The Ijaw Youth Council (IYC) Worldwide has kicked again against President Muhammadu Buhari’s continued silence and alleged refusal to form a substantive board for the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC).
The IYC expressed resentment that despite the hue and cry raised by critical stakeholders from the Niger Delta, Buhari was yet to constitute the board after the submission of long-awaited forensic audit was concluded and submitted to the government.
Other Ijaw groups, the Ijaw Consultative Forum (ICF), Ondo State chapter, and pan-Ijaw group, Ijaw National Congress (INC), also aligned with the IYC to demand the inauguration of the board without further delay.
The IYC’s anger is contained in a statement, yesterday by its National Spokesman, Comrade Ebilade Ekerefe, wherein it urged the President to constitute same immediately without further delays.
It advised him not to allow myopic and self-centred politicians to provoke violence in the region and discredit his administration.
“We accept the submission of the audit report as commendable but demand the immediate of the substantive board of the NDDC,”the IYC noted.
The group argued that the quick decision of the President to constitute the EFCC board, the NNPC board and other boards of agencies and parastatals showed that his position on the conduct of the forensic audit and submission of the report were mere excuses and cover-up of his disdain for the people of the region.
The IYC noted that though the region had remained peaceful despite the repeated failed promises on the inauguration of the substantive board, the youth of the region would no longer condone excuses for the delay as the forensic auditors had concluded their job.
It further argued that the Niger Delta was losing big time due to the continuous delay in the constitution of the board.
The IYC said, “The NDDC was set up to plan and execute developmental projects in the region, especially in the areas of skills acquisition and youth empowerment programmes, construction of roads and jetties, provision of health care facilities, employment, agriculture and fisheries, housing and urban development, water supply, electricity and industrialisation.
“We can categorically say that the region has lost greatly in the aforementioned due to the deliberate delay of the constitution of the board. Let it be on record that since President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration, the NDDC has been functioning without recourse to the Act which established it and that has contributed largely to the underdevelopment of the region despite the forensic audit which was used as an excuse for the delay of a substantive board.
“Notwithstanding the decision of the Ijaw youths to study carefully the submitted audit report which showed that over 13,000 abandoned projects in the Niger Delta with 77 road projects completed, the reported claim of recommendation for a part-time membership of the board is unacceptable. It is a violation of the provision of the Act setting up the NDDC and we will resist it at all costs.”
The IYC pointed out that the purported recommendation for a part-time membership of the NDDC board was the handiwork of self-styled politicians who desired to turn the NDDC as their own personal enterprise.
It warned that any strange clauses smuggled into the NDDC aside the constitution of a substantive board would be resisted and the activities of the commission crippled.
Similarly, the Ijaw Consultative Forum (ICF), Ondo State chapter, aligned with pan-Ijaw group, Ijaw National Congress (INC), and Ijaw Youth Council (IYC) to call on President Muhammadu Buhari, to inaugurate the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) board since the commission’s forensic audit has been submitted to him.
In a statement signed by the Chairman of the group, Suffy Uguoji, the group maintained that with the submission of the forensic audit to Buhari, nothing should further delay the inauguration of the board.
The ICF chairman noted that the delay in inaugurating the substantive board will further encourage the sole administrator to remain in office whereas the law setting up NDDC does not recognise sole administrator.
The statement read, “We strongly demand that President Muhammadu Buhari should, as a matter of importance and urgency, inaugurate the NDDC Board since the forensic audit report had been submitted to him by the Minister of Niger Delta Affairs, Senator Godwill Akpabio, through the Attorney General and Minister of Justice”, over three weeks ago.
The umbrella body of the Ijaw nation worldwide, Ijaw National Congress (INC) recently also cautioned that, “any further delay in the inauguration of the NDDC board is a clear betrayal of trust and display of state insensitivity on ljaw nation and Niger Delta region.”
The INC call followed the promise of Buhari in June, 2021, while receiving the Ijaw National Congress in Abuja, that the NDDC Board would be inaugurated as soon as the forensic audit report was submitted and accepted.
The President said, ‘‘Based on the mismanagement that had previously bedevilled the NDDC, a forensic audit was set up and the result is expected by the end of July, 2021. I want to assure you that as soon as the forensic audit report is submitted and accepted, the NDDC Board will be inaugurated.”
According to Ijaw Consultative Forum, the Federal Government also reiterated its position to inaugurate the Senate-confirmed board during the inaugural ceremony of the Interim Management Committee (IMC) of the NDDC, on October 29, 2019, to oversee the activities of the commission pending the completion of the forensic audit.
The group emphasised, “It is therefore incumbent on the Federal Government and the Ministry of Niger Delta Affairs, which is charged with the responsibility of overseeing the activities of NDDC to go the whole hog to ensure that the board is inaugurated urgently to put an end to all the manipulations.”
It further noted that, “the orchestrated rigmaroles characterising NDDC since the last board was dissolved in 2018 is taking its tolls on the development of our communities and it is capable of heightening tension and unrest which we are managing to maintain.”
The group affirmed that, “once the board is inaugurated, we are sure it will ensure fair representation of the nine constituent states and proper management of the fund of the commission in line with the provisions of the act establishing the agency.”
ICF also noted that, “our people have suffered a great deal of neglect due to the absence of their representatives in the management of the commission which is being administered by a sole administrator.”
ICF, therefore, re-affirmed, “We wish to emphasise here that our major concern now is how the board will be inaugurated without further delay and not the report of the audit knowing that it is the board that will be called upon to ensure that justice is done to the outcome of the report.”
The group has, therefore, made a clarion call on the leadership of Ijaw National Congress (INC) led by Prof. Benjamin Okaba, to concentrate on how the board will be inaugurated rather than calling on the Federal Government to make the report of the forensic audit public because “in the absence of the board the mechanism for checkmating large scale fraud is no more there and the sole administratorship contraption which is not known to the law that established the commission is at liberty to perpetrate anything unwholesome.”