Stakeholders of the Niger Delta region have urged the Federal Government under President Bola Tinubu to release to the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) the over N2 trillion in funding arrears owed the commission over the years.
The stakeholders insist that the poor performance of the NDDC in realising its core mandate of developing the Niger Delta region is partly due to funding challenges.
They made the call during the technical session marking the beginning of the Niger Delta Stakeholders Summit in Port Harcourt on Wednesday.
Speaking at the summit, Chief Jasper Jumbo, Chairman of the Founding Fathers of the Defunct Oil Minerals Producing Areas Development Commission (OMPADEC) and the Niger Delta Development Commission, decried the situation where the government would be owing the NDDC over N2 trillion of its funding after the region was forced to reduce the 15 suggested funding thematic areas to only 8.
“You don’t expect these gentlemen you brought to run NDDC to run it with their heads, no. After reducing the 15 thematic areas of funding for NDDC to 8, why should the Federal Government be owing the NDDC?
I gathered that the government is owing the commission over $2 trillion out of the statutory allocation to them,” Chief Jumbo stated.
He even suggested that nothing was wrong with the government borrowing to fund the NDDC to meet its funding obligations.
He declared, “Tell the National Security Adviser, NSA, to tell the President that if you are borrowing money to execute projects in Nigeria, they should borrow money to pay NDDC the outstanding N2 trillion.
“Tell them that this is our position; they should go and get money and pay them this N2-trillion. Let me see how Sam Ogbuku (NDDC MD) will have the money and not pay contractors, or have the money and not give it to the youths.
“That is the position of the fathers of the region. Secondly, the North East Commission is getting 3% of VAT. I can’t see why the NDDC shouldn’t be getting a similar 3% VAT. Tell them that we are demanding, as a right, that one of the funding provisions of NDDC be 3% VAT. They should give it to us. This is our position.”
Also speaking, the national president of the Pan-Niger Delta Forum, PANDEF, Senator Emmanuel Essien, identified funding challenges as one of the reasons the NDDC has not been able to achieve the ideals behind its establishment.
He said, “I want to say that the ideals of that law establishing the NDDC have not been achieved, partly because of underfunding and partly because of management issues. That’s why I want to thank the present board and management for what they are doing to redeem that deficiency. And I want to tell the traditional rulers to tell the President to release all the outstanding money to NDDC, which is over N2 trillion.
“You cannot set up an agency if you don’t fund it and you expect it to do what it’s supposed to do. There are a lot of issues in the Niger Delta region. The regional master plan cannot be implemented, and I was part of its design as the Vice Chairman of the NDDC committee in the Senate at the time.
“There were supposed to be regional projects for NDDC cutting across all the states of the region, but that has not been achieved because of a lack of funds. So I want to join the royal family to plead with Mr. President: We are borrowing money to do other things; even if we have to borrow and refund the money to the NDDC, we should borrow so that the NDDC can achieve its core mandate.”
Senator Essien also expressed the need for a review of the NDDC Act to increase the funding sources of the interventionist agency.
“I also want to say at this meeting that there is a need to review the NDDC act. There are other sources of money that have to be brought in through the act to enrich the purse of the NDDC. Also, the single-treasury account TSA should not apply to the NDDC. They should have their money so that they can do what they are appointed to do. The TSA does not help NDDC achieve its mandate,” he added.
In a paper presented at the summit, Nuhu Ribadu, National Security Adviser, NSA, said the Niger Delta region must be clearly captured in a more active and determined way as a national security priority in the vision of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, GCFR, and his Renewed Hope Agenda.
Speaking on the theme Sustainable Development of the Niger Delta: A National Security Outlook, the NSA stated that within the President’s broader and long-term national security vision, which includes moving internal security from the current strong posture of kinetic to non-kinetic operations, “I will emphasise security from a human and socio-economic development point of view to deepen democratic culture in the Niger Delta.”
“In view of the above two central ideas, I am determined to set up, for the first time in the office of the NSA, a directorate that shall specialise in the security of the Niger Delta, through which we can, as stakeholders, take a critical look at the peculiar security challenges of the region in a focused and professional way.
“Accordingly, my team on the Niger Delta (led by my Special Adviser on Energy Security and Niger Delta Affairs) is currently working closely with the Governors of the Region and the Presidency. They will eventually include all stakeholders in the region.”
He explained that the job would be to “have a very robust engagement to support the President in articulating a comprehensive Presidential Policy on Niger Delta Security.
“We should expect that when that fully materialises, the President will most likely personally present policy guidance that will define his security management posture for the sustainable development of the Niger Delta under the Renewed Hope Agenda,” the NSA declared.
Dr Sam Ogbuku, Managing Director, NDDC, speaking on the essence of the stakeholders summit, stated that it was a platform for the Niger Delta people to aggregate and evaluate how far the NDDC has performed under its current board and proffer advice on the best way forward.
He said the summit was a demonstration that the region had gone beyond agitations in the street to intellectual agitations.
“What we are doing today is enjoying the labours of some of our founding fathers. In doing so, we should endeavour to manage what we have judiciously to justify our demands for more.
“We need to harness the successes and see how we can improve on them while also correcting our mistakes. To achieve this, we need to do a wide consultation with the various critical stakeholders.”
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