N2tr NDDC debt, FG not committed to developing oil region

By Ambrose Nnaji

The Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), receives an average of N300billion every year, yet all the evil effects of oil and gas activities had continued unabated in the Niger Delta region till present.

These include gas flaring causing respiratory illnesses and cancer, water pollution, air pollution, oil spills, destruction of fishes and farmlands and a lot more other problems. But findings show that communities have not benefited from the oil and gas sector operations in the region.

Executive Director, We the People, Centre for Social Studies and Development, Ken Henshaw, who gave shared this view with the Nation Update in Lagos, said the NDDC was in debt of over N2 trillion with about 12, 000 abandoned projects.

According to record, the NDDC started a three months twin certification programme in 2015, running into billions of naira that was abandoned two months into the training – The Fiber Optics/Telecoms (Owerri) and Oil Spill Management (Port Harcourt) Training for youths of the Niger Delta region.

The two programmes were abandoned by the NDDC and its contractors CEO of GreenData Limited abandoned the 200 trainees in various hotels in Owerri. This is 2019, and the programmes are still not completed, the record stated.

Henshaw said: “We are not just saying that it’s a failure, it’s a fact, and it’s a complete failure. If you speak with anybody in the Niger Delta they will tell you over and over again that it is a failure, NDDC has failed over the 20years”.

The Niger Delta Development Commission is a Federal Government agency established by the government in the year 2000 with the sole mandate of developing the oil-rich Niger Delta region.

In 2008, government announced the formation of a Niger Delta Ministry, with the Niger Delta Development Commission to become a parastatal under the ministry.

One of the core mandates of the Commission is to train and educate the youths of the oil rich Niger Delta regions to curb hostilities and militancy, while developing key infrastructure to promote diversification and productivity.

He said the overall score was that things were bad and even getting worse. According to him, the impact of oil and gas are not being felt by people in the oil communities, and again a lot of the benefits that should be accruing to them are not being accruing to them.

“The realities are that the environmental impact of oil extraction, gas flaring, oil spills, contaminated water sources are still very much in those communities”, he stated.

The Natural Resource Charter (NRC) is a set of principles intended for use by governments, societies and the international community to determine how best to manage natural resource wealth for the benefit of current  and future generations of citizens.

Henshaw said the NDDC an agency of the state government that was put in place basically to ensure that the benefits got to the community people was not functioning in the interest of the people. The executive director who noted the commission had been in existence for the last 20years (2000-2020) added the realities was that communities in the N/Delta communities still did not look like a region that receives such huge sum of money by the commission.