The House of Representatives has vowed that it would not be deterred from carrying out its planned investigation into allegations leveled against the Interim Management Committee of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) by series of blackmail and life threatening messages.
Reports were that some sponsored militant groups have been issuing threats against the chairman and members of the House committee on the NDDC, with the latest being allegations of fraud against the committee, and contracts awarded under some disguised emergency interventions, running into some trillions of naira.
However, Chairman of the committee, Hon. Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo, on Tuesday, while responding to issues of illegal contract awards and other fraud allegations by a member of the interim management team of NDDC, and Executive Director in charge of Projects, Dr. Cairo Ojoughboh, said they would not be deterred from carrying out its investigation on operations of the Commission.
Tunji-Ojo who dismissed the whole allegations said: “It’s unfortunate that these allegations are coming, these allegations as I’ve always said are blackmails and it’s surprising because I became the chairman of this Committee, and was inaugurated in September last year(2019), and between September and now I can say categorically that not a kobo of contract has been awarded for emergency, so I don’t know how that figure comes in and how that assertion came into being.
“It’s laughable because (members of the ) IMC themselves came into being in October last year, a month after I became the chairman of this Committee. The same Dr. Cairo said on Arise TV that they have not awarded a single contract since they came on board so how did One Trillion, Two Trillion or whatever trillion was awarded? This is just sheer blackmail I expected it from the onset when the investigation process started and the bottomline is that we are not going to be deterred.
“I have to say this; this is coming after threat to life by militants, by different text messages, calls and etc; the threats have failed. So the next agenda to stop the legislative work is blackmail. And I can say it categorically, we are more determined to work for the people of Niger Delta, more than ever before. I can say it there is no One Trillion, Two Trillion, 10 Trillion or anything it does not exist. May be it only exist in the figment of their own imaginations”.
Stressing that it was a known fact that the National Assembly “does not award contracts”, the lawmaker observed that Dr. Ojougboh who accused him of getting multi-billion naira contracts in one breath barely a month after being inaugurated as NDDC committee chairman, in another, denied that the IMC awarded any contract since it was inaugurated in October 2019.
“I’m surprised that anybody will award a job that is not in the budget and I’m surprised about that and I’ve gone through the 2020 budget as approved, and I can tell you pointblank that in the 2020 budget there’s no provision, there is nothing like emergency training in the 2020 budget, nothing like that, I don’t know what he’s talking about. And I’ve said it before and let me repeat for the umpteenth time, I do not have a single contract in NDDC”, he submitted.
