NDDC: Akpabio’s crusade to expose the rot

• Agency alleges political vendetta by governors

By EMEKA EJERE

When an interventionist agency saddled with development has just a few billionaires to show for huge budgetary allocations of nearly two decades, serious questions about the purpose and relevance of such agency are asked. Nothing, perhaps, explains better the imperative of a forensic audit of the operations of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), from 2001 to 2019 recently ordered by Buhari President Mohammadu Buhari than this misplaced priority. President made this commitment when NDDC state governors visited him.

The president believes only a probe of the finances of the agency can explain a huge gap between projects on the ground in the region and the humongous amount that has so far been disbursed. At present, the agency is hobbled by a debt of over a trillion naira.

Most insiders knew that things were not at ease at the agency but few people wanted to stick out their neck. The rot had been eating deeper and deeper in the organization and government after government turned a blind eye to it. Until Godswill Akpabio, the Minister of Niger Delta Affairs came on the saddle in September and the can of worms was opened.

After a brief study of the place he was appalled at the situation and cried out. He said the agency has been crippled by corruption and now over burdened with over N2trn debt to settle. At a meeting with the management of NDDC in Abuja he said the commission had not performed well in its main responsibility, which was the development of the Niger Delta region.

The minister said that the impact of the commission on the entire region would have been more, but for some factors such as personal interest and undue interference, among others, stressing the need for collaboration between the ministry and the commission to move the region to a higher level.

According to him, there are too many uncompleted projects across the Niger Delta region due to lack of proper coordination, adding “we will not allow that any longer.”

“We are going to focus on the key ones that are on ground for us to complete between now and next year and also start some things that can create employment opportunities,” he added.

Akpabio also said that the East West Road was one of the major priorities of his administration, pledging to work very hard to ensure the development of the region.

The Director overseeing the NDDC, Dr. Akwagaga Enyia, expressed the commission’s readiness to cooperate with the minister to ensure development of the region, while appreciating them for such a meeting. Earlier, the Permanent Secretary of the ministry, Mrs. Didi Walson-Jack, pledged the commitment of members of staff to the actualisation of the vision and mandate of the minister.

The NDDC was created in 2000 by former President Olusegun Obasanjo, in replacement of the Oil Mineral Producing Areas Development Commission (OMPADEC), which was created by the military and crippled by corruption and fraud and failed to deliver on the mandate of developing the region.

A United Nations Secretary General mission to Nigeria after the execution of Ogoni human rights and environmental activist, Mr. Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight of his kinsmen, by the Abacha military junta, had made recommendations for its set up to assuage the feelings of alienation among the people.

Part of the recommendations was the establishment of an intervention agency to address infrastructural and human capacity deficit, as well as political and economic maginalisation of the oil rich Niger Delta, which later fueled discontent that eventually led to violent extremism in the form of militancy.

The agency was to, among other things formulate policies and guidelines for the development of the Niger Delta. It was meant to conceive, plan and implement “projects and programmes for sustainable development of the Niger Delta area in the field of transport, including roads, jetties and waterways, health employment, industrialisation, agriculture and fisheries, housing and urban development, water supply, electricity and telecommunications.”

However, findings show that instead of bringing development to the region, the NDDC has become notorious for creating a few billionaires through the award of bogus and phoney contracts that are never meant to be completed. Evidences abound that political actors whose proxies have controlled the affairs of the agency since inception have stripped the Niger Delta of resources meant for its development.

Under Dr. Godwin Omene, the first chief executive of the commission, the Niger Delta Regional Development Master Plan (NDRDMP) was initiated and developed by GTZ. The sketch believed to have provided a very comprehensive plan of how the region could be developed across various sectors, estimated to cost some $50 billion over a 15-year period. But 19 years down the line, implementation of the master plan is yet to commence.

Yet, Business Hallmark’s checks revealed that as at June 2017 the agency had in 10 years spent a whopping $40 billion, the use of which it could barely explain.

“With the amount of money that the Federal Government has religiously allocated to the NDDC, we will like to see the results on the ground. Those that are responsible for that have to explain certain issues,” Buhari said last week when he received governors of Niger Delta states led by Governor Seriake Dickson, of Bayelsa.

“The projects said to have been done must be verifiable,” Buhari said further, adding: “You just cannot say you spent so much billions and when the place is visited, one cannot see the structures that have been done. The consultants must also prove that they are competent.”

On August 27, 2019, President Buhari approved a new 16-man board of the NDDC, with Dr. Pius Odubu from Edo State as chairman. Odubu succeeds former Senate leader from Cross River State, Victor Ndoma- Egba, who oversaw the affairs of the agency from 2016 to 2019.

Inside the casino

A document obtained by Business Hallmark from a source that pleaded anonymity said: “As the budgets increased over the years, the value of the projects started to blow up. The use of variations to existing projects went out of control.

“For instance, a contract originally awarded at N3.39 billion to ROUDO NIG. LTD for Sandfilling and Shore protection of Ogu Town ended up costing N8.133 billion, a whopping 230% increment.

Construction of Isielu-Okaigbene Idungboko road awarded to JID construction company LTD for N2.35 billion ended up at N3.73 billion, an increase of 160%.

“Construction of (the same) Isielu-Okaigbene Idungboko road was also awarded to INTER-BAU construction NIG. LTD for N585 million and ended up at N3.67 billion, an increase of 620%.

“Construction of Ikot Ukap Ndiya internal roads in Nsit Ubium LGA awarded to Osmoserve Global Ltd for N1.2 billion ended up at N2.86 billion, an increase of 235%.

“This is just the tip of the iceberg of hundreds of projects varied in this manner”, the source had disclosed.

A projects review conducted in 2015 showed that since inception NDDC had about N2.2 trillion budgeted of which about N1.4 trillion had been received. As at 2008, the commission had awarded over 2,500 contracts.

However, in what many saw as unfounded, the immediate past chairman of the board at the time, Senator Bassey Ewa-Henshaw, put the number of contracts awarded at 6,000 projects in 2013 and 8,000 in 2015.

According to him, the commission needed about N1 trillion to complete outstanding projects and about N800 billion to clear outstanding liabilities. No explanation was given for almost N350 billion received between 2011 and 2015.

In a bid to clear a thick dust in the air at the time, Business Hallmark took a trip to Rivers State, one of the nine states of the oil-rich region and came back with findings further vindicating critics of the commission. From traditional rulers to ordinary people in the areas visited, nobody agreed to have seen any serious and completed NDDC projects in their localities.

Paramount Ruler of Nonwa Kingdom in Tai Local Government Area, Chief Emmanuel Nyedan said: “Idon’t know of any NDDC project in Nonwa hear. The light project we have here was done by OMPADEC.”

At Bane, the hometown of the late Ken Saro-Wiwa, Crown Prince Mike Karikpo told Business Hallmark that there was nothing like NDDC project in Bane and its environ.

“You can look around as you move. There is nothing, nothing to show that this place is where the oil is coming from. As far as NDDC is concerned this place does not exist.”

At Kira, also in Ogoniland, Mr. Destiny Nyar, said. “There’re no NDDC projects in Kira. But in few communities in Tai, there’re few NDDC projects.

“The only one we have here is a cottage hospital, which is not yet completed, so I cannot count ourselves as having any.”

In Oyigbo Local Government, the situation is not any different as a traditional ruler, who does not want his name on print stated his locality has not benefitted from the NDDC.

Changing the narrative

Arising from failures in the commission’s procurement processes and a number of dodgy contracts, Ndoma-Egba, who took over from Ewa-Henshaw as chairman of the commission, called for a critical review of the agency’s master plan, in order to strengthen its procurement processes.

The former Senate Leader had said, “We must strengthen our procurement processes to create a robust regional economy for our citizens through a long-term plan, because the 15-year master plan was abandoned immediately it was set up.”

Ndoma-Egba stated that the then management of NDDC was set to change the narrative of how the commission was run, because it was hitherto seen as more of a contract-awarding institution than a development agency.

On his part, the new managing director of the commission at the time, Nsima Ekere, confirmed that the NDDC had received a total of $40 billion in the last 10 years, and described the earlier master plan as a drain pipe.

“The Niger Delta master plan originally required 15 years to implement at a cost of $50 billion. The region has received $40 billion over the past 10 years and sadly, there is little evidence of anything to show for the amount spent.”

Ndoma-Egba and Ekere were certainly not oblivious to the fact that the agency had been a den of corruption where nothing seemed to have worked well in the interest of the people. They made frantic efforts to convince Nigerians that they had the capacity to rebrand and reposition the commission for better performance.

The new leadership claimed to believe that due process and transparency would facilitate sustainable development in the Niger Delta region and end the era of uncompleted projects and corruption. The new vision was encapsulated in the commission’s 4-R Initiative of restoring its core mandate, restructuring its balance sheet, reforming its processes and reaffirming a commitment to doing what is right and proper always.

“We must see our appointments as a lifetime opportunity to make a real difference in the lives of the ordinary people of the region and write our names in gold for posterity and not an opportunity for our own slice of the proverbial national cake or short term benefits.”, Ndoma-Egba had remarked at the inauguration of the board headed by him.

A resilient ill-wind

Ndoma Egba and Ekere have both left with nothing showing that the 4-R initiative has been adhered to. On Wednesday, the acting managing director of the NDDC, Ms. Enyia Akwagaga, stalled an investigation by the Senate Committee on Public Accounts, as she failed to appear before the committee with necessary documents.

Akwagaga had been summoned by the committee for investigative hearing over the contracts on the silting and clearing of water hyacinth in the Niger Delta region awarded by the NDDC under emergency programme. The chairman of the committee, Mathew Urghohide, had said N2.5 billion was budgeted for the said contracts but the commission spent over N65 billion.

Similarly, in August, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), quizzed the former acting managing director of the agency, Prof. Nelson Brambaifa, as well as its acting Director, Finance and Administration, Dr. Chris Amadi, acting Executive Director, Projects, Dr. Samuel Adjogbe, and others over controversial contract awards and subsequent payments.

Preliminary investigation by the anti-graft agency had revealed that funds were being diverted from the NDDC’s account domiciled in the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to commercial banks, hence its instruction to some commercial banks at the time not to grant request for payments by the NDDC

Report of a recent investigation conducted by The Guardian reads in part:

“Several contractors, who spoke to The Guardian claim they paid bribe of not less than 10 percent of the total project cost (of each contract) to top NDDC officials and their proxies before their payments are processed. They stressed that once this happens, poor quality of service was inevitable.

“Investigation by The Guardian further revealed that there exist a network of syndicate responsible for obtaining contracts from the commission, and selling them to subcontractors.

“This syndicate, which audaciously sells contracts close to the NDDC corporate headquarters along Aba Road, Port Harcourt, Rivers State, thrives because most contracts are won unfairly, with awards favouring friends or relatives of ruling political party chieftains and government officials.

“An unsuspecting member of the syndicate had offered to sell some contracts to The Guardian. One of the jobs is NDDC/EDP/ INS PR/DT/17/ 396, which is for emergency repairs of failed and un-motorable sections of NEPA Cooperative/FUPRE Staff Quarters Road, along Ehwerhe Road, off Tension, Agbarho, Delta State.

“The bill of engineering measurement and evaluation estimated that the job would cost N409.3 million.

“The second contract, NDDC/EDP/INS PR/DT/17/416 is for the construction/ emergency repairs of failed and unmotorable sections of Oil field Road and 3rd Marine Gate Road in Warri South Local Council, Delta State, valued at N266.2 million.

“Inside sources revealed that due to anomalies in the award of emergency contracts, the former minister of Niger Delta Affairs, Usani Uguru Usani, had to stop the award of emergency contracts. But immediately the last cabinet was dissolved, the management of the commission resumed the award of emergency road repair contracts, which it backdated.”

It is not news that the Edo State governor, Godwin Obaseki, has been so unimpressed lately with the agency’s performance that he has not only called for a probe, but said he was exploring the option of filing a suit against it for delivering substandard jobs in the state.

Shocked that he could not identify commensurate evidence of the N20 billion the NDDC claimed to have spent on projects in the state in the last six months, the governor said, “There must be a judicial enquiry into the activities of the NDDC. People must go to jail for their corrupt act.”

Reports indicate that, for the period that N20 billion was said to have been spent in Edo State, N256 billion was released to the agency for its activities across the nine oil producing states.

The Edo State Government also claimed that there was an agreement in which the state was supposed to contribute 60 per cent for projects, while the NDDC would provide the remaining 40 per cent. “We opened an account, but they didn’t remit one kobo into it,” Obaseki fumed.

United in support

The Niger Delta region and indeed Nigerians at large appear united more than ever before in their support for the president’s stance on the NDDC. The umbrella body for oil bearing communities in the Niger Delta region, Host Communities of Nigeria (HOSCON) has assured President Buhari of the support of all stakeholders in the region in his quest to probe the activities of the NDDC.

In a statement, signed by its National Director of Media and Publicity, Okakuro Monday Whiskey, the group said the commission’s performance had been far below the amount that had been expended on projects in the region.

“For 19 years, billions of naira has been allocated without commensurate infrastructural facilities to show for it” it stated. The president’s decision to conduct a forensic audit of all contracts and projects from 2001 to date is most welcome, said Dr. Emmanuel Mbah, a public affairs commentator.

“And for this reason most of the projects are deliberately poorly conceptualized so as to aid   to achieve their objective of stealing. As a result the whole of Niger Delta is littered with deliberately abandoned projects.”

Beyond the surface

But NDDC) in a reaction accused governors of the Niger Delta region of plotting to hijack the commission, insisting that there was more to the meeting between the governors and Buhari than the eyes can see.

“You remember that the governors who went there necessitating that reaction, were from the opposition party”, said Charles Odili, head of corporate affairs at NDDC.

“And so, such things are necessary fallouts when they have an opportunity to meet Mr. President. They want to control the commission. But it does not work that way. It is a natural thing for a president to ask that we look into the financial records of any organisation that is under the presidency. It is not about corruption.”

Akpabio’s resolve to change the tide

The Minister for Niger Delta, Senator Godswin Akpabio, does not want to leave any stone unturned in ensuring that President Buhari’s directive of probing the NDDC is carried out to the letter in order to right the wrongs in the agency.

According the ministers spokesman who spoke to Business Hallmark in a telephone interview, Mr. Anietie Ekong said meant to introduce a different measure in administering the NDDC affairs to achieve results and targets as well as ensure that the agency’s activities benefit the people of Niger Delta in totality. He explained that the minister was working tirelessly to complete and move the agency’s head office, an edifice which was started 20 years ago to its permanent office building.

“The minister will not only be proud to complete a legacy project for the agency and invite the President to commission it, he also plans to creatively develop a post amnesty program which will engage the group of people that have already been trained,” he said