Niger Delta Accountability and Development Coalition (NDADC), has raised the alarm over the setting up and inauguration of yet another interim management committee, now with five members, barely four months after the Joi Nunieh-led committee was inaugurated. It described it as evidence of a ‘deliberate’ plan to continually delay the inauguration of a truly representative governing board for the embattled Commission.
In a statement signed by its National Coordinator, Johnson Epia, the group stated that it is persuaded that there are attempts to use the forensic audit exercise ordered by President Muhammadu Buhari, as a ploy to thwart the inauguration of a governing board for NDDC, wondering why it has taken all of four months for the Ministry of Niger Delta and NDDC interim management to announce the appointment of an auditor, who has now been given a nine-month time frame for the conclusion of the audit exercise.
According to the group, people of Niger Delta are restive over the happenings at the NDDC and are opposed to the seemingly unending cycle of interim management on two principal grounds.
Epia insisted that to ensure that these new interim management appointments do not become merry-go-round, the governing board should be inaugurated and given a clear mandate to fast-track development, while the forensic audit takes place.
According to him, it is reductionist thinking to believe that the routine governance institutions provided for an agency like NDDC must be circumscribed in order to audit its activities and processes, asking that, “if that is so, why are other agencies of government not being run by interim management committees?”
He therefore urged President Buhari to abide by the NDDC Act and to inaugurate the governing board for the Commission just like there is a proper board for the North East Development Commission, as the ad-hoc interim management committee of NDDC has proven to be both unpopular and ineffective.