Tanure Ojaide Alleges Conspiracy Of Silence Over NDDC Scandal

Nigerian poet and academic, Tanure Ojaide, has raised the alarm over what he described as a conspiracy of silence by leaders in the region on the probe of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC).

In a statement, he noted: “There seems to be also a conspiracy of silence by the region’s governors and other political office holders who seem to be caught in a blood-and-soil loyalty trap. Why have we not heard anything from the six governors of the Niger Delta as well as Niger Delta Senators and members of the House of Representatives? Are they part of the problem that none seems to have come out to condemn in categorical terms the seething corruption?

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 “I demand that the Federal Government should set up a committee of experts, technocrats, and representatives of the Niger Delta people and not the bureaucratic ‘forensic audit’ panel, give it a maximum of three months to establish the contracts given and supposed to have been executedand checkwhether or not they were really carried out. That investigative committee should establish what each culprit has stolen or stashed away and publish the report for Niger Deltans and Nigerians to see.

“All monies stolen should be returned within a short time or the persons remain in jail for the rest of their lives.”

The Frank Porter Graham Professor of Africana Studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, added: “The NDDC should be reorganized with checks and balances to operate in a more transparent way so that the people and the state governments are aware of what the budget is and what programs the money is spent on as well as follow through with their successful execution.

“The current revelations should be investigated and not be treated the usual Nigerian way of crying foul but getting nothing done. We know those who have been in charge and how much money the Federal Government has pumped into the NDDC and so let the papers be opened for everybody to read. A situation in which those appointed to take care of the welfare of a people deprive them of development is unacceptable.”