The Ijaw Consultative Forum (ICF), Ondo State chapter, has aligned with the Ijaw National Congress (INC) and Ijaw Youth Council (IYC) on calls for President Muhammadu Buhari to inaugurate the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) board since the commission’s forensic audit has been submitted to him.
The group, in a statement by its chairman, Suffy Uguoji, maintained that with the submission of the forensic audit to President Buhari, nothing should further delay the inauguration of the board. The ICF chairman noted that the delay would further encourage the sole administrator to remain in office whereas the law setting up the NDDC did not recognise sole administrator.
“It is, therefore, incumbent on the Federal Government and the Ministry of Niger Delta affairs, which is charged with the responsibility of overseeing the activities of NDDC to go the whole hog to ensure that the board is inaugurated urgently to put an end to all the manipulations.”
It further noted that “the orchestrated rigmaroles characterising NDDC since the last board was dissolved in 2018 is taking its tolls on the development of our communities and it is capable of heightening tension and unrest which we are managing to maintain.”
The group affirmed that “once the board is inaugurated, we are sure it will ensure fair representation of the nine constituent states and proper management of the fund of the commission in line with the provisions of the act establishing the agency.”
ICF also noted that “our people have suffered a great deal of neglect due to the absence of their representatives in the management of the commission which is being administered by a sole administrator.
“We wish to emphasise here that our major concern now is how the board will be inaugurated without further delay and not the report of the audit knowing that it is the board that will be called upon to ensure that justice is done to the outcome of the report.” The group, therefore, made a clarion call on the leadership of the INC led by Prof. Benjamin Okaba to concentrate on how the board would be inaugurated rather than calling on the Federal Government to make the report of the forensic audit public because “in the absence of the board the mechanism for checkmating large scale fraud is no more there and the sole adminsitratorship contraption which is not known to the law that established the commission is at liberty to perpetrate anything unwholesome.”