Senator Andy Uba led Senate Committee on Public Accounts on Wednesday expressed disappointment over repeated refusal of the Niger Delta Development Commission, NDDC, management to avail itself for investigation following petitions bothering on financial malfeasance in the agency.
In his opening speech at the Committee’s sitting, he ruled out any ill-motives on part of the Committee, but noted that the Committee had been awash with petition bothering on corruption, award of contracts through frontiers and cronies of NDDC management staff and abandonment of those contracts.
“The Committee as part of its mandate of ensuring accountability and transparency in the management of the Public Accounts of the Federation and on receipt of Petitions of corruption on the award of contracts at the Commission decided to embark on special oversight on income and Expenditure of the Commission”, he said.
Citing instances of NDDC’s unresponsive stance to the Committee’s invitation, he explained: “The Committee wrote demanding for information from the Commission on 23rd and 30th August 2016, without response. It then wrote a reminder on 16th September, 2016 inviting the Acting Managing Director, Ibim Seminatari to appear on 20th September, 2016, but did not appear.”
IUba said neither the reminder letter sent for the MD’s appearance on Thursday 22nd September, 2016 nor that of 23rd October was honoured.
He therefore inferred that the utter disregard of Senate’s mandate of investigation by the Commission could amount to serious issues.
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