The President of the Ijaw National Congress, Prof. Benjamin Okaba, has urged the Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, and his Niger Delta Affairs counterpart, Godswill Akpabio, to obey the recent order of the Federal High Court, Yenagoa, stopping them from putting the Niger Delta Development Commission under the latter’s ministry.
He also called on Malami and Akpabio to take steps to cause the President, Muhammadu Buhari , to appoint and inaugurate a substantive board for the NDDC without further delay.
Okaba spoke at an event to mark the 50th birthday of the former leader of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), Ebikabowei Victor-Ben alias ‘General’ Boyloaf, and the official launch of the Boy Child Project by the Boyloaf Foundation in Yenagoa, Bayelsa State.
He said, “We implore the concerned ministers (Malami and Akpabio) to obey the directive of the court and other legal pronouncements, and also impress it upon the President to immediately put a substantive board in place for the NDDC.
“The illegality is not helping the interventionist agency created to tackle developmental challenges ravaging the region. Mr Akpabio, who was once quoted as saying that ‘the appointment of the sole administrator to man the NDDC was backed by court order’, should display the necessary integrity and due diligence to reverse his earlier action now that the same legal institution has ordered otherwise.”
The INC chief said it was disappointing that the president and his two ministers had not kept their promises to constitute a new board for the commission after the conclusion of the forensic audit and formal submission of the report.
According to him, the NDDC had been administered by interim management committees and sole administrators since 2015, contrary to the law establishing the interventionist agency.
According to him, the NDDC had been administered by interim management committees and sole administrators since 2015, contrary to the law establishing the interventionist agency.
