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NDDC backs Akpabio on list of contract-grabbing lawmakers
BY NICHOLAS ABE
The Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) on Tuesday, said it stood by the list of National Assembly members released by the Minister of Niger Delta, Senator Godswill Akpabio, as contractors in the commission, describing it as only a tip of the iceberg.
Named in the contract grabbing scandal by Nigerian lawmakers were senators Peter Nwaoboshi (Senate Committee chairman on NDDC), Matthew Urhoghide, James Manager and Sam Anyanwu. Also, indicted was the chairman of the House Committee on NDDC, in 19 contracts worth N9 billion inserted into the 2019 NDDC budget.
Director, Corporate Affairs, NDDC, Mr. Charles Odili, said the commission has details of the contracts and proxies used to collect them, including the 250 contracts collected in one day in the name of the National Assembly.
He said the list submitted by Senator Akpabio was not compiled by the minister but came from the files in the commission.
The NDDC spokesperson clarified that the list submitted to the National Assembly was actually compiled by the then management of the commission in 2018.
He observed that there was another set of lists for emergency project contracts awarded in 2017 and 2019, but these were not submitted to the National Assembly.
Odili affirmed: “The Interim Management Committee (IMC) of the commission stands by the list, which came from files already in the possession of the forensic auditors. It is not an Akpabio’s list, but the NDDC’s list. The list is part of the volume of 8,000 documents already handed over to the forensic auditors.”
He also said that prominent indigenes of the Niger Delta whose names were on the list should not panic, as the NDDC knew that people used the names of prominent persons in the region to secure contracts, adding that the ongoing forensic audit would unearth those behind the contracts.
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The spokesperson said the intention of the list was to expose committee chairmen in the National Assembly who used fronts to collect contracts from the commission, some of which were never executed.
Odili added that the list did not include the unique case of 250 contracts which were signed for and collected in one day by one person, ostensibly for members of the National Assembly.
On the forensic audit exercise, he said that it was on course and the commission had positioned 185 media support specialists to identify the sites of every project captured in its books for verification by the forensic auditors.
Odili advised members of the public to discountenance the “avalanche of falsehood being orchestrated by mischief makers,” regretting that “more insinuations and accusations may be thrown into the public space by those opposed to the IMC.”