The forensic audit of the accounts of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) ordered by President Muhammadu Buhari when some Niger Delta leaders visited him at the Presidential Villa recently has left the regions leaders divided. While the move did not go down well with certain interests in the region, others see it as one that is long overdue.
Governor Nyesom Wike of Rivers State, for instance, is firmly in support of the move because he believes that the Commission is nothing but a conduit pipe for siphoning funds. As far as he is concerned, there is nothing on the ground to justify the huge sums that have been invested in the Commission over the years. But some members of the National Assembly are opposed to it and are making all the moves they can to frustrate it.
While Sentry will keep readers posted on the issue, what is of utmost concern at the moment is the SMS war that has erupted between the Minister of Niger Delta Affairs, Senator Godswill Akpabio, and the Deputy Senate President, Senator Ovie Omo-Agege. Recall that Akpabio had constituted a three-man interim management committee to manage the affairs of the NDDC. But the National Assembly wondered the essence of a three-man committee when the board of the Commission could be constituted to take over its running.
However, it is one thing to constitute a committee but another thing to inaugurate it. Unhappy with the composition of the board of the Commission because he had no input in it and was not consulted before it was constituted, Akpabio sent a text message to Omo-Agege to register his displeasure. Rather than placate Akpabio, Omo-Agege responded angrily with another text, pointedly telling Akpabio that the board had come to stay “whether anybody likes it or not,” and now that it has been cleared, it must be allowed to work.
A distraught Akpabio has since dismissed the composition of the board as an exclusive show of the National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, describing it as an Edo/Delta affair.
