NDDC Unveils Master-plan for Niger Delta
From Cletus Akwaya in Abuja
The Niger Delta Develop-ment Commission (NDDC) yesterday unveiled its deve-lopment master plan for the oil-producing region with a firm pledge to create 800,000 jobs in a four-year period.
Managing Director of NDDC, Chief Emmanuel Aguariavwodo, presented the Draft Niger Delta Regional Development Master Plan (NDRMP) to the Economic Adviser to the President, Prof. Ode Ojowu, during a courtesy call in Abuja.
Aguariavwodo, who led a delegation of officials of the commission to the presentation ceremony at the National Planning Commission (NPC), said 200,000 jobs would be created annually under the plan whose implementation would commence at the beginning of the 2005 fiscal year.
"The Draft Master Plan has reached a critical stage where we are now presenting it to the Federal Government in order to plug into the National Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy (NEEDS). We shall be making presentations to stakeholders, state governments in the region, oil companies and donor agencies between September and October to receive their final inputs. After that we shall come up with the final document which we will start implementing as from 2005," Aguariavwodo stated.
He observed that most of the activities of the commission as well as, the projects contained in the master-plan were in line with the NEEDS document and expressed hope that the meeting with the Federal Government officials would provide a robust working tool that would meet national aspirations and the expectations of the people of the Niger Delta.
He disclosed that the NDDC has opened discussions with the United Nations Development Fund (UNDP), which has commenced the preparation of the States Economic Empowerment Development Strategy (SEEDS), the state version of NEEDS, on the importance of expanding its activities to include the preparation of SEEDS for all nine oil producing states of the region.
Such a strategy, he noted, would simplify the work of the commission to properly coordinate all development projects within the region as enunciated in its legislative mandate.
The master-plan, he disclosed, was a product of a "bottom-up consultation with local communities" who were given the privilege of feeding the commission with their priorities rather than the top-bottom approach of the past in which communities were often provided with facilities that they did not need or did not consider as priorities.
It contained a scenario of the present widespread poverty and restiveness in the Niger Delta, and the priorities that needed to be set in the development and integration of the area.
Areas of focus as contained in the draft document include infrastructure, environment, agriculture, health, education, private sector development, as well as social development.
The plan was based on Integrated Balanced Scenario, which would enable the commission to address several sectors at the same time, rather than focusing attention only on the urban centres, which has the tendency to encourage rural-urban drift.
Aguariavwodo hinted that the NDDC would adopt the Pilot Project Model and capacity building, with the expectation that successful projects could be replicated by members of the communities who had also received capacity building in various areas of the economy, especially where each community had comparative advantage.
The master-plan also has provision for details of financial outlay, monitoring programme, and periodic review of the overall strategy.
Of the many problems of the Niger Delta, the document identified poverty as the major factor, which made youths in the region vulnerable to manipulation by some interest groups.
And to check this, the plan aims at increasing the people's productivity through intensive vocational training in addition to formal education.
Permanent Secretary of the NPC, Dr. Muazu Babangida Aliyu, who received the delegation on behalf of the Economic Adviser warned the NDDC to guide against failure in its assignment, adding that the era where resources provided by the Federal Government and oil companies for the development of the region were diverted by community leaders was over.
He advised the Commission to tie all its funds to specific projects stressing that the board and management of the NDDC must be accountable for all funds released to it through profitable investment in the provision of infrastructure and in the development of human capital in the region.
Aliyu also charged the NDDC to be equitable in the distribution of its projects across the Niger Delta area and among the nine oil producing states.
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