The Minister of the Niger Delta Affairs, Godswill Akpabio has said that contrary to media reports that the sum of N40BILLION was missing,under his watch that,no money is missing as the money could be seen in the projects going on at The Niger Delta Development Commission NDDC.
He said that N40BILLION cannot be missing from the account of the NDDC now under President Buhari as the account is domiciled in the Central Bank.
“NDDC now under President Muhammadu Buhari, GCFR,is domiciled in the Central Bank of Nigeria.But before this administration, the APC came to cleanse the system, NDDC had over 311 accounts in various banks, there was possibility of money being missing,
“And so that could have happened at that time but today,we operate the TSA .So I want to state emphatically that no N40BILLION is missing”
Akpabio who disclosed this in Abuja on Monday while testifying before the House of Representatives panel on allegations of financial recklessness of the NDDC., said” Unfortunately people have done a lot of mudslinging, character assassination and people have done of social media judgement as to the person of the minister and all that.lwant to say Sir that those things are false”
He said that since he was appointed Minister of the Niger Delta Affairs,he had only awarded three contracts which are, the appointment of forensic auditors, the purchase of 90 vehicles which were approved in tranches by Mr President in a bid to stop the modus operandi of the Commission of renting vehicles.The contract he said was the Covid-19 which was treated as an emergency in line with the National Assembly ACT section 42 sub section And B.
Akpabio explained that no expenditure below N1billion is referred to him from the Commission for approval as the Commission has a culture of making expenditures in tranches so they do not go under the threshold
Answering questions on whether he had knowledge that the sum of N81.billion was spent by the Interim Management Committee, the minister denied any knowledge
He disclosed that Mr President has released about N71billion of the N100billion appropriated for the NDDC adding that if such panel had predated the present House, the NDDC would not have been in the state it is.
“How I wish that others were doing what you are doing now right from 2001,we would not be in this mess, when NDDC will stay in an office for for 19years without even an office or when they will stay in office 7-8years they are occupying without being connected to the national grid”.
The Niger Delta Development Commission NDDC was created by the Obasanjo government in,2000 with the mandate to develop the oil bearing Communities of the Niger Delta.The Commission was empowered to assess and tackle challenges in infrastructure, address poverty,and other emergencies.
However, the Commission is plunged by allegations of corrupt practices which neccessitated the Constitution of the Senate and House panels to investigate the allegations.
