The acting Managing Director of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) Professor Kemebradikumo Pondei alleged Tuesday that the agency’s 2019 budget was padded with about 500 non-existing projects.
The NDDC which was created to facilitate development in the Niger Delta region has for long been bedeviled by issues of corruption, whicch has been made impossible for it achieve its manadate.
Pondei, who spoke to journalists in Port Harcourt, explained that a huge amount of money was appropriated for bogus projects.
He said , “The National Assembly delays passage of the commission ’ s budget until it is too late for it to be implemented . The 2019 budget of the NDDC was passed two months to the end of implementation period . In fact , the hard copy was received by the commission on April 10 , 2020 when implementation period ends on May 31 .
“ Given the procurement rules, it is not enough time to call for tender and execution of the jobs. The statutory period for advertising tenders is six weeks .
“ The budgets are bastardised by the National Assembly in a way that render them useless. A case will suffice. In the 2019 NDDC budget , we had a provision of N 1 . 32 bn to pay our counterpart funding to the International Fund for Agricultural Development for the $ 129 . 7 m Livelihood Improvement Family Enterprises Programme in the Niger Delta .
“ The National Assembly cut the provision to N100 m . Are we going to IFAD, a UN agency , to tell them to bring their $ 129 . 7 m when our National Assembly says we can only pay N100 m out of N 1 . 32 bn obligation?’’
He was reacting to allegations of corruption levelled against the Commission’s interim management committee.
Pondei, a Professor of Medicine at the Niger Delta University, was appointed by Buhari in February 2020.
In October 2019, President Buhari ordered a forensic audit of the operations of the NDDC.
Pondei is leading the President’s forensic audit.
“We discovered that after NDDC forwarded its budget to the national assembly committees on NDDC, what was sent back to the commission was no longer recognisable,” Pondei said.
“The 2019 budget was classically over padded, with almost 500 new projects inserted to it when it was sent back to us.
“We found out the budget appropriation was done in such a way that meaningful projects were allocated very little sums of money.
“It is unfortunate that the 2019 budget will expire on May 31 without any project executed in the region. It was passed two months to the end of its implementation period.”
Pondei also alleged that some members of the national assembly have put pressure on the agency not to submit certain files to forensic auditors.
