NDDC returns to accountability, transparency as keys to region’s development

The newly repositioned Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) seems to deploy the tested tools of transparency and accountability to fuel development in the region.

The strategy is to win back the confidence of the disillusioned people of the region and get maximum support to push development projects.

The MD, Samuel Ogbuku, said in PH that these tools would reposition and transform the Commission to facilitate rapid actions.

Ogbuku, who stated this when the Deputy Group Managing Director of the United Bank for Africa (UBA), Muyiwa Akinyemi, paid him a courtesy visit, said the Commission has moved away from the era of transactional leadership to that of transformational engagement.

The MD said in getting to the level of the financial discipline that the Commission strives to attain, the agency had put in place solid building blocks culminating in the engagement of KPMG to design for the Commission a corporate governance system which would lay down the Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs). SOPs would ensure that the activities of the Commission were internally regulated to boost the confidence of stakeholders and development partners to do business with the Commission.

The NDDC boss said the Commission was already using the verifiable data set for the training of the youths through the Holistic Opportunity Projects of Engagement (HOPE) initiative.

In the area of entrepreneurship, Ogbuku noted that the NDDC through the Niger Delta Chambers of Commerce had streamlined engagement in giving support to farmers and verifiable entrepreneurs in the region.

While expressing the confidence that the NDDC can do more, the CEO lamented that the Commission is limited by the bureaucracy of the operation of the Treasury Single Account (TSA) policy and canvassed for the removal of the Commission from the TSA.

The Deputy Managing Director of UBA, Muyiwa Akinyemi, showed excitement in the transformations in the NDDC and said the involvement of KPMG in the design of a corporate governance structure would increase the believability of partners that work with the Commission.