If you are one of many Nigerians who have been shell-shocked and dumbfounded by the financial brigandage, massive fraud and unprecedented looting and mismanagement in the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), then the question you must be asking is: why has President Muhammadu Buhari not taken swift and immediate action to demand some accountability from the many stakeholders after incontrovertible jaw-dropping revelations and confessions by the Interim Management Committee (IMC) regarding the monumental corruption, extra-budgetary expenditure, abuse of procurement laws and due process in the sleaze-prone agency. As if that was not odious enough, Sen. Godswill Akpabio, Minister of Niger Delta Affairs with oversight responsibilities over the beleaguered agency raised eyebrows the other day when he made bold to describe the NDDC as an Automatic Teller Machine (ATM) where politicians make withdrawals to contest elections.
The minister made the assertion when members of the Independent Marketers Association of Nigeria (IPMAN) visited him in Abuja. “As a Governor I knew that there is something wrong with the NDDC but I didn’t really know what it was till I was appointed minister that was when I discovered that the NDDC was like a cesspool for corruption, it is like an ATM for people to come and collect money to contest next election,” Akpabio said. He faulted the National Assembly inquest into the financial activities of NDDC between February and July 2020 rather than embark on a comprehensive probe of the agency’s 19 years of existence.
The NDDC, Akpabio stated, received over N5 trillion [read 15.34 trillion] in the last 19 years, with no physical project on ground to justify the huge funds and wondered why the lawmakers decided to probe five months activities in the commission. Akpabio himself, facing corruption and sexual harassment allegations in the NDDC threw a spanner in the works when he accused lawmakers of complicity and involvement in sleazy NDDC contract deals. Add this to the shameful and pathetic drama brought to the public hearings by NDDC acting managing director, Prof Daniel Kemebradikumo Pondei, who feigned passing out during a grilling session with lawmakers.
Watched on live TV by millions in Nigeria and across the world as he was being questioned about several shocking expenditures running into billions of naira to which he could not provide answers, Pondei promptly “fainted” to escape further questions. It was the first time in Nigeria’s history where the head of a Ministry, Department or Agency (MDA) would play out a fainting script to dodge oversight over his official duties. Nigerians all over the world now have to deal with the international embarrassment as the social media is trolling with images of Pondei’s fainting drama. Nigerians have seen and heard the farce of explanations and excuses presented by Pondei and the Acting Executive Director Projects, Dr. Cairo Ojougboh, at the committee hearings where N81.5bn was found to have been spent recklessly by the IMC in just a couple of months.
But beyond the absurd melodramatic acts of the accusers and their “legislathief” interrogators, certain posers arise: Is the NDDC just a metaphor for other government agencies? How can these clowns conspire to steal public funds with such impunity? Looking at Pondei’s incoherent mumbo-jumbo on these contracts and other similar statements he and the IMC made during the National Assembly investigations, including the shameful dramatic fainting incident at the public hearing of the House of Representatives Committee, why has Buhari left such a man and his graft-prone cahoots to continue presiding over the NDDC?
Akpabio might think it is funny to describe the NDDC as an ATM machine but Nigerians are not amused. Not after the Senate ad-hoc Committee on Niger Delta led by Senator Olubunmi Adetunmbi of Ekiti State published an extensive 121-page investigative report of the allegations of malfeasance against the Interim Management Committee (IMC). It got the Commission’s account statement with the Central Bank of Nigeria, received presentations from the CBN, Office of the Accountant General of the Federation, Office of the Auditor General of the Federation, the Bureau for Public Procurement and other relevant government agencies, as well as statements, both oral and written from the IMC members, showing how the IMC blew N81.5 billion in five months on fictitious contracts, frivolities, and in violation of extant financial and public procurement laws.
The 121-page report, which was adopted as a Senate resolution found that the IMC, under Pondei made fictitious contract payments running into billions of naira and ordered the IMC to refund N4.923 billion to the Federation Account. Among the payments made, the Senate discovered that the Pondei-led IMC on April 15, 2020 during the Covid-19 lockdown paid out N1.96 billion purportedly for the procurement of Lassa fever personal protection kits for the 185 LGAs of the nine NDDC states. Yet, the IMC, which claimed rather strangely that it used NDDC staff to distribute the kits, could not provide the name of a single recipient in the 185 LGAs to whom the kits were purportedly handed over. Clearly, this was a fictitious unexecuted contract, used as a conduit to steal N1.96 billion.
The Senate ordered the IMC to also refund: N85.7 million paid for overseas travel to IMC members during the Covid-19 lockdown; N105.5 million paid for non-existent scholarship grants; N164.2 million paid to the NDDC staff union members for a journey to Italy, during the Covid-19 lockdown; N1.12 billion paid for public communication activities during the Covid-19 lockdown for which the IMC failed to provide evidence of places where the campaigns took place; N1.49 billion paid for Covid-19 relief materials which was never procured. The IMC could also not explain why N143.55m was paid to five NDDC staff as “Advance for the 2020 budget Participatory Conference” which never held. It seemed that the Pondei-led IMC was on a corruption binge as no excuse was deemed too ridiculous to pay out money from the NDDC account.
As the NDDC account statement showed, the IMC paid out N1.3bn for community relations, N122.9m on condolences, N83m on consultancy, N3.14bn for Covid-19 relief, N486m duty travel allowance, N790.9m as impress, N1.956bn on Lassa fever, N900m on legal service, N220m on maintenance, N85.6m on foreign travels, N1.121bn on public projects communication, N744m on security, N8.8bn on staffing-related payment and N248m on stakeholders’ engagement. Also, the IMC ridiculously claimed that it paid out hundreds of millions of naira to youths and chiefs (in all 185 LGAs) to identify project sites; N475 million to the Nigeria Police for face masks, amongst other banal frivolities.
The greed of the IMC team was flagrant as the records show that Pondei twice paid himself N51.6m as impress on June 19 and on 8 July, totaling N103.2m in less than three weeks. Dr. Cairo Ojougboh collected N36m within the same period; in addition to the N10m they each receive, monthly, for hosting visitors. In sum total, the NDDC claimed to have spent N81.5 billion in seven months without awarding any new contract. To say the least, this is criminal. The expenditures were so embarrassing that the Auditor-General of the Federation called for punitive measures to discourage unscrupulous public office holders from dipping their fingers into the public till.
A petition addressed to Buhari from the whistleblowing anti-graft group, Act for Positive Transformation Initiative, showed even as the explosive revelations of sleaze and graft made the headlines, the embattled agency made frivolous payments of over N24 billion from June 1 to August 5, 2020, without an approved budget in place. Signed by Kolawole Johnson, its Director of Research, the petition detailed names of companies and individuals paid, including the splitting of contracts, the award of fictitious contracts and the abuse of due process. For example, on the day Pondei appeared before the Senate Committee, the NDDC paid out a cumulative N3 billion to a contractor using five different companies.
Beside financial recklessness and mismanagement by the Pondei-led IMC, Akpabio fraudulently procured certificates of no-objection from the Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP) for the award of two contracts; for a lead consultant at N318m, and for the purchase of 62 cars for N1.599bn. BPP sources told Huhuonline.com that Akpabio lied that the two contracts in questioned were provisioned in the budget; but he used the certificates of no-objection in memos to secure approvals for these contracts at the Federal Executive Council (FEC) meetings of February 12 and June 10, 2020. However, the NDDC had no budgetary provision for these line items as required by the law at the time Akpabio presented these memos to the FEC. In effect, Akpabio deceived the President and FEC to approve the contracts, thereby inducing the president and FEC into error to commit an illegality!
After nine months, Akpabio and the IMC he installed at the NDDC have transformed the agency into crime syndicate that wantonly breaches the public procurement laws, grants and pays for fictitious contracts, award themselves ridiculous bonuses, and run the NDDC like their private. The Senate report on the financial recklessness of the IMC presented a detailed account of what has been going on at the NDDC in the last nine months. It also recommended that the IMC be disbanded and made to refund the sum of N4.923bn; that the substantive Governing Board of the NDDC screened and approved by the Senate be sworn in to manage the commission in line with the NDDC Act; that the NDDC be moved back to the office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF) in the Presidency for proper supervision; that the Office of the Auditor General of the Federation supervise the forensic audit to “guarantee independence, credibility, transparency and professionalism in the output of the exercise,” and that “the President with advice from the Auditor General should appoint a renowned, globally-reputed forensic auditor to carry out the exercise.”
President Buhari cannot afford to ignore the Senate report and resolutions on the IMC, if he is really serious about his anti-corruption agenda. The president’s failure to act promptly and decisively since the exposures seemed to have emboldened the IMC to continue their criminal activities at the NDDC, by backdating contract offer letters and making illegal payments. It is strange that after Senate cleared a list of members for management positions, the president arbitrarily overruled the Senate and appointed an interim body. This is unfortunate. It showed that somebody wanted a scenario in which criminals in the name of politicians would feast on public funds without fear of sanctions. The presidency is therefore complicit in the rot that has become the NDDC.
President Buhari should restore accountability at the commission by dissolving the IMC, implement the other resolutions of the Senate and direct the anti-corruption agencies to prosecute all persons indicted.
For a president that came into office on a strong anti-corruption agenda, now is the time to walk the talk. Nigerians are alarmed by the inaction of the president and are losing faith in his leadership. Buhari cannot continue to act like all is well at the NDDC under the IMC. He must act quickly on these issues that have been highlighted in the Senate report. These resolutions reflect the wishes and desires of the Niger Delta people and Nigerians.
