BY Ebi Arogbofa

At the just ended retreat for his ministers at which they reviewed their first-year performances, President Muhammadu Buhari was upbeat that his administration has shown probity and accountability in the manner it has tackled the problem of corruption.

To a partisan watcher of the president, he may have got accolades but not to a dispassionate Nigerian who has witnessed the massive erosion of credibility under the president, especially on the issues of public trust.

Examples abound that Nigerians are not swayed by the self-adulation of the president who seems fixated on his own self-assessment against the reality of corruption in agencies under his watch. Nowhere is this better seen than at the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) where an interim management committee appointed by his administration to midwife the forensic audit of the commission has been indicted for corruption, financial recklessness and mismanagement by the Nigerian Senate after an open and transparent investigation where Nigerians were treated to an arrogant display of corrupt entitlement by the directors of the IMC led by its Acting Managing Director, Professor Kemebradikumo Pondei and Acting Executive Director projects, Dr Cairo Ojougboh.

While Prof. Pondei told a shocked nation and the international community at the Senate Committee Public Hearing that, among others, the IMC shared out the sum of N1.3 billion among staff, including himself, as bonuses for the Covid-19 pandemic, Dr Ojougboh in various newspaper interviews, not only justified this curious expenditure but said it was standard practice under the Buhari administration.

Meanwhile, between February and May when the expanded IMC under the leadership of Pondei was appointed, the IMC members paid themselves N302 million as tour duty allowances at a time much of the country, including the NDDC office, was locked down on account of the Covid-19 pandemic!

So far, the investigations conducted by the Senate and House of Representatives have laid out fraudulent and questionable payments of N81.5 billion by the IMC of NDDC. This is a clear looting of the resources of the NDDC and the Senate which concluded its investigations in July, was unequivocal when it resolved unanimously that the IMC members must refund N4. 923 billion that was spent and be prosecuted for fraud. The Senate resolution also addressed the illegality of the IMC, which it said should be disbanded and the Governing Board inaugurated, to allow for the proper functioning of the governance structure at the commission. The resolution also touched on the forensic audit of the NDDC and other items with recommendations to guide the proper administration of the commission and the audit.

The Senate Committee report showed that in the space of eight months, between October 2019 and May 2020, as gleaned from the NDDC account statements, the IMC approved and disbursed the following: N1.12 billion for publicity, N1.3 billion for community relations, and N475 million, which the IMC said was used to buy hand sanitizer and face masks for the police. In his testimony, the Acting Managing Director Prof Pondei said the IMC paid themselves and staff a Covid-19 ‘palliative allowance’ of N1.3 billion despite receiving their normal salaries and allowances! In addition Pondei takes home N51 million monthly as allowances, while Ojougboh takes home an additional N18 million monthly as allowances. Ojougboh told The Vanguard recently that the N51 million Pondei collects monthly is to feed 100 policemen attached to him!

Despite the investigations and uproar that greeted the questionable manner it went about disbursing the N81.5 billion between February 2019 and May 2020, the IMC equally went further to squander additional money in the last one month in fictitious payments.

It is outrageous that “Despite the outcry against the ‘N1.3bn palliative to take care of themselves,’ the commission abused the nation further by paying self another money for “emergency intervention against the spread of Coronavirus among commission’s workforce” on 8th August.”

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However, in its 121-page report, which was adopted as a resolution of the Senate on July 23, 2020, the Senate Committee found that the IMC made withdrawals in the name of contracts that could not be verified. These fictitious contract payments ran into billions of naira. It therefore recommended that the IMC should refund the sum of N4.923 Billion to the Federation Account. Among the payments made, the Senate discovered that the Pondei-led IMC on April 15, 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown paid out N1.96 billion purportedly for the procurement of Lassa fever personal protection kits purportedly for the 185 LGAs of the NDDC states. Yet, the IMC, which said rather strangely that it used staff of the NDDC to distribute them, could not produce evidence of delivery of these kits to any of the 185 LGAs. Everything spoke to the fact that this was a fictitiously unexecuted contract. The IMC failed to provide a single name of recipient out of the 185 LGAs to whom the kits were purportedly handed over. It was self-evident that the fictitious contract, which was paid for by the IMC on April 15, 2020, was a conduit to steal the said N1.96 billion.

The NDDC IMC probe has revealed malfeasance on a scale never imagined before. Buhari’s inaction so far cannot be for want of evidence, which are amply provided by the Senate report and resolutions, and revelations by whistle-blowing anti-corruption civil society organisations such as ACTI.

Prof Keme Pondei and his IMC colleagues should not remain in office a day longer. We cannot afford delayed action by the president, which gives these officials that have allegedly abused public trust more time to commit further infractions, when there are already established indictment for fraud, corruption, self-enrichment, financial recklessness, abuse of due process and mismanagement against them. It is the evidence that sits the president’s logic of having done enough in the fight against corruption on its head.

Ebi Arogbofa is the Director of Research and Communication at Transparency and Accountability Advancement Group

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