We ought to know as people what is the minimalist attitude to commonsense and governance. We continue to remind ourselves as though we are reminding ourselves to remind ourselves.
Such rigmarole is at play again in the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC). The matter continues to fume on the front burner over how to take the commission out of the logjam of ego and stalemate.
The latest of the drama was that the presidency has sent its budget for the commission. Just as it approved a list for the board, comprising the managing director, Bernard Okumagba, among others. Now we have a board and a budget. Or shall we say two boards and a budget, and only one board by law should operate the budget.
By sending a budget to the senate, the presidency has turned a routine into a conundrum. Normally, the budget could have worked for an interim board if there was a problem constituting a board. But the presidency has itself constituted a board. The senate presided over it and approved the board nomination. All that is left is for the president to swear them in. This has not happened.
The problem was thought to have been solved over what the Niger Delta minister Godswill Akpabio did by throwing a spanner in the NDDC works. There was an audit committee set up by the president, Muhammadu Buhari, and it had a timeframe to present the financial doings of the commission with a view to cleaning the Augean stable.
But the minister maintained that the interim committee plied with his cronies should remain in the saddle in spite of the indecency of that position. The senate president and the minister are now at daggers drawn, even if it is not necessary.
Here are the words from the lips of Senate President Ahmad Lawan: “As far as we are concerned, this senate knows that we have confirmed the request of Mr. President for the board membership of the NDDC and we have communicated that and the next logical thing to do by law is for appointments of the members of the board to take immediate effect.”
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He also said that members of the committee should only relate with the board that the senate confirmed. The House of Representatives has made the matter even knottier by its insistence that it will deal with the interim management. This is not acceptable.
The question though is that it is the senate that would ultimately have to append its imprimatur on the budget to have any validity in law.
What we have therefore is an avoidable logjam. It all stands on the doorstep of the president and his dalliance in this matter is working against what he himself has condemned about the tardiness of the commission to fulfill its purpose.
The NDDC has been in the centre of many storms. We have seen over the years that it is a cesspool of corruption. Billions of Naira have been wasted away on contracts that never took off. Yet, it is supposed to save a region from not only the spoliation of the environment and cynical manipulation of the oil companies and their elite, but also from the series of corruption acts of its political leaders who continue to fatten on a region where many cannot drink clean water or sustain a job. In one of the stories of the corruption of the past few years, only one man, a politician, was named in hundreds of contracts that did not affect the lives of the people for good.
Holding the budget down because a board is not sworn in is no remedy for a troubled region.
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