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 Daily Independent Online.
* Monday, July 26, 2004.
House of Reps panel defends NDDC
By Uchenna Awom
National Assembly
Correspondent,
Abuja
When President Olusegun
Obasanjo and the last National Assembly were locked in a ding-dong battle
over the smoothening of legal edges that will give the birth of Niger
Delta Development (NDDC) a
smooth landing as an interventionist institution that will assuage the
restiveness of the Niger Delta people, it was not hard to phantom that it
will only be a matter of time for the agency to be placed on the spot,
either from pressures from contractors or contractor politicians.
So it was not surprising that recent events have put
the agency on the hot chase to salvage if from any scare that may come
out of the phony battle that stares it in the face, but then the National
Assembly may not let go easily, largely because it is seen as it its baby.
Reactions to some reports that the agency especially
some of its principal officers may have compromised in service delivery,
suggest that somewhere along the line, NDDC may eventually find light at
the end of the tunnel, depending though on how it sustains the
relationship with the lawmakers.
Rising in stout defence of the
commission last week, the Deputy Chairman of the House Committee on Niger
Delta, Mba Ajah, told Daily Independent that he was aware that
Independent Corrupt Practices Commission (ICPC) was investigating some
allegation leveled against the agency, adding, however, that his
committee was yet to find any wrongdoing against NDDC.
Ajah said the thinking among
most members of the committee is that those leveling the allegations
against the agency are those who want to get contract from it through the
back door, and when they fail, it must become an issue and of course
enough reason for them to castigate the management of NDDC.
Expressing his worry over the
development, he said the people of Niger Delta deserved more than what
they were getting now, adding that if any person moved against the
agency, then such a person must be a enemy of the people of the troubled
region.
NDDC, he said, is a child of
circumstance and brain child of President Olusegun Obasanjo and it was
the view of the President that he could develop the Niger Delta more
through the commission, and as such, he knows much more than “these
disgruntled elements calling for the scrapping of the agency. I believe
the President knows the situation”.
It would be recalled that
penultimate week, the House Committee on Public Accounts, after hearing
from the management of the agency, announced its plans to tour the
projects sites of the commission to ascertain the veracity of the claims
and know whether the amount so far expended is commensurate with what is
on the ground. Though Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, Oluwole
Adeyemi, emphatically stated at the parley that the investigative tour
was not targeted at NDDC alone, but would also take the committee to
other agencies of government that fall within its sphere of oversight
function.
Now, it looks as if something is amiss,
suggesting that the agency may be in a cliffhanger position. But
Ajah thought otherwise,
rather he traced the problem of the commission to the irregularity of
contributions to the agency.
He said that as at last year,
the problem was more on the Federal Government’s contribution to NDDC.
The government, he said, was not complying with its contribution
commitment to the commission, thus making the oil companies also found
reneging on their contribution.
The Niger Delta Committee, he
said, however, discovered that the oil firms as at last year had complied
by being up to date with their contributions. Even at that, the committee
had a disagreement with the oil firms when it was discovered that they
computed the developmental projects and investments in the NDDC states as
forming part of their contributions to the fund.
“We told them that it was not
acceptable, besides that, the calculation was not in consonance with the
NDDC Act. The commission was also directed to compute their account with
the aim of getting the oil companies to pay. The committee believes that
as a responsible corporate citizens, they would comply and make the work
of the commission easier”, he said.
On the report of a case of
fraud in the commission, the latest being report making the rounds that
the House Committee was given N10million to cover up N9.6billion revenue,
which was not in the commission’s budget. The deputy boss of the panel
fumed, saying his committee was alive to its responsibilities and to
oversight functions to the NDDC. He said the money in question was
carried forward from 2003 to 2004, explaining that when money is carried forward, it is
expected to be ploughed into other projects.
“I believe this is what the
commission will do. The committee has been in touch with the commission,
especially during their budget presentation. I can tell you there is no
fund lying idle at the commission. If you visit the Niger Delta areas,
you will see the projects on ground, they are projects being executed
with the funds appropriated to the commission,” Ajah stated.
Asked to comment specifically
if there was any attempt to bribe the committee as alleged, Ajah from
Abia State said the present House had done everything possible to be very
responsible Nigerians, and concentrate on its work unlike the previous
House, adding that as far as the House was concerned, it would do
everything possible so that Nigerians will continue to hold it in high
esteem.
His committee, he boasted, is
made up of over 40 responsible members with proven integrity, querying
the reasonability of N10million bribe to the members.
“Most of us had tested high
positions of authority before coming to the National Assembly. What is
N10million? There is no truth in the report. I see it as an attempt of
some people to ridicule the members. So I want to say here that there was
no attempt by anybody to bribe us and there was no plan to cover up any
money,” he stated.
Well, there is still some
missing link in the ongoing saga. One is the hurried inauguration of a
monitoring panel by President Obasanjo the same last week, again suggesting
that this time may not be NDDC’s best of times. Perhaps for the first
time the commission is facing its first real acid test. How it wriggles
out rests squarely on what is on the ground and how clean the accounts
are kept by the time both the lawmakers and the President’s men visit.
But again ,Ajah would not let
go as he opted to clarify one more controversial issue that is currently
dogging the commission, and that is the issue of the mass transit busses
alleged to have been distributed to some members of his committee. He
denied the allegation. According to him, the committee had discussion
with the NDDC to ensure that the busses get to the communities through
the instrumentality of
co-operative societies. It was agreed that the distribution of the
vehicles to the cooperatives must be monitored to ensure that they get to
their real destinations.
The bottom-line of the entire
brouhaha is that NDDC, whether the current management stays or not, has
through this pressure, warmed up to take service delivery very serious
and see it as a veritable and patriotic sacrifice to a worthy course.
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