A non-governmental organisation, Niger Delta Coalition Conscience, NDCC, has urged the Federal Government to extend the forensic audit conducted in the Niger Delta Development Commission to all other Ministry, Department and Agencies of government across the country.
The Minister of Niger Delta Affairs, Sen. Godswill Akpabio had recently submitted the forensic audit report of the NDDC to President Muhammadu Buhari where so much corrupt practices in the agency were uncovered.
However, the group in a statement signed by its president, Aniefiok Obot and the Secretary John Adangu, made available to Journalists in Uyo, Akwa Ibom State capital, said the same model used in NDDC should be applied to all the government-owned sectors.
It reasoned that since the NDDC subjected itself to audit, and a high level of corruption was uncovered, replication of the exercise in other sectors would yield the same result.
“The federal government had anticipated and rightly so too that a purge of the NDDC is capable of catalysing her anti-corruption initiative, since the elites in almost all geopolitical zones would most definitely have had one finger or other in the sleaze jar that the NDDC is known to have become.
“That is why it has become imperative that with the monumental success this audit has come to be identified as, it should become an adopted model to be replicated across all MDA’s of government nationwide,” they said.
The statement entitled, “A letter of commendation to our augean stable cleaner and 5-star Minister”, lauded the Minister, Sen. Godswill Akpabio over what it described as an uncommon courage and gallantry saying,”we commend the uncommon courage and gallantry of Sen. Akpabio in putting a lie to all the spurious accusers and finger-pointers by successfully bringing to conclusion the forensic audit initiated by the president into the activities of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NCDC) and submitting a comprehensive detail and all-encompassing report to your boss, the President and Commander-In-Chief of the Armed Forces, President Muhammadu Buhari (GCFRN).
“This report which is the single biggest corporate push by any administration at curbing systematic corruption since the existence of Nigeria has fulfilled both the legal requirement of transparency and fair hearing as well as come within the framework of the enabling Act which set up the intervention Agency, and so look poised to hopefully breathing fresh reinvigorating air into the institution, thereby bringing succour to the teeming communities across the Delta that has until now been shackled by infrastructural deficit since their creation in spite the hope held through the creation that August agency.
“However, this recourse to whimsical conspiracy of name calling, stampeding and acrimony on the person of the Honourable Minister since the submission of this report is both baseless and counter-productive as it is sentimentally aimed to shift public focus away from the main thrust of this report, being essentially the recovery of the humongous sums of the monies stolen by unscrupulous individuals and corporate bodies through the abandonment of contracts across the Niger Delta and the rechannelization of those funds back into productive projects for the enhancement of lives of the masses which primarily was the original intention of the government in establishing that agency.”
