Gbenro Adesina
Members of the House of Representatives in Nigeria today accused the Minister of Niger Delta Affairs, Sen. Godswill Akpabio of corruptly using his office to usurp the power of the chief accounting officer of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) for financial benefits.
The House, which was investigating corrupt practices leveled against the minister and members of the Interim Management Committee (IMC) of the NDDC also concluded that the Minister lied before the panel as well as misled the panel with a view to ensuring that objective resolutions were not taken in the matter under investigation.
The Minister, who had painstakingly absorbed the hostility of the investigating panel fired back by revealing towards the end of the investigation that the legislators were not exempted from high level corruption.
Specifically, Akpabio pointed out that against the law of the land, most of the contracts being awarded in NDDC go to the majority members of the House of Representatives.
Emphasising that the lawmakers are the greatest beneficiaries of the contracts the commission awards, he said, “I have a record to show that most of the contracts in NNDC are given to members of National Assembly…. The two chairmen can explain…”.
Akpabio made further startling revelations about the Commission, saying that for 19 years, the Commission was renting vehicles for official purpose at the rate of N200,000 a day.
He lauded the presidency for taking a bold step to put an end to this scandalous corruption by approving the purchase of 90 vehicles for the Commission.
Stressing that money allocated for the Commission for 19 years could not be accounted for, he pointed out, “With the quantum of money that has gone into the region, what we have on ground is not commensurate with that amount now”.
Akpapio also revealed that the recurrent expenditure of NDCC, basically salaries and other emoluments is N23billion in a year.
He also revealed that N11billion was budgeted for COVID-19 in 2019, adding that only N6.7billion was presented to President Muhammadu Buhari for approval.
Akpabio confirmed that on monthly basis, more than 90 per cent of the resources of the country comes from Niger Delta, saying under no circumstances, the region should be allowed to close down except the nation wanted to witness the greatest calamity including insurgence and chaos.
