A non-governmental organisation, Policy Alert, has knocked Akwa Ibom chapter of All Progressives Congress (APC) for calling Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) to build a secretariat for the party.
The organisation, working for social, economic and environmental justice in the Niger Delta region, described the party’s call as “self-serving, uncharitable, and preposterous.”
In a statement signed by the organisation’s Communications and Stakeholder Engagement Officer, Nneka Luke, and made available to Blueprint on Wednesday in Uyo, the group asked the Interim administrator of the NDDC, Barr. Effiong Akwa, to resist the temptation to misuse his office as a result of partisan pressures.
Recall that a stakeholders’ meeting of the APC in Akwa Ibom State last Sunday called on “the sole administrator of the interventionist agency to utilize his office to remodel the party secretariat.”
The statement read in parts: “The NDDC was established to facilitate speedy, equitable and sustainable development of the Niger Delta region in the face of the region’s peculiar ecological characteristics and the social and environmental injustices that have trailed oil and gas production in the Niger Delta over the years.
“However, in the last twenty years of its existence, the Commission has failed woefully to fulfill this mandate, a situation worsened by recent corruption scandals. We therefore find it self-serving, uncharitable, and preposterous for the Akwa Ibom State chapter of the ruling APC to ask the Interim Administrator to “utilize his office to remodel the party secretariat.
“This is the kind of rotten, fraudulent and dangerously partisan thinking that has institutionalised corruption at the Commission and undermined its efficiency over the years.
“We call on the Interim Administrator to resist the temptation to sacrifice the mandate of the Commission and the development of Niger Delta citizens on the altar of partisan sentiments. What we expect from stakeholders including political parties at this time is to support the Interim Administration with ideas to improve the transparency, accountability, and efficiency of the Commission, rather than ideas that will reinforce the corrupt and inefficient status quo.”
Policy Alert noted that transparency and accountability in the management of resources accruing to the agency is of great importance to citizens of the Niger Delta.
