Transparency and Accountability Advancement Group, Wednesday said that the Niger Delta Development Commission, NDDC, does not need new Executive Director Finance and Administration (EDFA), to pay overseas scholarship students.

Disclosing this in a statement signed by Damian Nwikinaka, Director of Information and Strategy, the group quashed the purported statement credited to the Director of Corporate Affairs at the Niger Delta Development Commission, saying that students on NDDC scholarship abroad have not been paid because the Commission cannot make payments from its domiciliary account without an Executive Director Finance and Administration (EDFA).

The Transparency and Accountability advancement group, described the above statement as lie, advising President Muhammadu Buhari to be careful with those he appointed into office.

The group said NDDC financial regulations have made adequate provisions to meet its financial obligations, even in the absence of its Executive Management.

Read the statement below:

“To address the issues raised by Akpabio and the IMC, the Domiciliary Account of NDDC is domiciled with the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), with the Managing Director/CEO as the approving authority for any payment or transfer from the domiciliary account. There are four other signatories to the account.

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These are the EDFA in Category ‘A’, with the Director of Finance as Alternate; and the Executive Director, Projects in Category ‘B’, with the Director, Project Monitoring & Supervision (DPMS) as Alternate. Any of the ‘A’ and ‘B’ signatories can sign for payments to be made from the  domiciliary account with the approval of the Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer. No transfer or payment can be made without the approval of the Managing Director/CEO, and not the EDFA.

“By the provision of the signatory categories, in the absence of the EDFA, as has been the case since May, the Director of Finance steps in as signatory. Both the Director of Finance and the Director of Project Monitoring and Supervision are staff (bureaucrats) in the NDDC and they are available to make such payments. In fact the NDDC has been making payments since the Acting EDFA died in May.

“Despite the fact that there is no EDFA at the moment, the IMC has been transferring funds  from the same domiciliary account to Naira account with the CBN for the payments they have been making since May, 2020, when the late Acting EDFA passed on. The NDDC does not need a fresh Acting EDFA to make payments for scholarship program or any other payments from the domiciliary account of the NDDC with the CBN. The question to ask is, is there no other alternate signatories in NDDC?

“Both the CBN and the Office of Accountant of the Federation (OAGF) are aware that payments can be made by the Managing Director and other officers from the NDDC domiciliary account without an EDFA. Therefore, nobody should believe the cheap falsehood being bandied  by the IMC. It is another strategy or antics to deceive people and the President to allow them to bring in a new EDFA into the IMC at a time that all Nigerians are calling for IMC disbandment for a proper Governing Board to come in to administer the NDDC.

“The narrative that the payment for the overseas  scholarships has not been done because of the absence of the EDFA is yet another falsehood by the IMC calculated at deceiving the Federal Government.

“We urge President Buhari and the Federal Executive Council to be very circumspect of Akpabio’s schemes and not allow themselves to be used to further his fraudulent agenda at the NDDC.

“We stand by the Senate resolutions based on the report of its Adhoc Committee, which investigated and discovered large-scale fraud and financial recklessness against the IMC.”

Vanguard