Don’t allow NDDC’s IMC criminality continue, stakeholders tell Buhari

The Transparency and Accountability Advancement Group has drawn the attention of Nigerians to the recent petition by a traditional monarch in Ondo State protesting against the payment made by the Interim Management Committee of the Niger Delta Development Commission for fake contracts allegedly executed at his community, according to findings by Daily Times.

According to the National Coordinator of the group, Comrade Damian Nwikinaka,   the petition validates what whistleblowers have been saying about the corruption, financial recklessness and mismanagement among other dubious practices going on at the commission in the last one year since the IMC was surreptitiously appointed.

Nwikinaka  said : “As reported in the media, the Olu of Igbokoda in Ondo State disputed the contracts for which the IMC has processed payments as unveiled by the whistleblower Kolawole Johnson of the Act for Positive Transformation Initiative recently. The said payment is in respect of desilting and re-channelling of river projects in Igbokoda but the Olu of Igbokoda has said no such contracts were executed in his community. Recall that payments for desilting contracts have run into billions of naira since the IMC was appointed. The IMC has obviously been employing the names of several communities and fictitious rivers and coastlines to execute what is clearly a well executed scam. The contracts at Igbokoda were awarded at a cost of N634,761,500 each, totalling about N2.5billion, payment of which has been processed by the IMC.”

The group said that  in the petition addressed to the presidency and the House of Representatives Committee probing the NDDC IMC, the traditional ruler said that the contracts were  not known to them. He made it clear that  the places of the so-called contracts did not even exist in the community.

According to the petition signed by the Palace Secretary on behalf of the Olu: “It may interest you to know, Sir, that there is no river in Igbokoda called Temetan Creek that they claimed gulped the whopping sum of N634,761,500.00 (six hundred and thirty-four million, seven hundred and sixty-one thousand, five hundred thousand naira). A close look at the petition shows four different locations at the same price each was executed. It means on Igbokoda alone, over N2.5 billion was siphoned by these dubious claims. I am therefore asking the NASS to compel the NDDC and the contractor to come to show where, when and how were the jobs in Igbokoda done. I dare say it is a fraud and an unfair treatment of my people who had been extremely short-changed by the contracts.”

The group said that the protest by the Igbokoda monarch was coming a few days after Act for Positive Transformation Initiative in a letter to Chief Godswill Akpabio, Niger Delta Minister and copied to the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Professor Ibrahim Gambari, raised the alarm of fresh looting by the NDDC IMC using the fraudulent desilting contracts through which billions of naira have been paid out for fictitious contracts since the IMC was appointed. In the letter signed by Kolawole Johnson, Head of its Strategy Directorate, the anti-corruption NGO pointedly accused Akpabio of supervising the criminal illegal extra budgetary expenditure at the NDDC in the last few months.

According to Johnson: “It is on record that about ​140 (One Hundred and Forty) Billion​ Naira​ has so far been spent under your supervision as the supervising Minister over the Commission. It is also instructive to note that payment for desilting against the instruction of Mr President has dominated the recent illegal expenditure.”

According to the group, in the last three months about N30 billion has been paid out by the IMC for desilting and other such fictitious contracts in violation of not just the president’s instruction but the fact that the NDDC does not have an approved budget. Despite his public statement after a recent Federal Executive Council meeting that the commission cannot undertake capital expenditure because it has no approved budget, Akpabio and his IMC appointees have consistently sidetracked this by embarking on reckless extra-budgetary expenditure under the guise of unbudgetted emergency contracts running into several billions of naira.

“It is plainly irresponsible that officials of an agency of government will not only brazenly disobey public procurement rules and financial regulations but persistently do so without commensurate response from the government as Akpabio and the IMC are doing at the NDDC.

“We will continue to restate that a litany of serious infractions and malfeasance have been investigated and established against the IMC, including the one by the Senate Adhoc Committee which probed the expenditure of over N80 billion in the space of nine months and indicted the IMC for corruption, financial recklessness and mismanagement, yet the president is acting like it is comfortable with the IMC corruption. Two months after they were adopted, none of the resolutions of the Senate which were based on the committee’s report, including the demand that the IMC be disbanded and its officials refund N4.923 billion, have been implemented despite an earlier statement by the president to consider the report, making Nigeria and Nigerians a laughing stock in the international community, especially for millions of people who watched the public hearings where IMC officials admitted to corrupt acts. President Buhari must be wary of his legacy because if he continues to fail to act on the Senate report and other reports of corruption perpetrated by the IMC, it will be said of him that this was the president who made anti-corruption speeches but condoned corruption by his appointed officials. It is not a flattering epitaph for an administration that professes zero tolerance for corrupt practices. We demand that the president acts on the corruption by the IMC at the NDDC without further delay”, the group added.

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