The Trumpet Newspaper Issue 524 (July 29 - August 11 2020)

Page8 TheTrumpet JULY 29 - AUGUST 11 2020
Opinion
NDDC and other stories
It is a show of shame isn’t it, what is
going on at the Niger Delta
Development Commission (NDDC)?
Established in the year 2000 to assuage the
fears of the people of the Niger Delta and
address their concerns about the lack of
infrastructural development in the region,
despite the region’s contributions to the
sustenance of Nigeria, it is sad to see how
like all good initiatives gone bad in
Nigeria, this interventionist agency has
become, or has been exposed as a festering
sore upon the wound of the Niger Delta.
From personality clashes to sordid tales of
mismanagement of funds, contractors that
collect mobilization fees and simply take
a walk, politicians in the National
Assembly feeding fat on Niger Delta
resources, and reports of terrifying
wasteful expenditure and the conversion of
every event or situation: graduation
ceremonies and even COVID-19 into an
opportunity to empty the people’s till, the
stench from the NDDC stinks to the
heavens. In the past week, we have been
treated to the kind of melodrama an artist
may never have imagined, complete with
the stuff of a fainting fit, a failed romantic
attempt, a woman scorned, and hell
breaking loose and a once self-styled
uncommon Governor as the deutragonist.
It is this latter part of the plot that has
excited, amused and fascinated Nigerians.
The protagonist is Joi Nunieh, the former
Acting Managing Director of the Interim
Management Committee (IMC) of the
NDDC (October 2019 - February 2020)
who left the commission rather abruptly
due to a yet unproven allegation around
and about her NYSC certificate and socalled
“insubordination.” In the course of
a forensic audit of the agency ordered by
President Muhammadu Buhari, it is
noteworthy that all the hidden corpses in
the NDDC especially within the last one
year began to show up, and some of those
ghosts emerged in the form of financial
sleaze and broken alliances and failed
relationships. The supervising Minister of
the Commission, the Minister of Niger
Delta Affairs, Senator Godswill Akpabio, a
once powerful PDP chieftain, turned an
APC floor member, went on television to
offer his perspective on what transpired at
the NDDC (he must be regretting doing
so); rather than address the issues, he
launched an attack on Joi Nunieh, who
worked briefly as Acting Chairman of the
NDDC.
He complained about how the lady had
married four husbands and called on those
four men, who, if they exist at all, have
lent themselves common sense and stayed
off the radar. The Minister also made an
allusion to Joi Nunieh’s state of health. Of
course, she didn’t take it lying low. She
seized the occasion with every ounce of
oxygen in her body and smashed the table
on which Akpabio leaned his bulky frame
in the studio. In the course of her now
famous interview on Arise TV, we were
treated to the sub-plot of how Akpabio
failing to dictate to her or control her
actions adopted a “Plan B,” which is
basically a plan to “entangle” her in “the
other room.” She disclosed that what the
“uncommon former Governor” from
Akwa Ibom State got in response was an
“uncommon slap in the face.” It must have
been one of those hot, dirty, blinding slaps
that result in a momentary loss of vision
and a loud scream of Ye!. Akpabio as
Governor used to refer to Akwa Ibom as
“Gilgal.” His current travail is like a
journey from Gilgal to Golgotha. He
insists that Joi Nunieh is lying. He says he
has asked his lawyers to go to court.
You probably know the rest of the
story: how things went downhill
afterwards: the attempt to arrest Joi Nunieh
at her Port Harcourt residence, a
detachment of about 50 policemen
knocking on the gates, smashing doors as
Joi Nunieh
if they were after a Colombian drug lord,
Governor Nyesom Wike’s ironic,
swashbuckling gallantry (can you imagine
a PDP Governor protecting an APC
member from members of her own
party?), the sordid spectacle of the current
Acting Chairman of the NDDC, Professor
Keme Pondei walking out on the House of
Representatives Committee on the NDDC,
after practically accusing the Chair of the
Committee of being an interested party in
the matter, and the same Committee
issuing a warrant of arrest to call Pondei to
order. Earlier, the same Professor Keme
Pondei allegedly disclosed how members
of the IMC which he leads spent N1.8
billion on themselves alone as COVID
palliative within three months! When he
eventually showed up at the House of
Representatives yesterday, and he was
reminded that he and his colleagues had
helped themselves to funds that were not
covered in the approved NDDC Budget,
he started fanning himself in an airconditioned
room and before anyone knew
it, he slumped atop his table! His
detractors argue that he was merely
playing his role: an Acting MD, acting out
a scene in the NDDC drama.
Stakeholders within the NGO
community who claim that they have been
monitoring the NDDC for years, in fact,
suggest that we haven’t seen anything yet
and that if a thorough forensic audit is
conducted, Nigerians will be shocked
beyond their marrows. But can anything
be worse than what we have seen and
heard so far? These stakeholders also
argue that all the drama that our eyes have
seen so far is at best a distraction and an
orchestrated cover up attempt. The only
problem is that the Niger Delta NGO
community has also been fingered in some
of the stories for having received
patronage from the NDDC for work not
done. If indeed things get more curious, a
list of beneficiary-NGOs may surface, and
we may all get busy struggling to lift the
veil. We should be watchful. A Professor
slumped yesterday. Someone else could
have a heart attack tomorrow!
But where are the people of the Niger
Delta in all of this? What are their views
on the on-going controversy? They are the
ones who have been short-changed the
most. The NDDC, originally OMPADEC,
Godswill Akpabio
was part of a series of policy measures
including derivation, ecological fund, and
infrastructure development plans to
address the marginalization of the Niger
Delta people, check youth restiveness in
the region and promote peace and stability.
Since inception, the NDDC has been
managed by persons from the Niger Delta.
A Ministry of the Niger Delta was also
created, and to date, only persons from the
Niger Delta have headed that Ministry.
And yet all of these issues! The usual
tendency is to say that the NDDC was
designed to fail, but that is certainly not
true. The goal was principled – to bring
development to the Niger Delta. It will
also be incorrect to say that the people
have not seen any development at all. In
1999, parts of the Niger Delta were in a
complete mess. I recall visiting Yenagoa in
2000. The Governor then was the late
Governor-General of the Niger Delta, the
famous Diepreye Alamiyesiegha.
Yenagoa, the capital of Bayelsa State had
only one visible road, which looked like
something constructed in the 1960s. I saw
one bank: the defunct All States Trust, I
believe. And one fuel station with a
broken, solitary, pump. And there was a
higher education college whose female
students were friendly and hospitable
beyond comparison! Today, Yenagoa looks
different, and the same may be said of
other areas of the Niger Delta. The
improvement does not go far enough,
however, because the major threats to the
people’s lives: critical infrastructure like
the East-West Highway, environmental
BY REUBEN ABATI
crisis, and unemployment remain visible.
Governors of the Niger Delta since
1999 may claim credit for this
improvement that we have seen but the
perception in Nigeria is that the
OMPADEC/NDDC intervention has
helped to some degree resulting in the
request by other regions for a similar
intervention agency. Nonetheless, recent
revelations that contractors and officials of
the NDDC have been busy pilfering the
funds of the Commission is at best
stupefying, the sheer scale of it is
benumbing. The N81.5 billion that was
allegedly diverted within two months
sounds like enough money to transform
the health sector in parts of the Niger Delta
in a season of COVID-19. So, this is not
the time for the people of the Niger Delta
to make the usual defensive point that
anybody from the Niger Delta is entitled
to take Niger Delta money. The view that
“it is our money taken by our children” is
unacceptable. The Niger Delta struggle
was based on the ideals of justice, equity,
development and progress, no latter-day
revisionist should impose on the people of
the Niger Delta, a Barkin Zuwo
philosophy. I bring this up because I have
read some comments by some members of
the Niger Delta elite insisting that the big
issue is that the NDDC has not been
properly funded and that the thing to do is
to release all outstanding funds to the
Commission. Is that why the trillions in
contention had to be mismanaged? Is that
the issue on the table? There should be a
more robust conversation about the
development process in the Niger Delta
beyond the confusing argument that this is
a conflict between “a political Niger
Delta” and “a geographical Niger Delta”
or that the only way forward is to throw in
more money.
President Muhammadu Buhari has
ordered two major audits in recent times:
the audit of the Niger Delta Development
Commission and that of the Economic and
Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).
Both should be taken as a personal
reaffirmation of his commitment to one of
the major planks of his proposed legacy at
the inception of his administration in 2015:
that is the fight against corruption. But
beyond the anti-corruption battle, there is
an emerging downside to the Buhari
administration: the constant bickering, the
cult of personality and the externalization
of battles over territory within the
government. In a Presidential democracy,
a President appoints persons to assist him,
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