayal of trust and display of state insensitivity on the Ijaw nation and Niger Delta region.” According to the group, “this represents the collective position of Niger Deltans, not the subterfuge from a puppet and beneficiary of the current illegality in NDDC who unabashedly sings the deleterious tunes of his paymasters to suppress Niger Deltans and deprive them of the benefits accruing from their God-given natural resources.” To put the records straight, NDUC stated that “NDDC is regulated by its establishment Act which clearly stipulates how the agency should be governed. The ongoing contraption of administering the Commission by a Sole Administrator is a violation of the NDDC Act. What the NDDC Act provides is that the Board and Management (Managing Director and two Executive Directors) of the NDDC at any point in time should follow the provisions of the law which states that the Board and management is to be appointed by the President, subject to confirmation by the Senate. In effect, the current Sole Administrator (Effiong Akwa), who is not recognized by the law setting up NDDC, the NDDC Act, therefore lacks the authority, and even moral standing to begin to pontificate on the “required reviews” of a subsisting law which he currently violates by administering the NDDC as a Sole Administrator.”
Brisibe and Archibong then wondered on “whose authority and permission is he, an illegal occupier of an office, making such a policy statement affecting an entire region of nine constituent states?” Niger Delta United Congress regretted that “what has subsisted in NDDC for the past two years is that there is an illegal sole administrator who is both Managing Director, Executive Director of Finance, and Executive Director Projects, in clear breach of NDDC Act which ensures separation of these duties to ensure checks and balances.” The group maintained that the “continued administration of the NDDC by an Interim Sole administrator (Effiong Akwa) is illegal because the NDDC Act has no provision for this illegality.” According to Brisibe and Archibong, “nobody is supposed to begin to administer the NDDC and utilise the huge funds accruing to it on a monthly basis without passing through this legal requirement as stipulated in the NDDC Act.” NDUC reminded President Buhari that “the continued illegality of the Sole administrator contraption administering NDDC in breach of the law, NDDC Act, is a national embarrassment that should be of grave concern to President Buhari, who should also not condone the arbitrary use of his name and office to justify the ongoing illegality in NDDC, most especially for his legacy when he leaves office in May 2023. “ According to Brisibe and Archibong, “beyond the well-established case by authentic stakeholders for inauguration of the Board in compliance with the law, the ongoing sole administrator contraption in NDDC has been enmeshed in unending scandals of immense proportions.”
It listed some of the scandals to include the “doubly-restated scandal involving the sole administrator in which the Ijaw Youth Council (IYC) alleged that illegal N20bn payment was made to ghost contractors over phantom jobs for phony distilling contracts purportedly awarded by the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC),” the scathing editorial of THISDAY, “NDDC AND THE ANTI-GRAFT HOAX” published on Wednesday, February 23, 2022 in which the newspaper stated that the “disrepute into which the commission (NDDC) has fallen in the last seven years is a sad commentary on the avowed commitment of President Muhammadu Buhari to fight corruption as a cardinal undertaking. Despite the agitations of critical stakeholders, the commission also remains without a substantive board. The minister of Niger Delta, Godswill Akpabio prefers to treat affairs of the NDDC more like a private estate by saddling the commission with cronies.”
Brisibe and Archibong reaffirmed that “while we condemn in its entirety the unwarranted and unauthorized use of President Buhari’s name and office to try and justify the ongoing illegality in NDDC, we align with the demands of authentic Niger Delta stakeholders and urge President Buhari to end the illegal sole administratorship at the NDDC; inaugurate the NDDC Governing Board in line with the NDDC Act to represent the nine constituent states, and thereby ensure proper corporate governance, checks and balances, accountability, transparency, and probity in managing the Commission.”
