PRESS STATEMENT: CHRONIC WRONG DOING AT THE NIGER DELTA DEVELOPMENT COMMISSION (NDDC) MUST END

PRESS STATEMENT: CHRONIC WRONG DOING AT THE NIGER DELTA DEVELOPMENT COMMISSION (NDDC) MUST END

Moved by the misfortunes occasioned by the relentless retardation of progress by a barbarous NDDC leadership in plundering and bringing extreme poverty, destruction and death to the peoples of the Niger Delta region, rather than intervention to develop and sustain the peoples, we make bold to say that these characters who have fearlessly engaged in open corrupt activities have broken the most solemn agreements that enabled their existence in the first place.

Justice therefore, demands end to the impunity of these bureaucrats, and necessity compels us to call for a complete purge and punishment of those who have within a brief time frame engaged in primitive accumulation at the expense of the fundamental objectives of the NDDC as an intervention agency as originally proposed.

We call on the Federal government to take this latest rude awakening most seriously. The Supervising Ministry must move beyond lamentation, and deal decisively with the chronic wrong doing of this so-called intervention agency and the personnel involved: the monsters who have infested the region, that continue to drench it in blood by reaping from where they never sowed, be urgently cast out, and given the punishment equal to the enormity of their perfidy. It is time we begin to eradicate what has become a permanent feature of the Commission, which simply translates into a mission to rob and decimate the unsuspecting peoples of the region.

For the avoidance of any doubt, NDDC has never truly been that intervention agency that was set out to improve and strengthen democratic institutions through the acceleration of economic and social developments, thus rapidly bringing about a substantial and steady increase in the average income in order to narrow the gap between the standard of living in the Niger Delta region, as envisaged by its founders. Instead, the region has remained grounded into retrogression and abject poverty at every given point. It has remained that agency where management bicker against one another, contracts are shared without due process, mobilizations collected, non-performance and absence of accountability is all pervading. 

The sheer incompetence, greed and penchant for absolute corruption of the NDDC management over time continue to give the poor in the region a cause to engage in deviant and devilish habits. The impotence of NDDC management has been to a large extent responsible for political, social and economic exclusion, humiliation, and alienation – a poverty of dignity and voice. Tragically, poverty and insecurity in the region are mutually reinforcing, leading to what Susan Rice, a Brookings Scholar rightly called a “doom spiral.” Young people of the region continue daily to suffer extreme poverty, lack of educational and economic opportunities, capacity, jobs, poor health, crime and armed conflict, while NDDC bureaucrats smoothly walk away shamelessly with same resources meant to improve the livelihoods of citizens.

Signed:

Anyakwee Nsirimovu

Chair, NDCSC

________________________________________________________________
Humanity House: 1, Human Rights Close, Off Port Harcourt Int. Airport Road, Rukpokwu Town, Obio/Akpor LGA. P.O. Box 2292, Port Harcourt. Rivers State. Niger Delta Region. Nigeria.