A group known as Act for Positive Transformation Initiative has asked the federal government to intervene very quickly to stop massive looting of the treasury of the Niger Delta Development Commission NDDC.
The Head of Research, Kolawale Johnson stated this while testifying at the House of Representatives panel on NDDC. He said inspite of the National Assembly panels investigating the NDDC, corruption still goes on.
Johnson said that the budget of the NDDC expired on may 31, but he discovered that between June,1 and July 17, 2020, the sum of N19.6billion have been expended.
“By the way, the NDDC budget expired on May 31, so between June 1 and July 17 iam here to tell this commitee that the document available to us show that NDDC has spent a total of N19.6billion.
“Sir I was just going through some payment that are taking place.Most of them are payments for desilting jobs.lam aware that last year,we raised alarm on payment for desilting that was exceeding threshold than should be paid.
“The first thing we did in March last year,was to analyse 2018 budget and we discovered that N2.5 billion was earmarked for desilting.but they exceeded threshold of N20billion-N30billion as at the time we analysed..Later we got to know that it even exceeded that amount.We raised alarm and later we learnt that the National Assembly wrote to the Commission to stop payments on desilting because a lot of times,” Desilting payments are for the boys’.
“The reason we are crying is that, if investigation is going on and still payment is still taking place,i don’t know where we are going from here.
“On the 9th of July, N631million was paid to one company for desilting, and same day,N667million,N73$million,N634million, and N697million were paid”he said.
He called on the government to act fast to stop the corruption in the Commission
