NDDC cancels 600 projects worth N200bn

The Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) will cancel 600 projects worth N200 billion, to reduce its N1.3 trillion inherited liabilities, Nsima Ekere, the managing director and chief executive officer, told BusinessDay in an interview in Port Harcourt on Monday, July 17, 2017.

Ekere also disclosed that the Federal Government owes the Commission N1.7 trillion in unremitted but due contributions that have been accumulated over the past 17 years.

He disclosed that a committee was set up to review the over 6,000 uncompleted projects which eventually took the decision to cancel 600 projects. The projects cancelled are those awarded without due process, abandoned projects, and those with little or no work going on, as well as those that had lingered from as far back as the year 2000. He said the screening was still going on to cancel even more.

Ekere acknowledged that the previous board was right in stopping upfront payments for projects, but said his management was determined to go after failed contractors who got paid and the banks that guaranteed them. He disclosed that N60m has so far been recovered from banks that backed failed contractors.

Going forward, he said, the Commission would devote 60 per cent of its funds to ongoing but impactful projects and 40 per cent for new ones which have region-wide impact.

Ekere said panels that probed the Commission in the past, found that “Everything that could go wrong with any organisation went wrong”. He said the Commission had deviated, and vowed to return it to its core mandate.

“The NDDC was set up for rapid socio-economic and infrastructural development of the Niger Delta region. We would ensure that projects henceforth, would meet this objective.”

In the past, he lamented, “You would see that some of our projects were politically motivated, done to satisfy one person or the other. We say, if we have to follow the masterplan, every project and every amount spent must be an incremental effort to the master plan’s milestone. The master plan is about 10 years old already. It was supposed to be accomplished in 15 years but after 10 years, not much has been achieved. So we want to go back to it.”

He said the NDDC now has to do less of minor projects and more of region-wide projects with economic impact. He told the sad story of how three government agencies, including the NDDC, Ministry of Niger Delta Affairs, and state government, awarded contracts on the same road and paid three different contractors. He called for collaboration to avoid duplication and to aim at same target.

On the foreign scholarship scheme which has attracted criticism in recent times, Ekere said the scheme had become a beehive of fraud. He said the foreign currency involved had attracted fraudulent people. Some got the scholarship for one course in one country and went to other countries. Some got it, stayed in Nigeria but collected the hard currency.

He however said the Commission would never abandon any genuine scholar. He said over 80 per cent of the disbursements have been made. “Let me say this; the NDDC will never abandon any of its foreign scholars. A lot of people have defrauded the government, using NDDC scholarship. The foreign currency involved has attracted fraud.

“Some of the youths are always at our gates, protesting or begging but most of them benefited from NDDC training schemes, got the starter-packs, sold them and returned to beg at our gates. We need to address the mindset of our people to seek economic activities rather than harassing people for money.”

Ekere said the solution was to develop an economic model which attracts investors to the Niger Delta because ordinarily, the region is not attractive to investors. He talked about plans to make the Niger Delta a rice hub too. “We want to make the Niger Delta a massive rice belt, through out-growers, mills.” Already, a company is to operate the Elele-Alimi rice mill complex. The NDDC invested N1.5 billion in two rice mills in the region, Ekere disclosed.

 

 Ignatius Chukwu