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 Daily Independent Online.
* Friday,July 16, 2004.
Reps to probe NDDC over
alleged fraud
By Uchenna Awom
National Assembly
Correspondent, Abuja
Plans
have been concluded by the House of Representatives to probe the Niger
Delta Development Commission (NDDC) following allegations of fraud, award
of contracts without due process, financial recklessness and
over-invoicing running into billions of naira.
Documents made
available to Daily Independent also showed that the commission
presented conflicting financial figures to two different committees of
the House as the balance in its account at the end of the 2003 financial
year.
The
discrepancies stem from the accounts given to the House Public Accounts
Committee by the NDDC which showed that it had a left-over of N9.310
billion from N66.72 billion it received at the end of 2003 while, in the
same breath, it presented a N10 billion figure to the House Committee on
Niger Delta.
Last week, the
House Committee on Public Accounts summoned the management of the NDDC to
clarify issues raised in petitions. At the end of the meeting the
committee announced that it will embark on a verification tour of
completed and yet to be completed projects to ascertain the veracity of
claims.
It will also
investigate if projects are commensurate with the huge amount already
expended by the commission in the troubled Niger Delta.
Most members of
the committee said that it may not be true afterall that the NDDC is
short of funds if it claims that it is left with such a balance after
executing projects.
Such claims,
some insist, have raised more questions than answers besides the
conflicting figures presented.
The
investigation, it was learnt, may be connected with several petitions
against the NDDC where its alleged financial duplicity was highlighted.
The committee is
not also taking lightly an internal memo from thirteen directors of the
commission to the managing director, dated December 10, 2003 and marked
“confidential”.
In it, they drew his attention to
their experiences on December 8 and 10, 2003 which compelled them to
convey their misgivings with some of the happenings in the NDDC.
It read in
part: “We feel that as
directors, it does not do the commission any good for us to be invited to
a meeting with members of the National Assembly or any other stakeholder
group only to be sent out later in deference to an ‘Executive Session’.
“We also wish to
bring to your notice, certain vexed issues that have been previously
raised by us to the former Managing Director, G.E. Omene. We have
observed that management meetings have been reduced to mere briefing
sessions while board decisions are not communicated to us. Equally of
note is a ‘committee’ of managing director and executive directors whose
critical decisions are not communicated to us.
“Laid down
procedures are either ignored or selectively applied. Project selection,
initiation, awards and payments are all made without clear and consistent
procedure. For instance, tenders and tender board meetings are almost
always to the exclusion of directors of the commission”.
Although House Committee on Niger Delta Chairman Olaka
Nwogu confirmed that NDDC presented N10 billion as the balance of its
accounts for the financial year ended 2003, he indicated that his
committee is yet to establish enough grounds to investigate the
commission. However, he added: “Where such exist we will set up a panel
to do so, and such will be in public”.
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