NDDC Excludes Etche From Project Lists

A development agency, African Global Development for Drastic Change (AGDDC) says if urgent steps are not taken, the people of Etche Local Government Area of Rivers State may not have any projects executed in the area by the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC).
According to the group, while other local government areas have various categories of projects in the project list of the commission, not even a job was included in the two lists being made public by the commission.
President of AGDDC, Prince Dan Mbachi, raised this alarm, in an interview with The Tide in Port Harcourt last Thursday.
According to Mbachi, “the headquarters of NDDC released its project list on March and out of the 378 projects published, none was from Etche Local Government.
“The second list and final, so far, which contained about 164 projects was also released May 4th, yet not even a project in Etche was in the list even when all local governments in the Nine NDDC states had several projects each in the lists”.
The group appealed to the authorities of the commission to be fair to Etche by including projects in the area noting that Etche is one of the major oil producing areas in the country.
Mbachi regretted that there was no federal government’s presence in Etche even with the huge contribution the area makes to the nation’s economy.
“There is every need for NDDC to revisit the project lists and ensure that projects were sited in the area in its developmental plan in the Niger Delta region”, he said.
Attempts to get the reaction of the commission on the issue were not successful as calls placed on the cell phone of the commission’s Head, Corporate Affairs, Mr Chijioke Amu-Nnadi, could not go through as the phone line remained switched off.

Chris Oluoh