Nyesom Wike, Governor of Rivers State declares the fresh eye-openers of corruption from the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) not unanticipated to him, declaring that the Commission invested N10 billion to fight in opposition to him all through the last election.
“Unfortunately, they have turned it to a different thing, NDDC is a cash cow for politicians. In my own election, NDDC brought N10 billion cash to fight against me,” Wike said on Tuesday in an interview on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily in Port Harcourt, Rivers State capital.
He complemented that the NDDC lost concentration from the preliminary mission for which it was founded for, and developed into a money-making machine for several corrupt politicians.
“I have said before and it is very clear, my concern is everybody knows that NDDC was set up for the development of the region,” he said.
His comments followed the current probe by the National Assembly into the scam running into billions of naira said committed by the Interim Management Committee (IMC) of the NDDC between February and May 2020.
He also accused the Commission of boarding on projects in Rivers without the consent of the state government.
“You cannot go to a state and begin to carry out projects without the permission of the state government, you don’t know what their plans are. You can’t come into my state to disturb my development plan, you must let me know,” Wike said.
According to him, technocrats, and not politicians to be found in charge of the Commission to facilitate it function efficiently to change the story of what is playing out at the moment.
While explaining the role of governors in the South-South, he said, “Under the NDDC Act, there should be a governing board made up of the governors.”
“Since 2015 we have been asking for that board, but it was only last year that the President was able to constitute a governing board. But that is just theory.”
Between February and May, investigations launched by lawmakers to probe the alleged fraud in the NDDC while President Muhammadu Buhari ordered that a forensic audit to be carried out on the Commission.
