The Special Assistant, Media, Mrs. Nancy Ijaopo, to the Acting Managing Director of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), Prof. Nelson Brambaifa, has stated that the records of the commission and the activities of the Brambaifa-led management team are very open for public scrutiny.
She also strongly condemned online attention-seeking, uncouth and unprofessional publications, allegedly contracted to do hatchet jobs for political actors, who, according to her, were on a mission to fight a proxy war.
Ijaopo, yesterday in an online statement, insisted that the acting managing director and other members of the management team of the federal government’s interventionist agency remained committed to developing the crude oil and gas-rich Niger Delta and empowering people of the region.
She said: “It is routine for anti-graft agencies to ask questions and even probe the activities of public agencies, in the greater interest of the public. What we find detestable is the attempt to force the office of the Acting Managing Director of NDDC into a needless media debate on the operations of any anti-graft agency. No one is in doubt as to the competence and patriotic ability of the anti-graft agencies to do what is right, even as we also know that this task does not include media trials.”
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In a related development, the immediate past commissioner of the NDDC in Cross River State, Mr. Sylvester Nsa, has urged the NDDC Act and master plan be reviewed to accommodate disadvantaged states like Cross River, especially considering its loss of Bakassi and 76 oil wells.
Nsa in a statement issued in Calabar, the state capital, said despite the inadequacies of the NDDC Act that inhibit Cross River State in its sharing formula, during his tenure as commissioner, he was able to attract 61 projects which have been executed and completed, while 34 projects are currently ongoing at various locations across the state.
“Out of a total of 119 projects approved by the board of NDDC for the state, 61 had been completed and 34 are ongoing, with 20 already commissioned in the last four years.
“I share the concern of other stakeholders and that of the executive governor of Cross River State calling for an urgent review of the Act to allow Cross River State benefit equally in terms of projects allocation and 13 per cent derivation across board. “We lost Bakassi and 76 oil wells due to no fault of ours. It was a decision taken by the International Court of Justice at The Hague and the Federal Government of Nigeria, but rather than compensate the state for the loss, we are being punished through the Act,” Nsa said.
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