Buhari shifts probe focus to NDDC board

Following reports and allegations of alleged mismanagement of funds, and contract splitting in the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) running into billions of Naira, President Muhammadu Buhari has summoned the management of the commission.
The President would reportedly meet the management team of the NDDC and take them up on many issues relating to the management of the resources of the commission since the new board came on board in December 2013.
Competent sources confirmed to Vanguard that Buhari is furious that the management has allowed influential politicians to hijack the agency and made away with billions of Naira under the guise of executing contracts with little or no result on the ground to show for such money.
It was learnt that the President would seek answers to why the commission refused to adhere to due process in the award of major contracts valued at billions of Naira, preferring instead to split them in violation of the Public Procurement Act.
The President is reported to have been furious that the commission went ahead to award multi-billion naira contracts, paid and backdated them to last year to cover the financial misdeed even after the board had been sacked with a specific mandate to the managing director to take over the place.
The struggle for the control of the finances of the commission is said to have reached its most embarrassing point about two months ago when two directors of the commission connived and withdrew N3.8 billion from the NDDC account in the Central Bank of Nigeria and paid the money to their favoured contractors drawn from their own states, leaving the managing director in the dark.

Read also: Revealed! Contract splitting racket at NDDC

It was learnt that the managing director, who had accused the CBN of withholding the money was shocked on reaching the CBN to discover that two of his directors had secretly signed and collected the huge amount and paid to their ‘contractor-friends’ without his knowledge.
It was also learnt that the meeting, which is to take place at the Presidential Villa this week, is to enable President Buhari to get firsthand brief from the Managing Director, Mr. Dan Abia and the two executive directors of Finance and Projects, Henry Ogiri and Engr. Tuoyo Omatsuli on what they have been doing to move the troubled region forward since they were appointed to office in December 2013 by former President Goodluck Jonathan.
The briefing by the three key officials will also determine the next line by Buhari regarding their continued stay in office given the gamut of petitions of wrongdoing against them by Niger Delta stakeholders, individuals and groups.

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