ONYEDI GABRIEL, PORT HARCOURT
The Ijaw Youths Council (IYC) Worldwide has given the Federal Government till March 31, 2021, to end what it described as “illegal leadership structure” in the Niger Delta Development Commission.
The IYC also called on the government and the commission to immediately publish the report of the NDDC’s forensic audit.
In a statement signed by its President, Deacon Timothy Igbifa, IYC recalled that in February 2020, the Federal Government initiated a holistic forensic investigation of the commission’s financial activities from 2001 to 2019 with a view to sanitising and optimising the operations of the NDDC.
“But it has been one year that the investigations started. It is time to publish the report of this investigation. Every audit has a lifespan and we think that one year is more than enough to complete the audit of NDDC and publish the report”, he said.
Igbifa said that the IYC and other stakeholders would no longer allow the ongoing aberration and leadership confusion in NDDC with flagrant abuse of the act establishing the commission to continue in the name of the forensic audit.
He recalled that strange leadership structures such as the disbanded Interim Management Committee and the ongoing Sole Administration were being used to run the affairs of the commission while dropping forensic audit as an excuse.
Noting that the IYC and the Niger Delta were expecting an end to the sole administration of NDDC before April 1, 2021, he called on President Muhammadu Buhari to nominate and inaugurate a board that would take over from Effiong Akwa on April 1, 2021.
He recalled that the Minister of Niger Delta Affairs, Senator Godswill Akpabio mentioned April as the resumption date for the substantive board administration of the NDDC, adding that IYC and other stakeholders in the region would not allow the current management structure in the commission to stretch beyond March 31, 2021.
He said: “We were all happy when this forensic audit started in February 2020 because we believed that it would sanitise the NDDC and give the commission a new beginning to actualize its mandate in the Niger Delta region.
At a point, our leadership insisted on the dissolution of the IMC and the inauguration of a substantive board, but instead of constituting a new board, a sole administration headed by Effiong Akwa was put in place to run the affairs of the commission with the singular action to conclude the audit and handover to a substantive board while expending the 2020 budget tenured to 31st March 2021.
March 31 is a few weeks ahead and we believe it is time the President readies the board for the commission knowing fully well that the Board members would be subjected to an official inauguration before the handover date which is April 1, 2021.
We are calling on the President to nominate the board now and inaugurate its members before April.
“The IYC and other stakeholders in the region want to see a published forensic audit and a newly nominated board for the commission. We repeat that the audit is not in perpetuity. It has a terminal date and we believe that it is about time it ended. We won’t allow any politician or group to ride a roughshod with the resources of the commission and mess with the NDDC Act for their selfish political interest forthwith. The time to end the aberration in NDDC is March 31, 2021”.