A former leader of the Niger
Delta People’s Volunteer Force (NDPVF), Alhaji Mujahid Dokubo-Asari, has issued
a strong warning to President Muhammadu Buhari, urging him to strictly follow
the year 2000 Establishment Law of the Niger Delta Development Commission
(NDDC), to avoid anarchy.
The ex-militants leader spoke to
journalists in Port Harcourt, the Rivers State capital on Friday.
Dokubo kicked against the
constitution of a new Interim Management Committee for the Federal Government’s
interventionist agency – NDDC.
Godswill Akpabio, the Minister of
Niger Delta Affairs had on October 29, inaugurated in Abuja, NDDC’s
three-member interim management committee: Acting Managing Director, Dr. Joi
Nunieh (Rivers state); Acting Executive Director, Projects, Dr. Cairo Ojougboh
(Delta state); and Acting Executive Director, Finance and Administration
(EDFA), Chief Ibanga Bassey Etang (Akwa Ibom state), while the then Acting
Managing Director, Dr. Akwagaga Enyia, handed over to Nunieh on October 30.
Akpabio said during the
inauguration that the members of the interim management committee would be in
office until the conclusion of the forensic audit of NDDC from 2001 to 2019.
Dokubo-Asari said: “NDDC is an
interventionist agency to remedy years of deprivation of the people of the
Niger Delta from the resources beneath their land and the effect is enormous.
The commission came to ameliorate the problems and to try to find small
palliatives, but people have been playing politics with NDDC.
“NDDC has a law that established
it. Disrespect for due process is a major problem. Everybody is trying to stab
the other person and they say we are in control. You are in control where? How
can President Buhari transmit a letter to the Senate, thereby submitting names
of qualified people to be screened and a minister (Akpabio) under him, whose
role even the law does not recognise, because NDDC is under the President,
decided to illegally appoint another acting interim management committee, why?
“President Buhari must put his
house in order. He is supposed to be President of the country. He has the power
of control over all the people working under him. President Buhari must abide
by the laws setting up all the agencies because what is happening in NDDC is
very regrettable. So many people fought to make the Commission to come to
reality, but right before their eyes, NDDC is being destroyed. Putting in place
the interim management committee is a very big insult on the Presidency. It is
so shocking.
“If I meet with Akpabio, I will
tell him that there is no legal provision for what he has just done in NDDC. He
is a lawyer. We were all together at the University of Calabar (UNICAL) in
Cross River State. He should know that the interim management committee is
illegal, but today the law does not mean anything any longer. So, anybody can
do whatever he likes. President Buhari transmitted a letter to the National
Assembly, nominating people to be screened and confirmed. So, what is the big
deal about setting up another interim management committee?
“Akpabio is my very good friend.
I know him and he knows me. I am not a member of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP)
or All Progressives Congress (APC). Any of our people that stray to the wrong
ideological camp, associating with such a person becomes difficult.
“The way forward is that people
should have a conscience. If there is a new board that represents all the
states, that should take precedence over some handpicked people. I know the
people that are there now, as members of the interim management committee of
NDDC. Maybe I will benefit, but I should not put my benefit over and above the
interest of the generality of the people.
“Since 2015, I have not gone to
NDDC. Anything that is associated with these people, I do Ben Johnson. I do not
want to be involved. Let the right thing be done. There is a new board that
represents all the stakeholders and the members have been screened by the
Senate. So, needful should be done.”
The Law establishing NDDC states
that the chairmanship must rotate among the nine crude oil and gas producing
states in alphabetical order, with Cross River state just concluding the
tenure, making it the turn of Delta state to produce the next chairman, but the
chairmanship has been moved to Edo state, through the list sent to the National
Assembly by President Buhari, with the nominees already screened by the
Senators.
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