N40bn Probe: Why We Walked Out On Reps C’ttee – NDDC

TRACKING ____The acting Managing Director of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), Prof. Daniel Pondei, has offered reasons for walking out on the House of Representatives Committee probing the alleged N40billion corruption in the commission.

Speaking at a press conference in Abuja yesterday shortly after staging the walk-out, Pondei said: “We in the NDDC are not comfortable with the chairman of this committee presiding over this matter.”

“He is an accused party. The NDDC has over time accused Hon. Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo of different crimes against the NDDC and he has responded in the press. He is an interested party and we do not believe that the NDDC can get justice because he cannot seat on his own case,” Pondei said.

According to the acting Managing Director, “We have no issue of appearing before the (House of Representatives) committee. We appeared before the Senate adhoc committee and as long as he remains, we will not make any presentation.’’
On the allegation of missing N40bn from the coffers of NDDC, he denied the story being bandied around, saying no money was missing.
He maintained that the NDDC did not disrespect the National Assembly, adding that, “we have absolute respect for the National Assembly. That is why we appeared before the Senate ad-hoc committee to investigate the same issue. We made our presentations over two days and we wait for the outcome of the investigation. However, the committee that was set up in the House of Reps is being chaired by the chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on the NDDC whom the NDDC has severally accused of different things.”

“Yesterday (Wednesday) for reasons beyond our control we were not able to present ourselves but the report that came out of the briefing yesterday had already indicted us, our head has been shaved in our absence. The fact given by the CBN and the Accountant-General’s office in the Senate explained that between October, 2019 and May 31, 2020, N81.5bn has been spent by the NDDC. Yesterday, according to what was read out by the chairman (Hon. Tunji-Ojo), the same figure was spent in four months by the NDDC. Already it shows that there is a problem, that there is an agreed and conceived effort to portray the management of the NDDC in a bad light and we know we cannot get justice in this manner.
“So any day a fresh ad-hoc committee without anybody being accused by the NDDC is set up, we will appear because we respect the National Assembly. When we saw that the committee was insisting that the chairman will continue presiding, we have no option than to take a leave but we did not disrespect the National Assembly, we asked for permission to leave and we left,” Pondei added.
According to Pondei, the CBN and the office of the Accountant-General of the Federation had given accounts of how much money was spent by the two interim management committees of the NDDC combined as N81.5bn.

He said out of the N81bn, N59.1bn was recorded as spent by the current interim management committee of the NDDC and in the same report from both financial agencies, the commission has spent N38.6bn on road projects and so on.
The acting MD of the IMC added that a balance of N20bn covers a wide range of things mostly related to staff matters, salaries and historical debts that were inherited.
“Because the interim management committee stands to clear backlogs that are left, untreated issues that have been left to continue to fester and we stated this even at the Senate hearing. We paid a backlog of hotel bills that have been there for long, staff duty allowances that are there for four years.

“We operate a single account with the CBN and account details are published and it was from those things that investigations in the Senate were based on the account provided by the Central Bank of Nigeria,” Pondei explained.