How senator insisted on inserting N150b in our budget, by NDDC
The Interim Management Committee (IMC) of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) has accused a senator of creating problems for it with his insistence on injecting N150 billion into the commission’s budget.
Reacting to the House of Representatives’ summon over its refusal to present its budget to the lawmakers, the IMC blamed what it called ‘’the anomalies’’ in the budget on the senator’s demand. The senator, it claimed, is insisting on the N150 billion before the budget is passed.
The lawmakers, on Tuesday, invited the Minister of Niger Delta Affairs, Senator Godswill Akpabio and the NDDC board to submit its budget for approval.
In a statement, NDDC’s Acting Executive Director of Projects, Dr. Cairo Ojougboh hailed the lawmakers for raising the issue, noting that there is no 2019 capital budget for NDDC.
Ojuogboh said, “first, it is imperative for me to thank the House of Representatives for bringing to the fore the situation the NDDC finds itself. The position that there is no budget, no capital budget for NDDC for 2019 is very correct.
“The reason is that the budget issue started in 2017. That year, the NDDC bureaucracy prepared a budget for the National Assembly and took the budget to the assembly, but a chairman of one of the committees insisted that his interest be considered, thus demanding for N150b to be added to the budget.
"So the bureaucracy went back to adjust the budget to accommodate the chairman’s input but when the bureaucracy came back, he (the senator) said; ‘No, it’s not N15 billion we agreed it is N150billion.
“The bureaucracy said, look how do we do this? How do we go and find a way to do this? For more than seven months, they could not accommodate it. So they dropped the budget for 2017 completely. There was no budget for 2017 because of this senator.”
“Now what was the way out? They now started awarding emergency contacts. That’s the list of emergency contracts for 2017, 2018 and 2019; over one 1000 emergency contracts and the total of these emergency contracts awarded is over N700billion.
"They didn’t follow due process for the award of all these contracts, the Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP) was not in the know. So, they now progressed from 2017 to 2019; and that is the reason the IMC was sent here to look into these issues critically and address them.”
“Let me say this very clearly; the Senate President, the Speaker of the House of Representatives and even the Senate as a body are not aware of all these things going on, the commission was intimidated by this chairman (name withheld) into all these atrocities; and that was why we want to make sure this never happens again.
"This said chairman instituted and planted a man in the commission, he goes from table to table, and as the commission wakes up he wakes, and there is another man working with him; and all these issues have been sent to the office of the Minister.
"This is why we are thanking members of the House of Representatives for bringing these anomalies to the notice of government; right now the MD has gone to make the presentations and address these issues as they are.
“We are here to work for the people of Niger Delta and Nigeria in general and to thank Mr. President for giving us this opportunity to make sure that all these anomalies happening at the NDDC stops and we assure all that they will stop’’.
On the IMC’s efforts to avert a recurrence of these issues, Ojougboh said: “Because I was a member of the National Assembly, a Senate Liaison Officer to the President for many years, I know the National Assembly is a just body and they have the interest of Nigerians at heart.
“You can now see why we are making our presentations to them to know what we have found on the ground and also note that all these issues of budgets happened before we came in but it is important for us to explain what led to it; and I am sure that the National Assembly will understand.”
