NDDC chairman says agency will bridge gaps between governors of Niger Delta, commission

The Chairman, Governing Board of Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), Sen. Victor Ndoma-Egba, said the commission was committed to bridging gap between the governors of the Niger Delta states and NDDC.

Ndoma–Egba, who stated this on Monday in Abuja in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), said the effort would be achieved through reinvigoration of the region.

He said the NDDC advisory board was composed of the nominees of governors in the nine oil producing states as well as two others by President Muhammadu Buhari.

According to the Chairman, the objective of the advisory committee is being synchronised with those of the governors in decision-making on NDDC projects in their states.

He further said this was being done to avoid duplication of projects and execution of substandard jobs.

The Chairman also said that one of the first decisions taken by the board was to re-activate all dormant organs of the commission.

He noted that the re-activation was to revive the Advisory Committee of the commission because NDDC must work with the government of the nine oil producing states.

The chairman said that the states would assume ownership of NDDC projects and programmes as well as check the duplication of projects.

“We want to maximise the scarce resources that we have so that we can achieve as much as we can, to create a regional economy in the Niger Delta,” he said.

Ndoma-Egba said for NDDC to achieve maximum efficiency, it must move away from the usual annual budgets that sometimes contradict previous budgets, adding that the region needed a functional Master Plan.

He noted that the Niger Delta Regional Master Plan, launched in 2007, had largely been unimplemented. “So we have to agree whether to terminate that Master Plan, update it or upgrade it.

“But a master plan is needed so that our annual budgets will be annual incremental steps toward achieving the vision of the plan," he said

According to him, the ad-hoc arrangement in the commission cannot endure, “so we have to have a long term policy for the region.’’

He said that the board was committed to doing things differently, if it must achieve results. “We cannot continue to do things the same way and expect different result.”

“We want to change that story. We want to change that narrative. We want to change that song, not just for the NDDC but also for the region and for the member states of the region.

“To change the story, to change the song, to change the narrative, we have to do things differently and to do things differently; we want to change our processes.

“We want to strengthen our systems, strengthen our monitoring capacity and our personnel to achieve accountability to the people we serve and accountability to those who fund us," he added.

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Ndoma-Egba noted that it would make the development partners have more confidence in the commission with greater assistance to enable it achieve greater good for the region.