The President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), directed on Thursday that the Interim Management Team of the Niger Delta Development Commission should continue to run the agency until the completion of the ongoing forensic audit of its operations.
Buhari further directed that the Board of the NDDC would be reconstituted and inaugurated after the completion of the audit.
This was contained in a State House statement by Buhari’s media aide, Mr Femi Adesina, in Abuja.
The statement read, “President Muhammadu Buhari has approved that the Board of the Niger Delta Development Commission be recomposed and inaugurated after the forensic audit of the organisation.
“The President has also directed that the Interim Management Team of the NDDC shall be in place till the forensic is completed, and that the supervision of the commission shall remain under the Ministry of Niger Delta Affairs.”
The Minister of Niger Delta, Senator Godswill Akpabio, had set up the IMT soon after assuming office at the ministry.
Before then, however, Buhari had sent a list of 15 board-member nominees to the Senate in October who were duly cleared.
The nominees included the Chairman, Mr Pius Odubu, who is from Edo State.
Buhari later kept the inauguration of the board members cleared by the Senate in abeyance, despite calls on him by the legislature to inaugurate the board.
Responding to the development, a group, the Vanguard for Transparent Leadership and Democracy, faulted the decision.
VATLAD’s National President, Igbini Emmanuel, recalled that the Senate recently screened and confirmed nominees for the board as presented by Buhari in line with Section 2(2a) of the NDDC Act, 2000, as amended.
He noted that Buhari’s latest directive tended to portray him as deliberately undermining and disregarding the decision of the Senate.
He said that the Presidency did not deem it important to explain the reasons behind the latest decision.
Emmanuel said although Nigerians did not know the reasons behind Buhari’s decision, it would be wrong if it was based on the argument that Delta and Edo states ought not to produce chairman and managing director of the commission.
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