The Niger Delta Development Commission has alleged that a new wave of allegations of financial impropriety at the commission is designed to destabilize the work of the commission and scuttle the forensic audit.
“Less than two weeks after an exhaustive and exhausting public hearing by both chambers of the National Assembly, another round of false reports has surfaced in the media alleging all manners of improprieties by the management of the Niger Delta Development Commission, NDDC,” the commission said in a statement issued Monday by Charles Obi Odili Director, Corporate Affairs.
The statement was titled: “Let NDDC Serve People of the Niger Delta”.
According to the statement, one of the reports alleged that a fresh massive fraud has been uncovered in the Commission, but noted that reading through the story, one would find no evidence of fraud in the Commission. It said the report is merely a rehash of the allegations which led the National Assembly, on May 5, to order a probe of the 74-day administration of Prof Kemebradikumo Pondei at the Commission.
“Lest we forget, that probe was set up to uncover the sum of N40 billion alleged to be missing from the Commission. In order to allay the fears of our stakeholders, we took the unusual step of publishing the list of payments made by the Commission since Pondei came into office,” Odili said.
With that publication, Odili said the rug had been pulled from the feet of the commission’s our accusers. According to him when the hearings proper started, there was no talk of the missing N40 billion anymore; it changed to financial recklessness. “As we pointed out in an earlier release, the issue of missing money is one needing objective proof. The issue of financial recklessness is a matter of subjective judgment. The reports of the hearings have been submitted and it is clear there was no money missing at the Commission,” he declared.
Odili said the response of the Commission to the new reports is that there is no fraud at the Niger Delta Development Commission. According to him, Prof Pondei has run a very transparent administration and that this transparency is now apparent after the searchlight put on his administration in the past one month.
He said that the second report rehashed the claim of the Contractors Association that the management demands between 20 percent and 30 percent kickback before paying contractors.
“We wish to state categorically that this is false. This allegation was made at the hearing of the Ad hoc Senate Committee which probed the affairs of the Commission. The management of NDDC was at the hearing when the allegation was made and challenged the man who did so for evidence. There was no single case that he could allude to. Without any evidence, the allegation became so outlandish that not even a single newspaper reported it the following day.”
“Prof Pondei famously said that if any contractor can prove he paid him any money, he would resign. Four weeks since that challenge was thrown on July 9, no one has come out with any proof. It is instructive that the Senate report did not adopt the allegation as valid. It beats the imagination why any newspaper will report a baseless claim, four weeks after it was made and for which no one can prove. The reporter claimed to have lifted the report from the report of the Senate Committee. We need to know why he did not report it four weeks ago when he was at the hearing,” he said.
The commission said it’s suspected that after the scheming of the past four weeks failed to achieve the purpose of sacking the management and scuttling the work on the forensic audit exercise, the schemers are out again to heat up the polity. It said however that those schemers miss the point that the forensic audit exercise is a project of Mr. President. “Hounding and haunting an innocent academic who is merely on a national assignment will not scuttle the audit.”
The commissioned appealed to those who it said: “are putting their personal interests over and above that of the people of the Niger Delta to have a rethink, pull back and allow the Commission the space to serve the people of the region”.
