The current revelations and show of shame surrounding the financial dealings of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) has revealed how deep and rotten the fabrics of our nation has been ravaged by corruption. The NDDC management since inception has made mockery of the dearth of infrastructural development in that region with hundreds of irrelevant and uncompleted projects that littered the region, yet bogus and outrageous amounts were awarded to contractors.
It is rather shameful that 20 years after the Commission was set up by President Olusegun Obasanjo to empower restive youth in the region and provide infrastructural development, the region has taken several steps backward into the abyss of rot.
IMPACT NEWS recalled that the region had since the independence agitated for attention with the likes of Isaac Boro, Ken Saro Wiwa and a host of others who paid the supreme price spearheading the struggle for government attention to environmental degradation, insecurity, oil bunkering and other forms of crimes heightened by lack of education, skilled labour and empowerment for the youth. One would have thought the establishment of the NDDC would put these old travails in the dustbin of history, but it only facilitates a cycle of insensitivity and pushed the region far into underdevelopment.
The revelation that the Commission spent N81.5 billion in eight months without tangible project to point to is laughable to say the least. A breakdown of the expenditure as claimed by the commission shows that N1.3 billion was expended on community relations; N122.9 million on condolences; N83 million on consultancy, N3.14 billion on Covid-19; N486 million on Duty Tour Allowance (DTA); N790.9 million on Impress; and N1.956 billion on Lassa fever.
Also other frivolous expenses were Legal services, maintenance, overseas travel, Project Public Communication, security, staff related payment and stakeholders engagement, all of which gulped a whooping N11.313 billion.
The various allegations and counter allegations flying around and across tables on the financial operations of the Commission is a reflection of Nigeria’s state of administrative management. It saddens our heart that an Interim Management Committee set up to oversee the commission all through the period which the forensic audit ordered by President Muhammadu Buhari would take, after the previous management was sacked for financial irregularities would engaged in similar atrocity.
The wasteful and corrupt administration in the NDDC is not an isolated case, but a silhouette of the state of the nation and corruption. Who would have imagined that the Czar of an anticorruption agency would also be suspended based on allegations of engaging in similar irregularities.
The backwardness of our nation is a collective fault of all Nigerians who pretended helpless in the face of wanton corruption and irregularities. We hope that Nigerians would one day take the country back from the resource-sucking politicians and public office holders who are less concern about the plights of Nigerians.
We therefore call on President Muhammadu Buhari to ensure that a comprehensive auditing of the finance operations of the NDDC and other major public organisations are done and made public in order to reassure Nigerians that he is sincere in his fight against corruption.
