…Vows to prosecute fraudulent contractors

BY JIMITOTA ONOYUME

Managing Director, Niger Delta Development Commission, Mr Nsima Ekere in this interview with selected journalists in Rivers state   speaks on effort by  the new board of the commission to change the narrative of NDDC as a corrupt institution.

Excerpts:

How has it been for the new board?

Some of you have been in this commission much longer than I do . I am not coming to tell you what you don’t know. When we came in we saw that without disparaging the effort and contributions of past managements and boards, we will like to acknowledge their contributions in laying a solid   foundation   for the take off of the NDDC, we also saw that a whole lot needs to be done.

I was stunned by the report of the Orosanye   panel, another one was the report of the bureau service reforms that had looked at NDDC with a view to restructuring it. The conclusion of the report as presented to us was that whey they studied NDDC they found that virtually everything that could possibly  be wrong with an organization was wrong with NDDC.

Managing Director, Niger Delta Development Commission, Mr Nsima Ekere

Based on that we came up with a very ambitious and very articulated program we tagged four R strategy to make the place deliver efficiently for the good of the region and the country. We said we must first reform the governance system, the system must be properly reformed to deliver efficiently.

We said we must restructure our balance sheet, because the NDDC balance sheet is over bloated, to ensure it is more meaningful. We have contingent liabilities in excess of 1.3 trillion naira. So there was need to   reform the balance sheet to ensure the   place runs efficiently.

One step we have taken, is that the last management meeting approved cancellation of over   600 projects. We found that some of the contracts   were not properly procured. Some of    the contractors have not gone to site, some of the jobs   are as late as 2002. Surprisingly, and sadly   too some of the contractors have collected advance payment yet no work in site. So we terminated the contracts worth about   100 billion naira . This is one step we have taken.

The second phase will involve projects within zero to five percent completion . In this case some of the contractors have gone to site but have achieved very negligible work compared to what they were asked to do. We are going to look at these ones. Some of  the contractors have also not gone to site for five to seven years.   We are looking at   all the situations.

We must also restore the commission back to its core mandate.    NDDC was set up for rapid socio economic and integrated development of the Niger Delta. We want to ensure that the projects we do achieve the core mandate of the commission.

You will observe that some of the contracts were done to satisfy one interest or the other, which should not be. So we are going back to the master plan which is about ten years old yet not much has been achieved on this. A point   I like to emphasis is that the NDDC master plan is not only for the NDDC. It spells out the programs and projects that should be pursued by all development   stakeholders in the region, the state governments, international oil companies, IOCs, the local government councils, these are all centres of development. The master plan is to integrate the development efforts of the development centers.

Some contractors had the mindset they were coming to defraud the region. How do you handle this?

First, I acknowledge the effort of   a former   management of the commission. They came up with the policy of no   payment of advance on projects to stop this fraud. It is good and it is also bad. On our part, we are determined to go after the contractors who got money and abandoned the projects. We are also going after the banks that issued the advance payment guarantees .

We have already recovered about 60 million already from the banks. We have a committee working on this.   So we want to ensure all NDDC   funds that are in the hands of these contractors are recovered and we are going to prosecute the contractors. We are working with the office of   Mr President to prosecute the defaulting contractors.

Let me also say that by the time we update the master plan, we will then have an integrated development plan for the region. It will eliminate stand alone project, duplication of projects. We will eliminate situation where state government, Ministry of Niger Delta and the NDDC will be handling one project. We had a project where a state government, NDDC and Ministry of Niger Delta had paid   for the same job. Regular engagements with stakeholders will stop this in the future.

There are fears that the NDDC has abandoned its   overseas scholarship programme for post graduate students. What is the situation of things ?

Let me say that NDDC does   not have intention and will not abandon any of the students. We discovered a lot of discrepancies with the way the scholarships were administered. I don’t want to say fraud. The scholarships are for studies abroad.

But you found that some of the people were still in Nigeria. There is a fixed amount paid for the scholarship. Some went to another university different from what we have in our record because it is cheaper. We get invoice on a student from one university whereas by our record the person is in another school.

They even go for a different programme than what they got scholarship for. So these raised questions on the whole process. NDDC has areas in which we want to develop manpower.

We have   set up a committee in-house to resolve all these. We made the first release to some of the students recently. I sympathise with the case of the genuine students. A lot of people have abused the process because it is paid in foreign currencies.

The assurance I want to give to all genuine students in the program   is that they will certainly get their funds. It might take some time but they will be attended to. We seek their understanding. A lot of people have defrauded the NDDC   scholarship scheme because it is paid in dollars. We regret the delay in releasing funds to the genuine students, the hardship they have gone through because of the delay . we are doing everything to resolve the problem and make disbursement.

What is your board doing to engage idle youths at the gate of the commission   begging for alms daily ?

It is unfortunate. When we resumed we found out that there are groups of youths at the gate. We found some have even benefited from training programs by the commission and at the end of the exercise they got the starter packs and sold  them.

I think this is one of the larger problems of the region. We need to educate the mind sets of our youths so they can think of being productive . We will keep working on this. We are committed to working on a sustainable development program that will get our youths engaged. We will ensure that all our training programs provide sustainable   economic development programs. We will want to train our youths in the right skills   for the oil companies,. We have had training in catering, home management and other kind of ventures.

Another thing is to provide direct support to small and medium scale business operations .  We are going to work with the development partners and institutions to achieve this. There is something we discovered we must deliberately do.

People are here to exploit hydro carbon and products that God has helped us with. This is a region that rain fails in nine months a year ,    The rain is not friendly, it is a rain forest, so we must come up with a very well articulated plan to attract investment to the region. We are working with our consultants on this. We want to see that the region attracts industries and other businesses.

Contractors are grumbling over delayed payment for jobs. Will your   board focus on payment   for existing jobs or award fresh contracts?

The framework of our projects in our present budget   is 60 percent for ongoing projects and 40 percent for new projects. We can’t realistically take on all ongoing projects. So we have set up a committee to look at the projects with the greatest good for our communities and region. We are not going to go into much of new projects. The only new projects we are on are those   that will create   integrated regional economy.