EXPOSED! Kickbacks, Bribes Behind NDDC’s Contract Scandal; As MD Is Fingered In Allegations

NDDC’s MD, Mr. Nsima Ekere

The contract scandal rocking the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), has exposed the truth behind why some critical stakeholders have allegedly accused the Managing Director of the commission, Mr. Nsima Ekere of attending only to contract files where he can racked up billions of naira, BigPen Online can authoritatively report.

Dependable sources told BigPen Online that the scandal of which Ekere was fingered is currently generating heat in the Niger Delta region as Stakeholders in the Niger Delta project who had executed jobs for NDDC have perfected plans to exposed all the antics of the MD and others who deliberately failed to process files of projects they consider as ‘low hanging fruits’, which would have reasonably impacted on the micro-economy of the people of the region.

A source in the know of the developments at the commission, but who preferred to remain anonymous, exclusively told BigPen Online that the NDDC no longer attend to contracts below the cost of N20 million as such do not bring enough gain from the well known 10% kickback usually demanded by officials.

According to the source, the commission’s chief helmsman, Ekere, had been stalling the processing of contracts that are not in their hundreds of millions, thus giving rise to the piling up of thousands of contract files in his office, and contracts files due to pass on to Executive Director of Finance for payment.

“The office of the MD is littered with files, he’s not attending to files. People’s invoices will get to his doorstep and stop there. These invoices also come with certificates, if he approves the certificates, then they can go to finance.

“He refuses to sign them because once he signs those certificates, they can enter finance for processing. He doesn’t want them to enter finance for processing, so he locks them down in his office, there are thousands of files in his office. You’ll have to almost jump over heaps of files in his office.

“In NDDC, there are more than a thousand contractors, that’s if we are not counting, who have done projects for the commission over the years; some are transformer installation, some are small supplies, some are maintenance activities, some are small hotel bills that they use. All those small bills below N20 million have been sitting down at the commission and only selected few are paid.

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“What the commission is paying are those ones where they can make good cuts; N200 million, N500 million, N150 million, those sort of payments, but those smaller ones have been kept unattended to, some of them for like three years, some for 4 years, some have even gotten TSA and waiting just for signal to go to bank, but they will never do it.

“This has constrained the environment, there’s no money, people are suffering, money comes, but use it for the big tickets, not considering the people at the lower rung of the ladder because they are not going to make money out of them. Everybody knows that they are collecting 10% for payments, people are even tired of writing petitions about that.

“So now the entire contract processes are being stalled by the MD, he’s not approving. Your paper gets there and gets stalled, no access to the MD, he is hardly in the office, you can’t see him or talk to anybody, you talk to the EDF, he’ll say it’s on MD’s table, you talk to EDP, he’s also tell you it’s on MD’s table.

“What is more painful is that, even in the face of an existing approved 2016 awaiting proper implementation, over sixty (60) new projects that are outside the federal approved budget have been contrived and awarded by the current management under the guise of “Emergency Road Repairs”, with each running from N200 to N500 million. It is these contracts that have become the priority of the management team. Most of these are promptly paid because it is an easier channel to satisfy personal interests; but is contrary to the priorities of the Niger Delta”, the source revealed.

BigPen Online also gathered that another fraudulent act in the NDDC in which Nsima Ekere has been reportedly accused is the  devotion of hundreds of millions of naira, solely to the renovation of the 7th floor of the NDDC headquarter offices, just some two years after the previous administration equally expended huge resources for same purpose.

Giving a graphic details on the allegation that the Managing Director used the renovation of his office area with hundreds of millions of naira, the source said, “this man has spent how many billions on Julius Berger to refurbish the 7th Floor alone, just for himself. The place is now a mini paradise. I can bet that he couldn’t have spent less than a billion naira on the job.

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“How is that refurbishing a priority? Furniture was there, the place was functioning, in fact the previous people that left for them to come refurbished the 5th, 6th and 7th floors, which are the MD, EDP and EDF floors and you came in less than 2 years you have called Julius Berger again”, the source queried.

All efforts to get comments from Mr. Ekere on this report proved abortive as he did not pick up his calls or reply text message sent to his mobile phone as at Thursday when the report was due for publication.