Amid the fraud allegations levelled against some officials of the Niger Delta Development Commission, NDDC, the commission has invited President Muhammadu Buhari to commission a 24 Billion naira project.
The project which is a 29-kilometre Ogbia-Nembe road in Bayelsa State was built in conjunction with the Shell Petroleum Development Company, SPDC.
The invitation was conveyed to President Buhari through the Minister for Niger Delta Affairs, Senator Godswill Akpabio.
According to the commission’s Director of Corporate Affairs, Mr Charles Odili, the road project cuts through swampy terrain across 14 other communities to creates a land link to the ancient city of Nembe for the first time.
NDDC Invites Buhari
Speaking on the protest at the Nigerian high commission in London by the commission’s stranded scholars abroad, Odili disclosed that President Buhari has given the commission the go-ahead to pay their school fees and stipends by next week.
Odili said the delay in the remittance of the fees was caused by the sudden death of the former Acting Executive Director, Finance and Administration, of the NDDC, Chief Ibanga Etang, who died in May.
Reacting to the list of NDDC contracts handled by some members of the National Assembly Odili confirmed that the list submitted to the National Assembly was actually compiled by the then management of the Commission in 2018.
He further stated that there was another set of lists for emergency project contracts awarded in 2017 and 2019.
Odili described the list as part of the volume of 8,000 documents already handed over to the forensic auditors.