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July 20, 2020

NDDC staff spent N1.32bn as COVID-19 relief funds — Pondei

NDDC CORRUPTION: THE NORTH DESERVES APOLOGIES! By Sharon Faliya Cham ''The beauty of reason is that it can be applied to understand the failure of reason" - Professor Steven Pinker ''It is not possible to be in favour of justice for some people and not be in favour of justice for all people" - Martin Luther King Jr. Ever since President Muhammadu Buhari ordered the forensic auditing of the finances and activities of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) last year, which consequently inspired the open investigative hearings of the Commission by the National Assembly this July, it has been floodgates of scandals upon scandals, which paint an obscenely lurid picture of how the elites and politicians of the Niger Delta region have turned the NDDC into a very fat cash cow that serves them cash instead of development and good life for the generality of people in the region. To confuse and deflect the attention of the poor indigenes of the region from how they criminally made themselves billionaires at their expense, the elite and leaders of that region perfected an art of propaganda in which they always pointedly blame the woes of that area on northern Nigerians, specifically the Hausa/Fulani who have become the favourite subject of blame and attack from groups and persons who hate looking at their own mirrors to identify the source(s) of their own problems. The noun 'parasite' was wilfully turned into a mischievous adjective by them to describe the northerner, just to give effect to the craft of fooling poor Niger Deltans to look away from the indigenous robbers and plunderers crippling them both physically and emotionally. In fact, they have so commonised the word 'parasite' to the extent that even people in some other parts of the country without crude oil or any known resource that helps in sustaining Nigeria also delight in calling the North parasite while delightfully chewing meat from cows and rams. When they call the North parasites, the intended objective is to make Niger Delta hoi polloi forget that their states receive 13% of the sales made from the crude oil extracted and sold from the region, which is just an addition to the fat monthly federal allocation they also receive, also always much more than other states of the federation. And all of those are beside the Federal Ministry of Niger Delta Affairs, the Presidential Amnesty Programme (PAP) and the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) whose annual budgets alone always surpass the total sum the entire northern states get from the federal government in a year, whereas the ministry alongside the interventionist agencies mentioned are all programmes carefully instituted by the Nigerian State to develop the region ahead of other regions in gratitude and appreciation of the fact that the country's oil economy rests on that region (so far). Again, all of that is beside the Corporate Social Responsibility programmes major independent oil firms do in the region, ranging from provision of hospitals, schools, electric power plants, employments and scholarships, usually strictly for people of the region. And that's not all. The federal government, especially this one headed by President Buhari, also includes the region in its signature projects captured in its other offices like the Federal Ministry of Works or that of Agric or that of Water Resources or Federal Ministry of Petroleum Resources, and so on. As a matter of fact, everything is arranged to be a win-win situation for the Niger Delta, yet because of the massive corruption and unbridled criminality of its elite and leaders, the region has remained slummy in total contrast to the wealth it generates and the wealth it receives back. To cement their hold on the people and the massive resources the federal government and oil firms plough back to the region, they created all manner of heavily armed militias whom they use to blackmail and extort the country for themselves. And to make the plight of the poor people of the area worse, the criminal activities of the armed militias always lead to the pollution and destruction of their farmlands, habitats and aqua life. For each of these, the 'parasites' are always blamed while the sleazy kingpins and ''queenpins'' luxuriate themselves across the globe with the proceeds of their plunder. The proceeds taste so eternally delicious that they invented a catchphrase called Resource Control, meant as a gambit to have it all in their pockets (again) while their proletariat continue to live in stilts above oily rivers. Well then, it was just a matter of time before the Buhari wind blew to expose the rump of the fowl. With the feathers blown away, it became all too clear that the North wasn't the chicken's rump embedded with parasites that were eating away the flesh and intestines of the chicken. And so with television screens showing that all the characters of the rape and plunder of the Niger Delta are Niger Deltans, and even displaying fainting theatrics as answer to probing questions, it became all too clear for the Niger Delta hoi polloi that they have been conned and blinded for too long. Their television screens didn't show them Hausa/Fulani Mallams fainting when asked to show what projects were executed with over 80 billion Naira in the Niger Delta during the Covid-19 lockdown; all they saw were their own kith and kin fainting on live television, perhaps as a perfect metaphor for how the region was made to faint under the unbearable weight of the edifice of corruption that was carefully and masterfully erected there by their indigenous taskmasters. It is under this gigantic edifice and atmosphere of corruption that another gambit of extortion, blackmail and distraction called 'restructuring' was birthed. Having conned their people into thinking and believing that the North is a parasite that is freely feeding fat on ''our oyel'', and feeling pained and frustrated that a 16 years old era that satisfied their morbid taste for unearned wealth was expectedly halted in 2015, they ramped up the volume of their restructuring song to a very deafening decibel. The most arrogant singers of the restructuring song among them, and across certain parts of the country, have never ever hidden their opinion that their entire agitation for restructuring was aimed at hurting the North whom they mischievously accuse of unfairly benefitting from the ''current skewed structure'' compared to their own regions. And each time they wax those untruths, the truthful citizen is left wondering whether the 13% Derivation Fund, the Presidential Amnesty Programme (PAP), the Federal Ministry of Niger Delta Affairs, and the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) have been handed over to the North, thereby skewing Nigeria's structure unfairly in its favour! Well, I have always argued that, considering the fact that 99.9% of the agitators of restructuring are always well-known admirers and supporters of corruption and corrupt politicians, their actual reason for agitating for restructuring is purely and simply based on their unbridled desire to pocket the totality of what they think Nigeria earns from their areas, but certainly not for any reason of proper and judicious management of resources and good governance. Looking at the mess in the NDDC, PAP and the integrity deficit that is a common feature among the ''activists of restructuring'', it always becomes pretty easy to see that they will be so incapable of running anything properly for the good of their own people, much less the good of all. Corruption and greed are the currency and character of their agitation. Therefore, even if Nigeria were to restructure in the way they want the restructuring to be, it wouldn't be long before you see their restructured enclaves ''fainting'' under the crushing weight of the character they have blatantly refused to restructure. For all of that, it wouldn't be a bad idea if they apologize to the North for the deliberate mischaracterization they subjected the region to, and that is if they have sufficient modesty and fairness of mind to do so, which also depends on if they feel any sense of contrition from the NDDC mess and other messes they helped in creating. * Cham is a public affairs analyst

Kemebradikumo Pondei (Source: Channels)

Kemebradikumo Pondei (Source: Channels)

By Tordue Salem

The Acting Managing Director of Niger Delta Development Commission, NDDC, Kemebradikumo Pondei, on Monday, told the House of Representatives’ Ad hoc Committee investigating the activities of the agency that N1.32 billion was spent as ‘COVID-19 relief funds’ for members of staff.

However, at a Senate hearing about a fortnight ago, Pondei had said NDDC spent N1.5 billion to take care of staff, besides their salaries.

His words: “The youth were given palliatives to help cushion the effect of the pandemic on the people. The youth were idle and to avoid violence, they were paid.

“Five million for youths and five million for women and five million for people living with disabilities in each senatorial district.”

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But on Monday (yesterday), when asked again about the ‘relief funds,’ he said he must have said N1.5 billion while he was not attentive.

He said: “We used N1.32 billion, not N1.5 billion, to take care of ourselves as COVID-19 relief funds.”

“The amount the IMC used to take care of NDDC staff as COVID-19 palliative was N1.32 billion, not N1.5 billion,” he responded to the question posed to him by coordinator of the panel and Vice Chairman of the committee, Thomas Ereyitomi, who took over after the chairman stepped aside at the start of the hearing over allegations of bias.

Pondei also disagreed with the committee that the commission had extra-budgetary spending by approving that sum for themselves.

He also said N81.5 billion was spent from October 2019 to May 31, this year by the NDDC.

Of this, he explained that the incumbent interim management committee he heads, which came in February spent N59.1 billion.

He said: “Of this, N38.6 billion was spent on capital projects. N35.3 billion was paid to contractors hired by previous administrations.”

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He added that N20.5 billion was spent on recurrent expenditure between February 20, 2019 and May 21, this year.

“They are a backlog of debt for about three years. Duty tour allowances haven’t been paid for three years; we cleared it. Scholarship fees haven’t been paid since 2016,” he said, adding that the NDDC paid N500,000 to each beneficiary.

He also told the committee that the commission paid a contractor N641 million for the completion of what he called ‘turning point road’ in Asaba and over N500 million to a consultant to identify NDDC projects in different parts of the nine Niger Delta states.

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