By John Mayaki

For weeks now, the Managing Director of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), Samuel Ogbuku, has sought every means possible, including a court ruling, to undermine the roles and powers of the Chairman of the agency’s board, Lauretta Onochie.

He has recruited some individuals in the corridors of power to push his bizarre mission, which summarily demands an inaccurate interpretation of the NDDC Act to justify his avoidance of accountability and due process.

While his mission is clear, the underlying reasons haven’t exactly been so. The public has been left to piece the puzzle together from public statements and the recent dramatic confrontation between one of his surrogates and the chairman at a Senate committee hearing.

However, for the first time, inside sources have leaked to the press the precise moment Ogbuku decided to declare an all-out war against Onochie, after previous unsuccessful attempts to cosy up to her as ‘mummy’ who, according to him, should stay quiet and receive her ‘package’ from under the table deals carried out using the agency.

The sources, some of whom received complaints from Ogbuku directly, said the conflict is about a clash of intent and vision about the NDDC’s operational objectives and what it offers those appointed to lead and manage it.

While Ogbuku is of the view that the agency is a ‘hustling ground’ where appointees come to stuff their pockets and ensure their family over several generations doesn’t smell poverty; Lauretta Onochie takes the opposite view that the agency should be (re)calibrated to deliver the greatest good to the greatest number in the Niger Delta, especially its teeming poor and particularly, the youth.

In other words, Ogbuku is animated by the commonplace ‘chop-make-I-chop’ mentality while Onochie has her eyes firmly fixed on making the history books as a true reformer under whose watch the NDDC was washed clean and made to serve its legal purpose.

This divergence of vision caused an expected friction when, in April, Ogbuku staged a PPP Summit in Lagos. The sources claimed that when the idea of a summit was mooted by Ogbuku at the agency, it raised eyebrows following the presentation of a bill costing over a billion naira and the curious choice of Lagos, not any of the Niger Delta states which is the primary constituency of the agency, as the preferred venue of the event.

Ogbuku was said to have failed to receive the required approval of Onochie as the board Chairman who wasted no time firing several memos demanding that the MD provides justification on why the agency was undertaking such a costly project with ill-defined objectives at the time it hadn’t paid the allowances of its workers for months.

Instead of responding to the memos and thus maintaining an official record of the exchange, Ogbuku reportedly called for physical meetings at which he tried to soften the stance of the Chairman through excessive flattery and charm. while also claiming that his refusal to respond to the memos demanding clarity was because he didn’t want to “exchange words with his elders.”

When these entreaties to the chairman failed, as she insisted on due process and the requested explanation cum justification, Ogbuku then decided to abandon his charm offensive, opting instead for an all-out war against her. He was said to have gone around the Villa in search of those willing to back him in an extraordinary effort to distort the NDDC Act with a weird interpretation that the board chairman has no say in the agency’s running, including projects execution and financial management.

He then went about bragging that everyone has a price tag. It was as part of this effort that he reportedly sponsored a court ruling barring the chairman from ‘interfering’ with the MD’s duties and other threats issued by ex-militants to scare Onochie. MD Ogbuku is no stranger to financial scandal, having been party to a N19BN fraud case back in 2012 when he was hunted by the EFCC.

Mayaki, a developmental journalist and archivist, sent in this piece from Abuja.