Sanya Oni
I got this WhatsApp message from a friend from the South-south as reaction to the roforo fight between Minister of Niger Delta Godswill Akpabio and the former acting managing director of the NDDC Joy Nunieh.
His words, rendered in Ibibio which he subsequently interpreted, came to something like– you do not deploy the same hand used to catch a fly to catch a bee.
By this of course he meant that his former uncommon governor, by his earlier opportunistic insinuation that his now out-of-favour NDDC amazon was not only a shrink case but a wayward one, has figuratively laid an egg!
He was in essence saying that had the uncommon fellow taken the popular Ibibio proverb to heart, he would have restrained from casting the first stone, when as it now seems to be the case, that his abode, a gilded cage is glass-encased!
On the other hand, Nigerians are supposed to figure out what the elegantly coded riposte by the former Acting Managing Director of the NDDC Joy Nunieh meant by the so-called Plan B and what it means to ‘come up on the Port Harcourt girl’ as indeed the place of the ministerial slap in the messy tango!
Such is the tragedy that has befallen a people that their age-long misfortune has not only been reduced to one of contest between two oversized egos, but is on the verge of being eclipsed in the choreographed inanities.
But then, this is to be expected in a country where corruption is regarded as staple and one which shame has long taken flight.
President Muhammadu Buhari obviously meant well when September last year, he ordered a forensic audit into the operations of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDCC) covering the period 2001 to 2019.
Citing persistent criticisms of the operations of the commission, the president had observed that what was on ground in the South-south region did not justify the huge resources that had been made available to the agency.
He told the delegation of South-south governors’ an obvious truth: “With the amount of money that the federal government has religiously allocated to the NDDC, we will like to see the results on the ground; those that are responsible for that have to explain certain issues.
“The projects said to have been done must be verifiable. You just cannot say you spent so much billions and when the place is visited, one cannot see the structures that have been done. The consultants must also prove that they are competent.”
That was the big idea. What Nigerians didn’t bargain for was the inelegant contraption called the interim management committee (unknown to law) – a solution that has since proven worse than the original disease.
The result: two acting managing directors all in the space of eight months and billions of naira in contracts for all manners of purposes under the sun.
(Never mind that a huge chunk of the contracts fell short of the requirements of due process and appropriation).
And someone is still wondering why the old virus has not only mutated but metastasized?
The question is whether things couldn’t have been different. Remember, the NDDC was until October last year, under the Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (OSGF).
In moving it to the Ministry of Niger Delta Affairs, the president had told Nigerians then, that the measure underscored his administration’s “commitment to enhance the living standards of (our) communities in the Niger Delta, through coordinated and appropriate programmes’’.
Recall also that the president had in the same October forwarded the list of his nominees to the NDCC Board which the Senate, had expeditiously confirmed.
In a move that surprised not a few, some powerful forces would convince the president that an interim cleansing job was not only needed but that the job could not be done while a legally and properly constituted board was in place!
Between the president’s good intentions and the riotous, putrefying process, they can only now shudder not just at the wide gulf but the debasement of the idea.
Before now, the OSGF was said to be too busy tending to other cabinet office matters leaving the vultures in the commission to unleash mayhem; now Akpabio thinks little of treating the interventionist agency as anything more than a reward for loyal service hence the anarchy loosed on the commission!
Nigerians are certainly familiar with sundry acts of impunity by those elected or appointed to serve the rest of us.
We have heard revelations of NDCC headquarters building that would not be connected to the public electricity grid, because, it is alleged, the vendor supplying diesel for the commission’s generators is the girlfriend of one of the top guns in the ministry.
Of contract-splitting and other acts of monumental corruption. Including the charge that funds meant to pay tuition for Niger Delta students studying overseas were paid into the private accounts of some IMC members.
However, Nigerians luckless to have put up with Minister Godswill Akpabio’s testimony at the House of Representatives committee sitting on Monday could only come away with the feeling that the Buhari administration has substituted one principality for another monstrosity.
Or how else could one describe a situation in which one powerful minister’s word was not only law, but could, through guile manipulate the entire FEC going by the revelations at the House panel sitting?
Thanks to the House public hearing, it ought to have dawned by now that the president, not least the Federal Executive Council, was sold a dummy on the issue of forensic audit.
That the IMC contraption could have ranged from being an instrument of ministerial gerrymandering or control but certainly nothing of the so-called intendment.
Which explains why the minister, being the alpha and omega of NDDC would, on the strength of a dubious presidential authorisation, assert the privilege of appointing the forensic auditors, ensuring that everything about the transaction from pre-qualification to issuance of award letters to forensic auditors was overseen by his office; to add the greatest farce of all, ensuring that procurement was done in lieu of the appropriation!
Thanks to PMB’s delegation by abdication, ministerial outlawry could not have been more perfect, or complete.
These are certainly interesting times, both for the country and the good people of the Niger Delta. But then, the story is an old, familiar one.
From OMPADEC to NDCC, Nigerians are only too familiar with the activities of the soldiers of fortune holding the Niger Delta region to ransom.
One sample is the 657-kilometre East-West road project, awarded in 2006 by the Obasanjo administration, stretching from Calabar in Cross River State to Warri in Delta State initially valued at N726 billion which remains undelivered till date.
Yes, the president means well; unfortunately, only a President Buhari could have imagined that the contraption birthed in a fit of ministerial conceit and iniquity, would deliver a spotless NDDC. It won’t happen.
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