Buhari Has To Sanction The Urgent Reconstitution Of NDDC Board – Okowa

Delta State governor, Ifeanyi Okowa has come out to urge President Muhammadu Buhari to reconstitute the Board of Niger Delta Development Commission, NDDC.

He revealed this recently at the launch of “Resource Dependence, Violent Conflict, and Economic Development in the Niger Delta Region of Nigeria”, a book was written by Dr Michael Tidi, Chairman, Warri South Local Government Council.

According to him, reconstituting the commission is needed because the instability in NDDC’s board has led to the systemic institutional failure of the agency.

He added that it is now compulsory to give NDDC a board that would be accountable and get rid of politicization of the interventionist agency.

His words, “I am not happy when I see the type of projects embarked upon by the NDDC in recent times. They ought to embark on inter-regional projects and also build major roads that connect one part of a state to another and not one kilometer of roads as the case may be.”

“Unfortunately, some of our people when appointed, they go there for the wrong reasons and it is imperative that we must appoint people that can be held accountable for their actions during their tenure.

“There is a need to develop the Amnesty Programme to become sustainable so that the people can benefit from it. We have truly started up by trying to solve the problem at the foundation stage without building them up to become self-reliant.

“Our people must realise that we cannot continue to play politics with what we say or do. Recently in Port Harcourt, we called for resource control and restructuring because the Constitution as it is now, cannot develop the country.

“Give us 100 per cent and we can pay you tax of 50 per cent, and I hear people asking what the governors had done with the 13 per cent derivation?

“The cost elements in construction are different and it’s obvious that when people speak they don’t have an idea of what we are going through in this region. We are not saying that governors should not be accountable but we should be asking for the control of the entire resources and possibly pay tax to the Federal Government.

“We must be ready to work together to speak truth to power, and no reasonable Niger Deltan should criticise what the leaders demanded at Port Harcourt because as has been said by some stakeholders, ’13 per cent derivation is 87 per cent deprivation.”