Like PENCOM‎, Like NDDC

But for the timely intervention of the Senate leadership, the legislature and the executive would have been plunged into yet another avoidable imbroglio occasioned by executive recklessness in the revocation/renewal of the tenure of members of the board of the Niger Delta Development Commission, writes Tobi Soniyi

Section 4 of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) (Establishment) Act 2000 provides that the office of the chairman shall rotate amongst member states of the commission in alphabetical order. Thus, the chairmanship, which started with Abia has rotated up to Cross-River currently.

Section 12 of the Act provides that: “There shall be for the commission, a managing director, and two executive directors who shall be indigenes of oil producing areas starting with the member states of the commission with the highest production quantum oil and shall rotate amongst member states in order of production”.

Section 5(2) of the NDDC Act provides: “Where a vacancy occurs in the membership of the board, it shall be filled by the appointment of a successor to hold office for the remainder of the term of office of his predecessor, so however, that the successor shall represent the same interest and shall be appointed by the president, subject to the confirmation of the Senate, in consultation with the House of Representatives.”

Mrs. Ibim Seminatari, former Commissioner for Information in Rivers could not become a substantive Managing Director (MD) of the NDDC for this reason. She acted briefly to complete Rivers State’s tenure and made way for the former Deputy Governor of Akwa Ibom State, Nsima Ekere. Also, Senator Ndoma Egba (Cross River) was appointed to serve out the tenure of Senator Bassey-Ewa Henshaw (Cross River), who was removed along with other board members in 2015 before the end of his tenure in December 2017.

It is in line with this Act that the former Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Babachir Lawal, made it clear, for instance, in Ekere’s appointment letter dated 1st November 2016, (referenced SGF.55/S.2/C.3/IV/52), that “The appointment took effect from November 1, 2016 and you are to serve out the remainder of the term of office of your predecessor in line with Section 5(2) of the (NDDC) Act”.
Yet, in sheer absurdity, the same Presidency vide a letter dated 16th October 2017 (referenced SGF.55/S.2/C.3/IV/168) and signed by the former Acting SGF, Dr. Habiba Lawal, renewed the appointment of the NDDC Board for another four-year term in clear breach of the NDDC Act.

This violation of NDDC Act and other legal provisions regarding the constitution of the NDDC Board, led Senator Emmanuel Paulker (Bayelsa Central) to move the motion entitled: “The Illegal Extension of the Tenure of the Board of the NDDC” calling the Senate’s attention to this impunity. He said that the next chairman of the NDDC should come from Bayelsa State.
But for the intervention of the Senate Leader and the Senate President, who convinced the Senate to allow the Committee on Niger Delta Affairs and the new SGF, Boss Mustapha, to address the absurdity in the spirit of Mustapha’s rapprochement towards the Senate.

Meanwhile, the All Progressives Congress (APC) State Chairman in Bayelsa, Chief Joseph Safi, has also petitioned President Muhammadu Buhari insisting that “the purported extension of the term of the present Board of the NDDC is done in bad faith and in fact runs contrary to the provisions of the Act that established the NDDC”.
Yet, some others have described the tenure renewal as double illegality since the FG should not have sacked the entire Ewa-Henshaw-led NDDC Board in the first place, being a statutory board.

Members of the Ewa-Henshaw-led NDDC Board have also sued the FG after their efforts to get the Presidency to reverse their sack failed. They asked the National Industrial Court, Abuja, to declare that Buhari had no powers to sack them on the strength of the FG circulars dated 16th July 2015 (referenced SGF.19/S.81/XIX/964) and 23rd July 2015 (referenced SGF.55/S.2) dissolving all federal boards because their appointments were governed by statutes and for a fixed period, which was yet to expire.

Regrettably, the NDDC conundrum is just one of several such appointment messes masterminded by some bad eggs within the presidency. The illegal removal of the entire management Board of the National Pension Commission (PenCom) without recourse to the Pension Reform Act (PRA) 2014 is another clear case of people trying to feather their economic and political nests at the expense of Buhari’s reputation.

Section 20 (1) of PRA 2014 provides: “The Chairman and the Director-General shall hold office for a term of five years in the first instance and may be re-appointed for another term of five years and no more”.
Section 20 (2) provides: “A member of the Board other than the Chairman and the Director-General shall hold office for a term of four years in the first instance and may be reappointed for another term of four years and no more subject to the provisions of section 21 (1)(g) of this Act”.

The whole essence of Section 20(1) and (2) is to immune the commission from the vagaries of change in federal administration. By virtue of this section, PenCom’s pioneer DG, M.K Ahmad (Gombe, North East), served out two terms that cut across the administrations of Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, Alhaji Musa Yar’Adua, and Dr. Goodluck Jonathan. Also, the wisdom in making the tenure of the chairman and DG five years and those of the commissioners four years is to ensure institutional memory and continuity through the presence of experienced members of the board to pilot the affairs of the commission in acting capacity when the tenure of any DG or commissioner runs out.

Even though Section 21 of the Act lists circumstances under which a member of the PenCom Board may lose his/her position (such as death, resignation, removal by the President if he feels the person’s continued stay in office is not in public interest), the section never envisages nor provides for the disbandment of an entire membership of the board. Again, pension stakeholders believe that the FG cannot say in good conscience that a PenCom leadership that had strictly regulated the industry and grown pension fund from N2.9 trillion to over N6.5 trillion in about three years was not working in public interest.

Apart from illegally and improperly disbanding the PenCom Board, the steps taken so far in trying to replace them clearly betrays the inordinate motives behind the entire exercise. Whereas Section 21(2) of PRA 2014 provides that: “In the event of a vacancy, the president shall appoint a replacement from the geo-political zone of the immediate past member that vacated office to complete the remaining tenure”, Alhaji Aliyu A. Dikko (Kaduna, North West) was nominated as replacement for the removed DG, Mrs. Chinelo Anohu-Amazu (Anambra, South East). Funsho Doherty (South West) was nominated as Board Chairman to replace Adamu Muazu (Bauchi, North East).

The DG nominee, Alhaji Dikko, was however shipped off to the Bank of Industry’s as Board Chairman by the then Acting President Yemi Osinbajo, and replaced with Doherty immediately the President travelled to London on account of his health in May 2017. Apart from the fact that Doherty is not eligible to be PenCom DG for the same reasons Osinbajo removed Dikko, he was also directed to commence as the Acting DG without confirmation of the Senate on the eve of Buhari’s return from medical vacation. Doherty was only halted by the stern statement issued by the Senate warning that there would be consequences should such illegal directive be carried out. Interestingly, Mr. Doherty, a well-known longstanding ally of Osinbajo was former MD of ARM Pension Ltd, while Osinbajo was also on the Board of Directors of the ARM Group. Observers worry, there may be a conflict of interest.

The efforts by VP’s Office to justify the non-replacement of the previous DG with a South Easterner to serve out the region’s tenure (as was done in NDDC) on the ground that such replacement does not apply when an entire Board is dissolved have been rightly rejected by industry stakeholders and the South East people. Stakeholders wonder what laws the schemers in the presidency relied on to disband the entire PenCom Board, midway into their tenure, being a statutory Board.

It is believed that the Presidency is yet to send the names of the PenCom nominees, Funsho Doherty and others, to the Senate for the obvious fact that the illegality may not fly, hence the attempts to have them assume office without Senate’s confirmation.
The result of this avoidable miscalculation is that PenCom has been without a management board for almost a year now and the gains of the past 13 years are fast evaporating with critical stakeholders like the Police, Customs, Immigration insisting on pulling out of the Contributory Pension Scheme (CPS) as the integrity of the system is now under threat.

Also, a statement jointly issued sometime by frontline labour activist/Secretary-General of National Union of Textile, Garment and Tailoring Workers, NUTGTWN, Comrade Isa Aremu and President of NUTGTWN, Comrade John Adaji, sums the apprehensions of the organised labour over the PenCom crisis.

They said: “A labour market institution like PenCom is a specialised field that should not be a place for political appointees.

“The recent appointment of Funso Doherty by the Acting President as the replacement of Dikko Aliyu Abdulrahman will further lead to crisis of confidence in the leadership of PenCom.

“The best way is for the Federal Government to return to due process by recalling the former Director General Mrs. Chinelo Anohu-Amazu to complete her tenure in accordance with the Pension Reform Act 2014.”

Will President Buhari put a stop to the NDDC, PenCom mess, and other similar mess masterminded by unwholesome interests around the Presidency? Only time will tell.

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Yet, in sheer absurdity, the same Presidency vide a letter dated 16th October 2017 and signed by the former Acting SGF, Dr. Habiba Lawal, renewed the appointment of the NDDC Board for another four-year term in clear breach of the NDDC Act.