At the early stage of
his first tenure in office, President Olusegun Obasanjo, in his wisdom, established the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) as an interventionist strategy to address the gross underdevelopment in the oil-rich Niger Delta region.
At the inauguration of the agency,Obasanjo noted that the aim was to ensure a principled, co-ordinated and focused approach to addressing the peculiarities of the region.
He said, “since the inception of our administration in 1999, we have consistently acknowledged the critical essence of the Niger Delta region to the economic well being of Nigeria, and commitedly striven to address the visible underdevelopment and neglect of the past in the region “.
About fifteen years after its establishment, can one say that NDDC has made such impact expected by those who initiated it? Can the approaches adopted be ascribed to as principled, coordinated and focused? And in general assessment has NDDC met its mandate?
While the agency can be said to have embarked on some meaningful projects across the Nine NDDC states, there have been avalanche of protests by people of the region who felt that the commission has not meaningfully met its obligations.
Some analysts believe that most projects executed were substandard, others think that most cannot be equated to the amount of fund tagged to them.
Yet others believe that while contractors have collected mobilization fund, they did below 25% per cent and abandoned the jobs hence resulting in thousands of uncompleted projects which today dot the nooks and crannies of the region.
One of the analysts, Mr Bon Obilor blamed the high incidents of project abandonment on political interference.
He said, “those appointed in the NDDC board were there to serve their political god-fathers. Most of the contracts are inflated such that kickbacks go back to their bosses above and even  some of the contracts were ways of settling political supporters.
“So what you find is a situation where interest shifts from the real people for whom NDDC is set up to attend to them in terms of human and infrastructural development”.
The analysts who is an economic expert from the university of Port Harcourt believes that there is need to probe the activities of the contractors and deal with those who have defrauded the system.
The issue of contract abandoned in such agencies established to address Niger Delta region development precedes NDDC.
The Oil Minerals Producing Areas Development Commission (OMPADEC) which transformed to NDDC was a victim of huge contract abandonment. The then Managing Director, Chief Albert Horsefall, in his good intention had awarded huge contracts to mainly sons of the region, but ironically some of  these contractors collected the contract funds and disappeared.
As a result, instead of developing the region the funds sank into the pockets of few fair weather contractors. The relics of OMPADEC was inherited by NDDC and instead of improving on that, the commission appear to have gone back to the old sore ways of defunct OMPADEC.
Apart from the negative impact of bad contractors to the interventionist agency, the activities of those appointed to oversee the well-being of the agency has become another concern.
Just like Prof. Eric Opia, a former managing Director of OMPADEC who disappeared into the thin air with the commission’s millions of naira, a one time Managing Director of NDDC, Amb. Sam Edem, was caught up in fraudulent practices and capped it up with voodoo expedition.
Edem went as far as paying native doctors whom he hired to protect his position in the commission with millions of naira, and later burnt tens of millions and used the ashes in preparing charm.
There are several allegations that some members of the board also used phony companies to sign out contracts and later destroyed documents that could lead investigators to trace their fraudulent activities while some such companies do not even exist in the records of the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC).
The challenges frustrating NDDC from actualising the aim of its establishment are so many and the caliber of persons and institutions involved are beyond the imagination of the average Nigerians.
Most states LGAs and corporate organizations have failed to pay their own obligations of the counterpart funding of the agency while on its own part, the Federal Government which is the major financier is known to have held back billions due the agency.
The inability and unwillingness of these organizations and government to live upto their financial obligations to NDDC constitute largely to the failure of the agency towards effecting development to the impoverished people of the region.
In a recent meeting between the Senate committee on NDDC and the present management of the commission, the chairman of the committee, Senator Peter Nwaoboshi frowned at the huge debt owed the commission.
He said proper funding of the commission was critical to its mandate of addressing sustainable development in the region.
Nwaoboshi said, the challenge of developing the region is enormous and that all relevant contributors to the NDDC must play their roles diligently, promising that, as part of its oversight function, the committee will do all within its reach, including amending necessary laws where necessary, to ensure full compliance by agencies statutorily obligated to contribute funds to the commission.
The Acting Managing Director even shocked the world when she revealed that NDDC was yet to receive contributions from the Ecological Fund since its inception in 2001.
If since 2001 when established NDDC had not received any contribution from Ecological fund, the Federal Government had withheld hundreds of billions of naira budgeted to it while states, LGAs and oil firms are not willing to pay counterparts fund, how do you expect NDDC to effectively meet its mandate?
The decision by the Buhari-led Federal administration to reposition NDDC is indeed a welcome development. Only a diligent probe exercise of past activities of contractors and officials who have diverted funds and resources meant to intervene in developing the region to themselves can reposition the commission.
From what is filtering into the air, the wave of the probe appear to be causing some ripples in high places as a past official of the commission is said to had been arrested for attempting to bribe the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).
The said official was said to had enticed an official of the EFCC with the sum of N150,000.00 to buy recharge card for his phone. You can imagine how much such an official might have used in recharging his own phones and those of people close to him for past years. You can clearly see how they abandoned the interest of the people, mandate of the commission for frivolities.
For the repositioning of the new NDDC to succeed, there is every need for the new leadership of the commission to shun the shameful priorities of the likes of Prof Eric Opia and Amb. Sam Edem who sacrificed the public trust on them for other things that lack anything but honour.
The Acting Managing Director, Mrs Semenatari, as a woman, should take advantage of the failures of men on NDDC throne to make the difference and prove to the world that what men could not do, she is able to do. Not only the womenfolk who hunger for such situation but the impoverished natives of the region who had been disregarded would hold her in high esteem.
The repositioning should consider the constitution of those in the board and begin to include community-oriented persons as respected traditional rulers because as long as politicians control the board the mandate of the commission will continue to derail. NDDC should be seen as an agency meant to redress a lot of grudges and grievances caused by neglect by oil exploratory and producing companies.
The new NDDC must be one in which the Federal Government should be in the lead in terms of payment of counterpart funding instead of withholding hundreds of billions meant for the agency. It is only by so doing that the Federal Government can have the moral justification to enforce things in the commission. In like manner, the states, Local Government Areas and oil and gas companies must prove that they are responsible entities and pay up to the last kobo, what they owe NDDC.
The picture of the first oil well head Oloibiri must attract the attention and sympathy of the new NDDC leadership. It must transform to a museum of pride instead of its desolate posture that depicts that of a hopeless orphan, for there marks the beginning of our journey in oil production.

Chris Oluoh