…Sues for Due Diligence
A Niger Delta Born Activist and Fellow of the Institute of Management Consultants, Mr. Iteveh Ekpokpobe, is applauding the Senate and House of Representatives for probing the activities of Minister of Niger Delta, Mr. Godswill Akpabio and the Interim Management Committee of the Niger Delta Development Commission NDDC.
In a chat with Newsmen in Warri, Delta State, Iteveh urged the National Assembly to ensure due diligence in their processes in order to promote and entrench the culture of fiscal responsibility in the operations of the commission.
Iteveh lamented that the NDDC was due for total overhaul, in view of the reckless abandonment with which issues of accountability were handled.
He stated that the visible recklessness that prompted President Muhammadu Buhari to set up the Interim Management Committee while ordering a forensic audit, was totally defeated considering the alarming issues of corruption emanating from the IMC.
His words, “I adopt the position of Senator George Sekibo who argued on the floor of the senate that ‘the President’s action of setting up an IMC and the forensic audit may have been conceived to forestall the financial recklessness of the commission and reposition it for fast-tracking of the development of the region, but the IMC was more bedevilled with the same financial misuse, misapplication, misappropriation or outright fraud in the management of the funds of the commission’.”
“The details are gory, that the Commission, within the last three months, 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. This should not be encouraged. The National Assembly should ensure to leave no stone unturned.” He said.
He also commended stakeholders across the Niger Delta for their resilience in the fight for emancipation of the region.
