Joy Nunieh: The fury of a woman scorned

By ADEBAYO OBAJEMU

Mrs. Joy Nunieh, former acting NDDC boss, is an unusual woman of steel, the stealth Amazon that looks at Iroko without batting an eyelid. When she was appointed managing director of the Niger Delta Development Commission in October last year, nothing pointed to the avalanche of  controversy that laid in wait for her tenure, which abruptly came to a close four months after her appointment.

Nunieh has proven to be the opener of the Pandora box, the Oracle that exposed the cesspool of wrongdoings at the Commission saddled with the responsibility of developing the Niger Delta, but which has despite the efforts of the successive administration in the country ever since its creation in 2002 and over N25 trillion, has turned out to be a blight on the region it was meant to develop. Following her sack by government reportedly at the instigation of Godswill Akpabio, Minster in charge of Niger Delta, a lot of water has passed under the bridge.

Analysts who spoke with this newspaper believe the Minister of Niger Delta Affairs, Akpabio, may have pushed for the removal of Joy Nunieh as the acting managing director of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC).

According to sources familiar with the raging battle between the duo the relationship between the two individuals became rancorous lately prior to her sack. This newspaper learnt that it came to a point that the former NDDC chief reportedly refused to pick the minister’s telephone calls. Her sack and replacement by President Muhammadu Buhari came as anti climax, and named Kemebradikumo Pondei, a professor of medicine, as her replacement.

Pondei was to serve as acting managing director of the troubled NDDC until the completion of a planned forensic audit of the agency. That was not to be, as soon after, Pondei himself was enmeshed in N40 billion scandal which led to House of Representatives’ hearings where Pondei fainted under intense interrogation.

Mr. Akpabio’s relationship with the sacked NDDC boss was fraught with mutual suspicion and power-play, according to people familiar with the matter.

“The expected cooperation was not there (between the ministry and the NDDC),” a source close to Akpabio told this newspaper.

Some sources  familiar with the matter told BusinessHallmark’ that Ms Nunieh stayed away from the first tripartite meeting between the NDDC interim management, the lead forensic consultant, Messrs Olumuyiwa Basiru & Company, and the ministry of Niger Delta Affairs in January in Abuja. The two other directors in the NDDC attended the meeting, the sources said.

“Some people in government suspect that she may not give the needed cooperation for the forensic audit to be done timely”.

“You know the government does not want the interim management to drag on with the forensic audit for too long,” the source said. “If you don’t cooperate with them and they don’t conclude the work on time, it means your tenure will continue.”

One source said the relationship between Ms Nunieh and Mr. Akpabio remained frosty for several weeks. She said the former NDDC chief later tried to broker peace meeting break when an uncomplimentary story about her surfaced in some newspapers in January.

It was learnt that Ms Nunieh reached out to Mr. Akpabio at the Port Harcourt airport sometime in January while the minister was on his way to a sporting event at the Federal Government College, Port Harcourt. Inside the VIP lounge at the airport, the former NDDC chief was said to have requested a peaceful settlement of her conflict with the minister.

“It had nothing to do with contract-award,” the source said of the disagreement between the minister and the former acting managing director of the NDDC.

“The interim management committee is not supposed to be awarding contracts, their job was to supervise the forensic audit,” she said.

Nuineh said the minister wanted her to enter into oath of secrecy with him, as he also wanted her to do his bidding to commit illegality. She did not provide any evidence to support her claims against the minister. The former acting MD, who made her claim in an interview with journalists shortly after appearing before the Senate ad-hoc committee investigating the issue, said she would have been jailed if she had succumbed to Mr Akpabio’s ‘oath of secrecy’.

Recall that the video of the interview published by Channels TV has been in circulation online.

According to her, Mr. Akpabio pressured her three times to place her “under oath” to the extent that they took the matter to the presidential Villa, when she vehemently refused.

“He told me to take an oath. Though he denied that, he told me three times. We had a reconciliation meeting at the Villa in the office of Sarki Abba, the S.A. to the President on Domestics,” she said.

Ms Nunieh said she feared that she would be jailed for five years if, under Mr Akpabio’s oath, she committed infraction on the Public Procurement Act and was not able to speak out, while he would be going about as a free man. The former official said it was after her refusal to take the oath that Mr. Akpabio started plotting her removal.

“He said he was going to remove me and then he started the campaign of calumny against me…,” she said. “One of the issues raised against me was that I awarded contracts without them knowing about it. I’m sure that is what they told you people yesterday.

“Nobody makes payments in NDDC without Godswill Akpabio’s consent. When we first came to NDDC on the day of the inauguration, we were going to the camp, he told me Madam MD, if you don’t do what I said, the same pen I used in signing your letter; that is the pen I will use in removing you.

“He said the first thing I should do, when I get to Port Harcourt, is to change $236 million in (the) NDDC account into Naira. I told him I am scared to do that. He claimed that I have a poverty mentality, that I was afraid of money. All of you knew he accused me of that, saying I am afraid to spend money.

“After two days, he came to Port Harcourt and told (me) that what I should do is to change dollars and I said I cannot just do that. He said I (should) remove Mr. Kaltungo from legal and send him on compulsory retirement and he said we cannot have a northerner as head of the legal unit.”

NDDC Crisis

Accusations and counter accusations of fraud and abuse of office and due process filtered among officials and ex-officials of the NDDC since President Buhari ordered the audit of the interventionist agency’s accounts last year. It should be noted that the Senate May 5, set up a seven-member committee to investigate the “financial recklessness” of the Interim Management Committee (IMC) of the commission.

The lawmakers fumed that in the last three months the commission has spent over N40 billion of the commission’s fund without recourse to established processes of funds disbursement. The NDDC management believed the Senate investigation was spurred by people who wanted to stop the planned forensic audit of the commission.

This position was shared by its supervising minister, Mr. Akpabio, who railed against the Senate, accusing the lawmakers of corruption and undue interference in the running of the commission.

Akpabio has ever since appearances at National Assembly accused the lawmakers of being greatest beneficiaries of contract awards.

In the thick of the war of attrition between Akpabio and Nuineh, all weapons were fair. Security operatives numbering more than 30 wanted to arrest her on the day she was due to appear at National Assembly, presumably to stop her but Nyesom Wike, Rivers State governor came to her aid. Prior to that, the duo had appeared before a Senate ad hoc panel investigating the alleged mismanagement of N40bn by the Interim Management Committee of the NDDC.

At the hearing, Akpabio said he did not know the expenditure of the NDDC under Nunieh because she refused to give him briefings. But Nunieh, who made damning allegations against Akpabio, said the minister engineered her removal for failing to dance to his tunes.

She alleged that Akpabio asked her to change the dollars in the NDDC account; sack the head of the legal team, who is from the North; remove all directors, who refused to follow his instructions and also implicate Senator Peter Nwaoboshi, Chairman of the Senate Committee on NDDC.

According to Nunieh, Akpabio warned that if she did not follow his instructions, she would be removed. She also alleged that Akpabio would never sign any document but rather ask his subordinates to commit fraud. After the appearance it is evident that the allegations may have reached a dead end, and the NDDC will like continue as usual.