NDDC: Cesspool Of Familial Demons

''The NDDC, for me, has become a kind of occultic cauldron of familial vampires feeding on and sucking the blood of their own people, the very same people they are meant to ostensibly fight for and develop with the commonwealth that has become saddled in their hands.''

And so when we heard about the many oodles of disquieting revelations emanating from the ongoing investigation as regards the process of management of the Niger-Delta Development Commission (NDDC), the flagship program of the oil-rich Niger-Delta region, it was to say the least disturbing.

The can of worms that has been blown off by accusations and counter-accusations since the House of Representatives adhoc committee set out to investigate the activities of the agency has been deeply shameful and highly interesting as well. It's shameful for the rots in this sector that it has caused to be exposed and interesting for bringing to the fore the facts about the many clogs that has continued to lacerate to bleeding the vessels of the Niger-Delta region even after many years of consistent efforts to patch and heal.

It'll be relevant here to understand what the idea and motive behind the establishment of the NDDC were and the enormity of the resources that have so far been channeled therein towards seeing to the actualization of these idea and motive. This will remarkably help us to appreciate the reason I had initially stated that the turn of events of the investigative hearing has been shameful and at the same instance interesting.

The NDDC was established by the Obasanjo-led administration as an interventionist program to adequately and rightly compensate the people of the Niger-Delta region for being the goose that have led the golden eggs from which the entire nation has fed, survived and thrived on and also to placate them for the many years of neglect, injustice and naked murder of the region and its many activists cum agitators.

The idea was to have an agency of the Federal government of Nigeria particularly focused on the oil-rich region, catering for their needs. The motive was for the agency to be fully given the necessary resources to commit centrally to the development and economic growth of the region and its people. That noble idea by Olusegun Obasanjo was conceived in June of 2000 and greeted with great excitement and high enthusiasm for the envisaged prospects it held.

And whether, since then- over two decades ago, the very motive of the establishment has seen any progression, is a question that leaves to be answered, especially when looked at from the very realities in place across the entire region vis-à-vis the tonnes and tonnes of resources pumped into the project. Indeed, the result as portrayed in the many failed and abandoned contracts of road, electricity, fibre-optics, oil spill management, employment and other projects is a shallow indemnification as compared to the humongous amount rightly injected for the service of the Niger-Delta people.

The rot in NDDC is smelling strongly. This is a reality which the current House sitting has unravelled and which, together with the expected forensic audit must endeavour to clean up. Innocent lives, whose resources are constantly pulverized without adequate impacts, are left to die of hunger, impoverishment and inconsistent environment while some few idiots feed fat out of their misfortunes.

Consistently, the youths of this region have taken to the streets, and more extremely resorted to arms-taking in sprees of agitations, to express their angst and demand for a refocusing of  federal government's attention to their plights of environmental degradation, unemployment and poverty. In response, different administrations of the federal government had come up with means to reach out pacify these agitations. After Obasanjo had created NDDC, Yar'adua, in 2008, established the Ministry of the Niger-Delta Affairs. In a seeming bid to make a statement on this region, current President Muhammadu Buhari thought it to review the impacts of these creations.

But the federal government has not in real terms done what in principle had been its good motives for the Niger-Delta region, and this is basically because some few avaricious elements pathetically within this same region have stood against the trickling down of this goodwill to the grassroots and the masses, who should be the chief and primary beneficiaries of the gestures of these laudable establishments.

But it's time to call the bluff of this shenanigans. Enough of the idiocy!

The time to call to question the manner in which the NDDC have been run has come. This should be the time of reckoning, where every stakeholder that has administered the NDDC and which in one way or the other has been part of the ricochet of rots must be called upon to account for the grave mismanagement along the years that has left the Niger-Delta region still gasping for breath after many years of huge injection of funds.

In the words of Joy Nunieh, the former MD of the Commission, NDDC money is ''blood money'' and I cannot agree less to this notion. The blood of Ken-Saro Wiwa and the several agitators murdered and the blood and tears of the many inhabitants of this region whose lives have been subjugated by the direct and indirect consequences of the degradation caused their environment should not be in vain. Those elements, who have fed their greed and avarice from the resources meant to mollify these deaths/tears and better these inhabitants, must be called out to answer for their crimes against humanity!

The forensic audit ordered by the president, Muhammadu Buhari, must go on and carried out holistically and with the highest sense of probity to ensure that no sacred cow is spared. The issue of the welfare of the Niger-Delta is a serious matter. We're talking about the woes of a people, the dilapidation of their environment that makes a shameful irony especially when we realize that it is the region that, to a greater extent, sustains this nation. We're talking of the destruction of the  means of livelihood, we're talking about avoidable hunger and diseases from years of negligence. We're talking about increasing poverty and death. It is about blood money!

Therefore, the call is that head must roll, for that would be the first and most practical way to purge the NDDC and prove that their wellbeing and sustenance have always mattered. Let the forensic auditors swing into action without further delay and let Godswill Akpabio, the supervising minister in charge of the Niger-Delta Affairs be excused and critically examined for the weighty allegations against him for his part in the decay.

Let Cairo Ojuigbo, the IMC of the Commission, the failed and abandoning contractors and every single individual that has stood while the stench recoils, be suspended and quickly made to answer questions and account for their shameful irresponsibilities. Indeed, the sucking vampires must not be allowed to get away with their despicable acts of fratricide!

#PurgeNDDC

#LetHeadsRoll