Members of the National Assembly connected with allegations of corruption and other fraudulent activities against the development of Niger Delta have continued to pay “deaf ears” to voices of reason the likes of Chief Edwin Clark’s, which insist they cannot be judge in their own case in the ongoing probe of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) from creation till date.
We gathered that they still go ahead “pretending” to investigate the young Interim Management Committee (IMC) of the NDDC against ongoing thorough Forensic Audit ordered by statutory authority of President of the Federal Republic, Muhammadu Buhari. This they do as they mainly gather “frivolous” allegations, apparently intended to rubbish the IMC that is currently overseeing the presidential effort at cleaning up the agency.
But there is yet another mindburgling revelation about how the agency was incapacitated from achieving its set goal for the Niger Delta people.
This was coming as Senator Peter Nwaoboshi, Chairman Senate Committee on Niger Delta, was once again involved in another case where he allegedly hijacked 1,000 out of 2,900 emergency projects from the NDDC under the pretence of distributing the jobs to his fellow senators.
Nwaoboshi’s involvement was made known by Dr. Cairo Ojougboh, the Commission’s Executive Director, Projects.
The ED projects said,” The senate committee chairman on NDDC signed, collected contracts through one Nelson Agbamuche that he is going to distribute same to the senators and the house members. Because we know some of you, we took our time to find out and all the senators said they know nothing about it”.
About the NDDC budget,the ED projects had this to say, “The budget has been a recurring instrument of blackmail against the interim management Committee (IMC). When the National Assembly passes the budget of the NDDC, it passes the line budget, for example, 50 billion for projects, 10 billion for health and so on and so forth.
“They throw it to the chairmen of both chambers (senate and house of representatives), the both chairmen will retire against the system asking one Maina to bring the budget to Hilton Hotel and that’s the end of the NDDC budget, it will become history.”
As regards project monitoring by the IMC, Dr Ojougboh went further to say, ”Since the IMC came on board, out of 45 billion meant for projects, we have saved 30 billion by employing the use of technology for project verification,” it was gathered.
