Some stakeholders in the region have urged the new Board Chairman of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), Loretta Onoche, to ensure that she clears up the rots in the agency to unable it live up to its obligations.
The stakeholders who were reacting to the performance of NDDC, in terms of development in the Niger Delta since its inception, in a public forum in Port Harcourt last weekend, lamented that the agency had become a conduit pipe of wastage of resources, at the expense of the development of the region.
In his reaction to the issue, a public affairs analyst, Solomon Onuekwa, while expressing disappointment over the situation, said the only way forward is for some staff, especially Directors, that have stayed long in the agency, to be retired.
He accused some of the Directors of being part of the problems in the commission, saying that they collaborate with the management and board to siphon money from the agency.
“Some of these directors are corrupt, and they are the ones that should show the board members how things should be in the commission. Some of them have been there for over fifteen years, and they know all the loop holes to siphon money.
“If Loretta Onoche really wants to make impact to develop Niger Delta, let her retire these Directors, and sanitize the system, and you will see that things will change, and real development will take place in the region, which is why the NDDC was set up”, he said.
Tilting a bit from Onuekwa’s position, a civil society advocate, Dr. Vincent Amadi, said any Chief executive of NDDC that allows a director of the agency to mislead him or her, already wants to go in that direction.
According to Amadi, the way to show uprightness is to bypass any such Directors and make use of their deputies, since they are civil servants, and have specific tenure of service.
“Any Chief Executive of any organization who wants to be upright, can bypass corrupt officers under him, and use other people to achieve his goal, and that is what I want the new NDDC Board Chairman to do, if she sincerely wants to sanitize the commission and bring development to the region”, he said.
It would be recalled that the new NDDC board Chairman, Loretta Onoche, on take over of office, noted that there is a lot of decay in the commission, but that she was determined to sanitize the system.
The commission has been allegedly notorious in awarding contracts on paper and payment completed, and numerous inflation and abandonment of contacts, at the detriment of Niger Delta communities and development.

By: Corlins Walter