Why Forensic Audit of NDDC is necessary

By Comrade Osanga Oswanga

For young Mr. Williams, a 22-year old Nigerian who was born and brought up in New York City, United States of America (USA), the only thing that will ever make him to again visit Nigeria, his country of origin is when the high level of corruption that has eaten so deep into every fabric of Nigeria is reduced to the barest minimum.
Williams was sobbing profusely over the high spate of corruption in Nigeria as he narrated his predicament when he recently visited Nigeria to the media practitioner that boarded the same Emirate flight with him on his return trip to New York. For Williams, the Nigerian security system needs total overhaul in view of its lack of professionalism in handling security issues.
Honestly, corruption is a monster that every reasonable citizen of Nigeria that believes in the corporate existence of the country should collectively join hands together to fight. Corruption is extremely wicked. It is a disease and a monster that every Nigerian should rise up and fight. The earlier, the better, or else the after effects of it would no doubt be very calamitous.
By and large, I shall not in this context dwell so much on the menace of corruption but shall in totality condemn the recent news that is making waves in most media platforms in Nigeria and even at the international media platform on how a single individual, who claims to be a Senator of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, illegally awarded to himself a total of 300 contract projects at the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) simply because he sees every indigene of the Niger Delta region as someone to be swindled.
He must consider himself a demi-God to cart away such large amount of contract projects and nobody would dare ask questions. What an irony, and wickedness of the highest order meted on the highly civilized and educated people of Niger Delta. We live in a lawless country where those who are well known for their criminal lifestyles are the ones piloting the affairs of the country while those that are well equipped with enormous intellectual prowess and earthshaking dreams and visions are left as bystanders because they have no capacity to match evil for evil.
For those that may not really know where I am driving towards, I am in particular referring to the news on how a single Senator from the Niger Delta region had used his position as Senate Committee Chairman of one of the juicy committees both in the 8th and 9th Assembly of the Red Chamber of the National Assembly to illegally allocate to himself 300 contract projects with over 120 out of this number being fully paid for by the management of the NDDC to the said Senator even when there is nothing tangible on the sites of the 120 contract projects, which had been fully paid for!
I want to use this medium to appeal to all citizens of the Niger Delta Region that the Federal Government in their magnanimity decided to established the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) to cater for their basic needs in view of the fact that the major source of the country’s source of income is deposited on their land. I urge them all to rise up against this selfish senator. Rise up and hold him accountable for the non-execution of those 300 contracts that would have made life easier for them. He needs to explain. He must be held accountable for the non-execution of those projects!
I urge you to give all necessary support to Hon Cairo Ajuigbo to come out boldly with the true result of the forensic audit of NDDC which the Senator is already paying the hungry and clueless army of youths to scuttle. Sadly, those youths agreed to carry out this assignment because he so much impoverished them to pave the way for him to achieve his devilish and dubious agenda of continuing to feed fat while large numbers of them continue to die in penury. I urge you to join hands with Honorable Cairo Ajuigbo to ensure that he is arrested by all the anti-corruption bodies and prosecuted.
I call on the EFCC, ICPC, NFIU and Code of Conduct Bureau (CCB) to arrest him immediately to account for the 300 projects. Enough is enough. How can a single Senator pocket the destiny of millions of the long-suffering people of Niger Delta Region and the entire Nigeria, while most of the rural communities the said projects were designed and awarded for keep wallowing in abject poverty with no single social amenities like potable water, good roads, modern hospitals, affordable and well equipped schools in sight.
I call on all citizens of the Niger Delta Region to rise up and support Senator Godswill Akpabio, Hon Cairo Ajuigbo and other sons and daughters of the Niger Delta Region that are insisting on the forensic audit of the NDDC! They should be given all the necessary support to succeed or else development will continue to elude the people of the Niger Delta Region in this 21st Century that people are turning hamlets into cities via their intellectual prowess and natural resources.

– Oswanga, a public affairs analyst, wrote from Bayelsa