Senate Committee in charge of investigating the alleged financial reckless spending in the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) has recommended the dissolution of the agency’s Interim Management Committee (Dissolution Of IMC Management)
It was revealed in a detailed report which was submitted to the Senate plenary on Thursday by the Chairman of the Ad hoc Committee (Ekiti North), Senator Olubunmi Adetukunmbi, that the NDDC spent N1.334 trillion in five years.
He said:
“the IMC was involved in reckless spending where they spent based on “cash accounting”, and not based on the “budget”. the mode of “running the accounting system” by the IMC was an aberration to the act establishing the agency.”
He added:
“the IMC spent a whooping sum of N81.5 billion in three months, lamenting that the money was not spent on development-oriented infrastructure in line with the mandate of the NDDC.”
This comes exactly two weeks after the acting Managing Director of the NDDC, Kemebradikumo Pondei, admitted that the commission spent N1.5 billion for staff as ‘COVID-19 relief funds’.
He made this statement at the investigative hearing on the N40 billion corruption allegation against the commission.
The Senate had on May 5 set up a seven-man ad-hoc committee to investigate the “financial recklessness” of the Interim Management Committee (IMC) of the commission.
The lawmakers said within the last three months, the commission has spent over N40 billion of the commission’s fund “without recourse to established processes of funds disbursement which has opened up further suspicion among stakeholders of the Niger Delta Region.”
They also faulted the IMC’s “arbitrary use of executive power in an alleged wrongful sacking of management staff without recourse to established civil service rules and practice with the aim of allegedly concealing the fraudulent financial recklessness they have committed.”
Presenting the report, Mr Adetumbi said the NDDC spent 4.9 billion on medicals between October 2019 and May 2020. He also said the commission spent billions of naira on “overseas travel allowance” at a time when countries were on lockdown and international flights were not operating.
The report also recommended that the NDDC be returned to the presidency for supervision with the setting of supervisory board by governors of the nine Niger Delta States.
Adetunmbi said:
“In conclusion, the Committee noted that it is difficult to find a correlation between Niger Delta community development and cash invested in the zone.
