Contractors Want New Board for NDDC

Olaoluwakitan Babatunde

The Contractors Association of the Niger Delta Development Commission (CA-NDDC) has appealed to President Muhammudu Buhari to reconstitute the Board of the NDDC, with one of the founding fathers of the commission as the Managing Director.

In a Press statement signed by Joe Adia, CA-NDDC’s Chairman, the Association bemoaned the ills of the commission since its inception in 1999 and traced the major hindrance to the success of the commission to the fact that it had been led by those whom it referred to as ‘outsiders’, instead of those who had the vision for the commission and were therefore in the best position to nurture and guide the growth and development of ‘the baby they gave birth to’.

The Association expressed gratitude to President Buhari for his various efforts to ensure that the commission fulfills the objectives of its establishment by effectively and rapidly developing the Niger Delta Region, “the goose that lays the golden eggs of Nigeria”, but regretted that the people Mr. President delegated authority to, to ensure the realisation of his objectives for the area had become great disappointments.

They also complained that the contractors of the commission, who borrowed money from banks at high interest rates to build projects for the commission, were not involved in matters affecting the commission.

They described the ongoing forensic audit of the commission as a sham since the contractors were not invited for projects inspection and believed that as major stakeholders of the commission, they should have inputs in the constitution of the commission’s new board.

CA-NDDC suggested that the new MD of the NDDC should not be an imposed one by those who ran down the commission over the years but should be someone to be appointed purely on merit, “someone who had seen it all from the inception of the commission till date, an experienced Administrator who had enough credibility to run the affairs of the commission with honesty and sincerity and in the best interest of all the Niger Delta people.”

“We have humbly recommended such a personality should be a leader of the founding fathers of the NDDC, the one who wrote the blueprint of both the OMPADEC and NDDC to our dear President,” they stated.