Monarch Urges Buhari To Return NDDC To Presidency

A first-class monarch in the Niger Delta and the Ovie of the Idjerhe Kingdom in Ethiope West Council of Delta State, His Royal Majesty, King Obukowho Monday Whiskey, has urged President Muhammadu Buhari to urgently return the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) to the Presidency.

BIGPENNGR.COM reports that the paramount ruler made the call in a statement on Wednesday, saying that the return would put a stop to the current crisis bedeviling the interventionist agency.

According to the royal father, returning NDDC to the Presidency just like the North East Development Commission, would help to address the issue of its control and check the ongoing controversies over the running of the regional interventionist agency.

The monarch, however lamented that the NDDC had today been hijacked by the Minister of Niger Delta Affairs, Godswill Akpabio to the detriment of the people of region.

He called on President Muhammadu Buhari, as the father of the nation, to listen to the voice of reason and urgently reposition the NDDC to enable it to carry out its statutory responsibilities of intervening in critical infrastructural problems in the region, which the agency was established to address.

According to the outspoken monarch, the avoidable crisis in the agency would have been put to rest if the President had listened to the critical stakeholders by inaugurating the already screened and confirmed board of the NDDC under the chairmanship of Dr. Pius Odubu and the Managing Director, Chief Bernard Okumagba.

He stressed that the alleged huge financial mismanagement and outright stealing of billions of naira by individuals in the name of Interim Management Committee and recently Sole Administratorship had clearly shown that the President must put an end to what he termed “this dance of shame.”

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He stressed the need to remove the control of the NDDC from Akpabio as “all evidence has shown total failure and lack of capacity.”

In his words, “it should be noted also that the huge stealing that is taking in the NDDC will become a standard if nothing drastic is done to bring the looters and their conspirators to book.

“I, therefore, call for urgent probing and prosecution of all those who are responsible for the current sorry state of the NDDC.

“We cannot pretend that all is well in the Niger Delta region when the NDDC has been hijacked by an individual to the detriment of larger populace of our people.

“‘The President must act now, or never.”

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