By Comrade Ofonime Akpanikon

The attention of Niger Delta Frontline Coalition, has been drawn to reports in some Nigerian newspapers of Thursday, April 23, 2020, where the Interim Management Committee of Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) put up a show on Wednesday to give the impression that a forensic audit was being kickstarted six months after the IMC was inaugurated.

We want to put it on record that critics of the IMC and Akpabio have never been opposed to the forensic audit but to the imposition of the IMC.

For the avoidance of doubt, we have always asked for a forensic audit and several groups in the region, cutting across diverse ethnic and civil society organisations, have done so for many years. However what Akpabio has put in place cannot stand.

The Akpabio IMC has no place in the NDDC Act, which only provides for a Governing Board nominated by the President in line with set conditions and approved by the National Assembly. These have grave implications for the NDDC as an institution because a situation where a government or appointee can decide to set aside the law setting up agencies is not only a fundamental corruptive breach of due process but one that opens up the channels of manipulation and corruption.

This is what has been put in place in the NDDC and why the actions of the IMC are suspect. He has caused to be appointed a committee he alone nominated and not beholding to any institution but him, a danger we raised in October 2019 when the appointments were made.

By his selfish actions, he has risked the reputation of the NDDC further and jeopardized even the audit as contemplated because at least four legal actions have been instituted in federal courts by indigenes and activist groups in the Niger Delta to declare the constitution of IMC illegal and all its activities since it was constituted. Not only that, other actions are pending in court challenging the  manner in which the institutions provided for in the NDDC Act of 2000 (as amended) have been set up under the minister.

Among these are the NDDC Monitoring Committee to which he installed himself as Chairman and the NDDC Advisory Committee where he again installed himself as a member. Both committees are clearly provided for in the law to work with the Governing Board, which inauguration has been delayed for some strange reason. Rather, the minister has promoted the appointment of an interim management committee in contravention of the NDDC Act.

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Our group, and indeed others have made the point that the minister’s desire to promote the IMC is to have in place a management that will do his bidding.

We believe that a proper transparent audit does not have to be micro-managed as the minister and his IMC have been trying to do in the last seven months. This is why we have always insisted on a reputable international firm of auditors carrying out the audit under a duly constituted Governing Board.

Clearly what is happening now is that the IMC is restless. We are aware that since Niger Delta groups and citizens began to raise questions on his motives, Akpabio has tuned up his propaganda machine to give the impression that he is going ahead with the audit as ordered by President Buhari, which he had conveniently ignored. Yet this is a step too little too late and designed to mask his real intentions.

Nigerians will recall that the minister had stated when the  IMC was appointed that the audit will last six months beginning from their appointment in October 2019. It is already seven months since the IMC was appointed and the audit we are being told will now begin and last an additional nine months. We consider this an insult to the intelligence of the people of the Niger Delta region and total disdain for the law and due process.

What this means, if this illegality is allowed to continue, is that Akpabio would have singlehandedly run the NDDC like his personal estate, a sole proprietorship, along with superintending over its annual budget of over N300 billion. In effect, several billions of naira has been put in the hands of the committee to spend under the supervision of Akpabio.

The Niger Delta will not stomach the gross illegality that Akpabio has foisted on the NDDC and we will continue to expose him for his lies and manipulations. However, we cringe to believe that the Buhari administration and its famed anti-corruption toga will fall to the manipulation of the minister into allowing that illegality to become the new norm in the agency in utter disregard for the NDDC Act.

We call on President Buhari to disband Akpabio’s  IMC, inaugurate a Board for the NDDC and appoint an unbiased international firm of auditors to independently audit the books of the NDDC.

Vanguard