A Civil Society Organization (CSO), Niger Delta Peoples’ Forum (NDPF), has condemned Minister of Niger Delta Affairs, Senator Godswill Akpabio, for what it said has now become a pattern of allegedly denying his ambivalent statements on the delay in inaugurating the NDDC Board.
According to Chief Boma Ebiakpo, National Chairman of the group, “the minister’s unending ambivalence and denials are embarrassingly a sad commentary on governance and an uncalled-for bringing to disrepute the office of the president because with each statement of denial or ambivalence by Senator Akpabio, he is either blaming President Buhari for the delay in inaugurating the NDDC Board, or he is contradicting President Buhari’s position and what the President said on the inauguration of the NDDC board.”
According to NDPF, another “volte-face by the minister in less than two months, appeared in a national newspaper, on December 8, under the headline “Akpabio denies asking protesters to approach Buhari.”
In the said report, according to the group, “using another senior official of his ministry, a Permanent Secretary, for this flip-flop, Senator Akpabio now claims that he “never advised protesting youths and women of the region to channel their grievances to president Muhammadu Buhari,” with regard to the inauguration of the board of the NDDC. The statement however added that “at the appropriate time, upon the recommendation of the minister to the President,” the board of NDDC will be inaugurated.”
Expatiating the minister’s pattern of denials, the group noted that “with this new ambivalence, it is another denial of a December 4, story in national newspaper under the headline “NDDC Board: channel your grievances to Buhari, Akpabio tells women, youths,” which was the minister’s reply to women of Niger Delta who accused him of delaying NDDC Board inauguration. The letter, dated November 30, 2021 was signed by his ministry’s Director, Planning, Research and Statistics, Alfred A. Abah.”
Ebiakpo then recalled that “in a similar pattern, Senator Akpabio, as reported in national daily of November 2, under the headline “It’s not part of my job to constitute NDDC Board, says Akpabio,” also absolved himself from the delay in inaugurating the NDDC Board, thereby blaming Buhari, only to later walk back in a November 12, story in a newspaper entitled “Re: Formation of NDDC Board Not Part Of My Responsibility.”
NDPF affirmed therefore that “in this denial story personally signed by Akpabio on November 12, Akpabio stated that the report of forensic audit, which he submitted to Buhari on September 2, “has just been submitted to Mr President, who is studying it to come up with a formula for a commission fit for purpose. That formula is what the board being put together will work with.” This again contradicts President Buhari’s promise and commitment to Nigerians on June 24, that “I want to assure you that as soon as the forensic audit report is submitted and accepted, the NDDC Board will be inaugurated.”
The group restated that with him now stating that “at the appropriate time, upon the recommendation of the minister to the President,” the Board of NDDC will be inaugurated, he has again “contradicted Buhari’s firm promise on inaugurating NDDC Board on completion and submission of the forensic audit report.”
Recall that when the leadership of the pan-Ijaw group, Ijaw National Congress (INC) visited President Buhari, on June 24, the President promised the nation that he will inaugurate the NDDC Board on receipt of the forensic audit report.
The president said: ‘‘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.” The report of the forensic audit has since September 2, 2021 been submitted to President Buhari by Senator Godswill Akpabio.
Niger Delta Peoples’ Forum believes that “the Minister of Niger Delta Affairs is acutely aware of the fever pitch tension the inexplicable continued delay in inaugurating the substantive board of NDDC is causing in the region after two years of the forensic audit exercise and after three months of President Buhari’s receipt of the forensic audit report, coupled with Mr. President’s earlier promise to inaugurate the Board on receipt of the audit report.” The Minister, they said “now resorts to classic red herring, using his well-worn excuses which he describes as accomplishments.”
NDPF states that Senator Akpabio continues to “flaunt the ‘completion’ of NDDC Head office, which was already 80% complete before his assumption of duty in July 2019; the completion of a student hostel block in Uyo; and a rural electricity project in Ondo, as accomplishments by his NDDC in two years.” The group however state that this is “an embarrassment for a Commission whose combined two-year budget for 2019 and 2020, as approved by the National Assembly was N799 Billion.”
NDPF therefore draws attention to what it described as “most alarming is the current report in a national newspaper of December 3, deflating Akpabio’s most touted accomplishment under the headline, “Workers, contractors, groan as all elevators in 13-floor NDDC building break down.”
The group quotes the above newspaper report that “contractors and workers at the 13-floor corporate headquarters of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) located in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, are groaning over the breakdown of all the lifts installed in the building, as all the four lifts installed to facilitate movements in and out of the multi-billion naira edifice stopped working about a month ago.”
NDPF further quoted the newspaper report as saying that “The Corporate headquarters of NDDC was completed and commissioned on March 11, 2021. The over N16bn edifice was constructed without furnishing as the Minister of Niger Delta Affairs, Senator Godswill Akpabio, who supervised the project said that another contract would be awarded for its furnishing. Apart from the problem posed by the elevators, it was observed that the NDDC workers including the directors have been operating in open spaces. The floors are simply large halls without required demarcation to give workers a needed conducive environment to do their jobs. Most senior workers only have desks and chairs at some corners of the halls to attend to files while other junior employees loiter the premises till the close of work. The walls of the building are already defaced, dirty especially the staircase areas showing lack of maintenance.”
NDPF also stated that the Minister of Niger Delta Affairs, in his latest volte-face “continuously touts positive reforms he is bringing to NDDC even when the evidence is to the contrary, and he is also breaking the law establishing the Commission.”
According to them, “Senator Akpabio as supervising Minister of the NDDC, through an official memo in 2019 recommended the suspension of the inauguration of the substantive Board, which President Buhari had appointed, and which was confirmed by the Senate in November of 2019.”
The group noted that the Minister further “recommended to the President the running of NDDC with illegal interim management/sole administrator contraptions until the completion of the forensic audit, contrary to the provisions of NDDC Act. That illegal interim management/sole administrator contraption has been administering NDDC since October 2019, in contravention of the law, and negates fair and equitable representation which a board guarantees and which ensures proper governance, accountability, equity and fairness to the nine constituent states.”
Boma Ebiakpo of NDPF further highlights that the NDDC Act only provides that the Board and Management 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. According to them, 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. Sadly according to NDPF, “to the detriment of the entire region, Senator Akpabio has been using these illegal interim contraptions/sole administrator to fleece the NDDC of its funds in the last two years.”
Niger Delta Peoples’ Forum also highlighted “the stark but startling revelations” by the Association of Contractors of the Niger Delta Development Commission (ACNDDC) who picketed the NDDC Head office in Port Harcourt this week.
It quotes the Chairman of ACNDDC, Joe Adia, who addressed the protest march stating that “presently huge monies come into the Commission every month and the next thing we hear is that the money is finished. Who are you paying? Give us a record of the people you are paying. How can you pay N800 million each for so-called desilting jobs and yet contractors being owed N5 million you have refused to pay? We cannot die for the jobs we have done for the region. We are saying, you pay us now and you bring in the board as a matter of urgency.”
NDPF further quotes the ACNDDC Chairman as stating that “the Minister of Niger Delta affairs is the one that okays everything that must be paid here (NDDC). We contractors are dying. You said you are paying contractors. I am the chairman of contractors association of NDDC, (pointing to others) this is the president, and these are critical stakeholders, contractors that have jobs, do you know how many jobs these people have? Look at a woman here, she has a project, she lost her mother, she cannot even bury her, or are we talking of contractors that died in the hospitals. We protested in Abuja and we are here. We don’t want anybody to come and address us, because it has gone beyond that because they have to pay us what they owe and bring in the board.”
NDPF also stated that the “Minister needs to be reminded again that it is President Buhari who, on June 24, 2021, promised the nation that he will inaugurate the NDDC Board on receipt of the forensic audit report.”
The President said: ‘‘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.”
The group therefore reminded the Minister that it has been “over three months when he (Akpabio) submitted the forensic audit report to the President since September 2, 2021. So, how does a legitimate demand by Niger Deltans requesting abidance to the law setting up NDDC and the reminder to the President to fulfill his own promise amount to stampede?”
On the way forward, NDPF opined that “beyond Senator Akpabio’s continued characteristic flip-flops and ambivalence, contradicting President Buhari or blaming the President for the delay in NDDC Board inauguration, use of President Buhari’s name to try and perpetuate illegality, and ineffectual finger-pointing, what is needed at this point is for the government to redeem itself now that the Forensic audit report has been submitted to President Muhammadu Buhari since September 2, 2021.”
NDPF also recounted that “whereas the North East Development Commission (NEDC) has been allowed to function with its duly constituted Board in place in line with its NEDC Act thereby ensuring proper Corporate Governance, accountability, checks and balances and fair representation of its Constituent states, the NDDC on the other hand has been run arbitrarily in the last two years by Interim committees/sole administrator in breach of the NDDC Act.”
Boma Ebiakpo of NDPF, therefore urged “the President to heed the call of Niger Delta leaders, governors, youths, women, traditional rulers, civil society organisations, and other stakeholders, comply with the law setting up NDDC, and also fulfill his own promise of June 24, 2021, and inaugurate the board to manage the Commission for the benefit of the people of nine Niger Delta states.”