Experts, Groups Back Probe Of NDDC, Want New Board To Supervise Audit
LAGOS OCTOBER 20TH (NEWSRANGERS)-Positive reactions from segments of the society have continued to trail President Muhammadu Buhari’s pronouncement on Thursday for a forensic audit to be undertaken on the operations of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC).
While receiving governors of the states that make up the Commission in Aso Rock, President Buhari said what is presently on the ground in the Niger Delta region does not justify the huge resources that have been made available to the organization.
Mr Femi Adesina, Presidential Spokesman, quoted President Buhari in a Statement released from his Office as expressing disappointment with the current state of operations at the NDDC vis-à-vis the volume of funds that have been pumped into the interventionist agency.
In their swift reaction, experts and stakeholders in the Niger Delta have expressed support for the presidential directive on forensic audit. They however urged President Buhari to quickly put the new Board that he appointed in August in place since they have never been part of the NDDC in the past, to help supervise the audit.
Dr Jeffrey Emerson, a Development Economist in Port Harcourt, who has written extensively on the Niger Delta, while lauding Buhari’s bold move stated that “It’s a very laudable and encouraging move. Stakeholders like us are elated but in carrying out the audit, it has to be supervised by a new Board, the New Board that has never been part of the rot in the past.
You don’t expect the acting Managing Director or bureaucrats who have been part of the rot in the past to supervise that audit…The auditing team should work independently with a team and that team, in my view should be the newly named Board. That is the standard practice globally.”
In their own reaction, the President of Ijaw Diaspora Coalition, Elder Johnson Ebibai stated that it was widely reported in the national media that the Commission under the current interim management had secretly interviewed and was set to recruit over 300 new staff members without a Board approval for such massive recruitment, and it took the intervention and outcry of well-meaning stakeholders in the Niger Delta Region to halt the exercise.
In his view, this therefore is not the leadership that should be entrusted with this level of activity to unravel what has happened in the past which involves them.
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Posted by News Rangers
on Oct 20 2019. Filed under National.
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