The Niger Delta Development Commission, NDDC, has invited President Muhammadu Buhari to commission the 29-kilometre Ogbia-Nembe Road in Bayelsa State. The road, built in conjunction with the Shell Petroleum Development Company, SPDC, creates a land link to the ancient city of Nembe for the first time.
This was disclosed in a statement issued by the commission in Abuja shortly after delivering the NDDC management’s invitation to Mr President through the Minister for Niger Delta Affairs, Senator Godswill Akpabio.
The commission’s Director of Corporate Affairs, Mr Charles Odili disclosed that the road project, which gulped a whopping N24 billion, cuts through swampy terrain with spurs to 14 other communities, needed 10 bridges and 99 culverts. “To conquer the swampy terrain. The construction involved digging out four meters of clay soil and sand filling it to provide a base for the road,” he observed.
Odili said the joy of the communities served by the road was unspeakable, noting: “This project is a not only a flag ship of intervention in the Niger Delta, it is also a model of development partnership between the Commission and international oil companies in the region, Significantly, he said, “the road has cut the journey time to Yenagoa, the Bayelsa State capital, from three hours to one and a half hours.”
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On the protest at the Nigerian high commission in London by the commission’s stranded scholars abroad, Odili disclosed that the commission has been given go ahead by President Muhammadu Buhari to pay their school fees and stipends by next week.
He said the delay in the remittance of the fees was caused by the sudden death of Chief Ibanga Etang, the then Acting Executive Director, Finance and Administration, EDFA, of the Commission in May.
On the list of NDDC contracts handled by members of the National Assembly, the commission also stated that, the one submitted by Senator Akpabio was not compiled by the minister but came from the files in the Commission.
“The list submitted to the National Assembly was actually compiled by the then management of the Commission in 2018. There was another set of lists for emergency project contracts awarded in 2017 and 2019 but these were not submitted to the National Assembly”.
“The Interim Management Committee, IMC, of the Commission stands by the list, which came from files already in the possession of the forensic auditors. It is not an Akpabio list but the NDDC’s list. The list is part of the volume of 8,000 documents already handed over to the forensic auditors.”
The NDDC Corporate Affairs Director also said that prominent indigenes of the Niger Delta whose names were on the list should not panic as the Commission knew that people used the names of prominent persons in the region to secure contracts, adding that the ongoing forensic audit would unearth those behind the contracts.
The spokesperson said the intention of the list was to expose committee chairmen in the National Assembly who used fronts to collect contracts from the Commission, some of which were never executed.
Odili added that the list did not include the unique case of 250 contracts which were signed for and collected in one day by one person ostensibly for members of the National Assembly.
On the forensic audit exercise, he said that it was on course and the Commission had positioned 185 media support specialists to identify the sites of every project captured in its books for verification by the forensic auditors.
Odili advised members of the public to discountenance the “avalanche of falsehood being orchestrated by mischief makers,” regretting that “more insinuations and accusations may be thrown into the public space by those opposed to the IMC.”
