Political Class: Let NDDC Develop Niger Delta!

 By Tonnie Iredia

The oil-rich Niger Delta Region of Nigeria consists of Nine (9) coastal southern states of the country; namely: Ondo, Edo, Delta, Bayelsa, Rivers, Imo, Abia, Cross River and Akwa Ibom. The 2006 controversial census recorded for the area some 31 million Nigerians – a figure that would today be about 40 million. What is certain is that the Niger Delta provides over 80 percent of Nigeria’s budgetary revenues and about 95 percent of the nation’s foreign exchange earnings.

Consequently, one would have thought that the area would have on its own merit be at the front burner of Nigeria’s development framework but that has not been so. Instead, the area has been subjected to severe collateral damages caused by the multi-dimensional nature of oil operations thereby completely devastating the environment.

In year 2000, the Olusegun Obasanjo administration, set up a supposed pragmatic interventionist agency known as the Niger Delta development Commission (NDDC) to concentrate on the rapid development of the area. Painfully, the commission has till today been unable to redress the situation – a failure that people have attributed to many factors. While some imagine that those mandated to do the job have all been too corrupt to perform, a few have strongly argued that the Niger Delta would remain underdeveloped until the country reverts to true fiscal federalism which allows federating states to assume control of the exploitation of their natural resources while paying adequate taxes to the central authority.

Whereas the identified causative factors of Niger Delta’s underdevelopment subsist, the greatest of them all, has hardly been underscored. Accordingly, this article seeks to accentuate the pivotal role of the adverse posture of the political class and the federal government to the development of the area.  To start with, the adoption of bureaucratic management as the preferred strategy option suggests that our federal government like Max Weber, the legendary German sociologist who first propounded the system centuries ago never thought of proactive development, rather the emphasis was on rules, order and hierarchy. Of course, an authority desirous of speedy execution of projects cannot prefer a system which is designed to work as a slow coach. This explains why the Niger Delta that was visibly in dire need of development required an interventionist agency instead of a structural system based on red tapism.

Government later confirmed its real agenda when it added a Ministry of Niger Delta to the system making room for ample time to be expended on pushing NDDC files around several tables with a plethora of officials sending discordant memos to one another. Another evidence that government never intended to be faithful to a proactive framework was the intermittent experimentation with the commission’s governing boards. 

From December 2020 – October 2022, a legal practitioner, Effiong Okon Ekwa was appointed sole administrator in place of a board as if the problem at hand desperately required a legal expert. Interestingly, Dr. Pius Odubu, a former deputy governor of Edo state also with a legal background had been nominated by the President and cleared by the senate to lead a governing board of the commission, but his team was never inaugurated. When a new team was reconstituted, the man was downgraded to just a member making him to respectfully decline the offer. What wrong could a board that was properly constituted and replaced without assuming duties have committed?

Corruption is no doubt one of the factors responsible for the failure of the NDDC to develop the Niger Delta, but there is no proof that the amount of funds involved in the corruption cases at the NDDC have been more or higher than what happens in other public sector organizations in the country. For example, of the more than one hundred billion naira stolen at a point from the Federation’s Treasury Single Account TSA, the story was that the EFCC promptly recovered 30 billion naira from one individual, a serving Accountant General. But why are such other persons/bodies always able to misappropriate so much and yet no one seems to observe any gap in the realization of the objectives of such public bodies? Here, some officials of the NDDC are convinced that funds allegedly misappropriated in the commission have been over exaggerated.

A former acting managing director of the commission, Audu Ohwavborua, argued recently on national television that of the six trillion naira reportedly budgeted for the NDDC over the years, only N2.45 trillion has so far been received in the commission. Who diverted the balance amounting approximately to N4 trillion and to where?  Could it be that the balance was part of what some NDDC top officials wanted to expose some time ago when microphones were suddenly switched off during a special public hearing at the National Assembly?

Is there any truth in the statement made and later refuted by the former Niger Delta Minister, Godswill Akpabio that funds meant for development projects in the commission are traceable to some legislators? The point to be emphasized is that corruption in the NDDC will not even reduce if state actors, essentially government officials and their ruling political parties continue to coerce NDDC operatives to engage in corrupt practices.

It is against this backdrop that senators who are at the moment playing their usual antics about NDDC’s 2023 budget must be called out. With half of the year gone, Nigerian senators last week declared that they would not approve the budget if expenditures of 2021 and 2022 are not explained to their satisfaction. On its face value, the declaration looks cogent but anyone familiar with the modus operandi of our legislators know that the matter would be resolved not by satisfactory explanation but through financial lobbying by which a substantial portion of approved funds would hardly get to the commission.

Is the new board which came into existence this year well positioned to satisfactorily explain expenditures which preceded its tenure? Why was the 2022 budget not so treated when that of 2021 was not explained? Besides, why are government requests for new loans at the tail end of its tenure entertained when old ones have remained inexplicable? 

Unfortunately, NDDC’s new board seems to have inadvertently left room for ambush by the political class. Although the board is, for once, made up of strong professionals they are engaged in fruitless bickering over the means for achieving desired goals. They have been at logger heads over who is a full-time or part-time member and who has power to sign certain documents thereby derogating substantially from their capacity to attain a unity of direction.

Lauretta Onochie who chairs the board has among other things two Harvard certificates in Humanitarian response to conflict and disaster as well as Health effects of climate change. Samuel Ogbuku, the managing director has a doctorate in development studies along with a vast experience in community and government relations having served as Special adviser to the Minister of State (Petroleum) and Chief of Staff at Government House Yenagoa.

Similarly, the two executive directors have impressive credentials: Charles Airhavbere in charge of finance and administration, is a retired general and accomplished accountant who for several years managed the finances of the Nigerian Army. Charles Ogunmola in charge of projects has a multi-disciplinary academic background specializing in core project management.

This team should work harmoniously and avoid the distractions of the political class. Onochie does not have to give routine supervision to management in order to be seen as the highest ranking official of the board, just as the management team cannot implement policies without the imprint of the board. What will put all their names in gold are projects like the proposed rail line across the Niger Delta, not ego and in-fighting. 

As indigenes, NDDC’s leaders ought to know that successive Nigerian governments care little about minorities. What seems to matter are projects like Lagos-Ibadan and Abuja-Kaduna express ways that are modernized from time to time. Indeed, how to extend them to cities outside Nigeria is even more attractive than from Abuja to South-south states. Therefore, the NDDC must be up and doing in using available funds to develop the neglected oil-rich region. Our senate should release the commission’s 2023 budget already passed by its relevant committee to motivate the NDDC towards good performance.

*Dr. Iredia, a veteran broadcaster, is a commentator on public issues