THE SUN

A story in a National newspaper on November 7, 2021, entitled “FG To Merge NDDC With Niger Delta Ministry” is both provocative and insulting to the Niger Delta people.

While the paper did not attribute its report to any specific Federal Government official, it yet again indicates the terrible mess made of the region’s development agency.

The Niger Delta Development Commission has been opened to specious reports, speculations and innuendos following two years of interim management contraptions.

However, knowing how fickle the Buhari Muhammadu administration has become and its increasing numerous decisions against the people of the Niger Delta region and its reluctance to hold people to account, it will not be far-fetched to conclude that some people were flying a kite with that report.

It would seem that the Minister of Niger Delta Affair, Godswill Akpabio is carried away  by his position. After a rigmarole of a controversial forensic audit, a convenient excuse by which he got to appoint Interim Managements for the NDDC in contravention of the NDDC Act, the promise to inaugurate a substantive/legal  Board has still not been met. Rather, specious propositions are being made in the public space, creating tension in the Niger Delta states.

This is why Niger Deltans have risen up as one to demand the board’s inauguration. The Ijaw National Congress recently in a statement signed by its President, Prof. Benjamin Okaba, condemned “the continued existence of the grossly illegal vehicle of Interim Administration at the NDDC and the monumental deception of the Presidency and the Niger Delta Region by the Interim contraption and its promoters.” What the federal government and Akpabio have created in the Niger Delta is a tenuous case of peace of the graveyard. In trying to sell the dummy of a merger of the ministry and the NDDC, the promoters are courting trouble. If anything, it is the ministry that should give way, else, why do we have the North East Development Commission (NEDC)  functioning unhindered with its substantive/legal  Board and not reporting to any Minister or ministry of the Federal Government? How does anyone then  begin to suggest that what is not being done to the North East Development Commission (NEDC) should be done to the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC). Why should the Federal Government continue to comply with the Law in the case of the NEDC and refuse to comply with the law in the case of the NDDC? The Buhari administration is showing utmost disdain and disregard for the Niger Delta people and treating us so shabbily. There is increasing anger against the Federal Government and the APC in the Niger Delta region as a result of the very poor, biased, illegal and provocative actions of the Federal Government in the handling of matters concerning the NDDC and the Niger Delta region.

For the avoidance of doubt and for proper guidance, NDDC is an Act of Parliament established by “Niger-Delta Development Commission (Establishment etc) Act 2000 Act No 6 Laws of the Federation of Nigeria.” Consequently, no change whatsoever, no matter how minuscule, can be effected to the manner of governing the Commission through an executive administrative fiat of the Federal Government, but only through a process of National Assembly amendment or repeal of the NDDC establishment Act.

To be clear, NDDC, according to its establishment Act, NDDC is a Commission set-up by law to cater to the peculiar needs of the Niger Delta people and majorly funded by statutory allocations meant for the constituent nine (9) Niger Delta states. And, in that regard, the Act provides for a Governing Board with representatives from each of the nine constituent states. It also provides for an Advisory Committee comprising the Governors of the nine constituent states. As a result it cannot be whimsically transferred to a Ministry of the Federal Government.