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Senator Peter Nwaoboshi, Chairman of the Senate Committee on Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), has denied receiving any contract from the commission as alleged by Godswill Akpabio, Minister of Niger Delta Affairs.
Recall the Minister had claimed before the probe panel of the House of Representative Committee on NDDC that lawmakers are the most beneficiaries of contracts awarded by the intervention agency.
Femi Gbajabiamila, the House Speaker, had given Akpabio 48 hours to reveal the names of the beneficiaries. The former Akwa Ibom governor, however, wrote the lawmakers denying the claims, stating that he was misunderstood.
MERIDIAN SPY reported earlier the names of the lawmakers who benefited from the NDDC contracts surfaced.
According to The Nation, the list was part of a letter the Minister sent to the National Assembly and also copied the Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami.
However, following the alleged failure of the lawmakers to read that part of the letter, the National Youth Council of Nigeria presented the document to the media in Abuja on Sunday.
In Akpabio’s letter, Sen. Nwaoboshi was involved in 53 projects, while Senator Nicholas Mutu’s name appeared on 74 projects.
The Chairman of the Senate Committee on NDDC however denied the allegations, while asking the minister and the Interim Management Committee (IMC) to focus their energy on explaining to Nigerians how they “spent a whopping N81.5 billion within a period of five months.
“Mr Akpabio alleged that I was awarded contracts for 53 NDDC projects. I wish to state unequivocally that this allegation has no bearing with the truth and challenge Mr Akpabio to send so-called list to anti graft and other security agencies if he can substantiate the apparently baseless allegation,” he senator said in a statement on Monday.
“Indeed I would have made further comments but for the fact that the matter is currently before two competent courts of law.
“However, suffice it to say that this unsubstantiated allegation is in line with Mr Akpabio’s well known agenda to continuously blackmail me so as to keep diverting public attention away from the serious mismanagement of the NDDC by the Interim Management Committee (IMC) under his supervision and under the guise of a phantom forensic audit that has no operating time line.”
Sen. Nwaoboshi subsequently told The Cable the forensic audit of the commission’s finances ordered by President Muhammadu Buhari since October has not commenced.
“The forensic audit is not going on, that is the truth as we talk today, I’m the chairman of the committee, they have not even appointed… they said they appointed a lead consultant,” he said.
“That is the evidence we have in our report, that means they are going to appoint other consultants, other forensic auditors, that they have not done so as I am talking to you now… What is the function of the lead consultant? It is somebody who is going to assemble a team, according to what they told us, they are going to have people state by state.”
The senator said the commission should be put under the presidency for effective management.
