South East South South Professionals of Nigeria (SESSPN), an advocacy group for the advancement of the two regions, has enjoined the Minister of Niger Delta Affairs, Senator Godswill Akpabio, to facilitate “the immediate inauguration of the Board of the Niger Delta Development Commission whose members have since been screened by the National Assembly.”

This, according to the group, “is the safeguard provided by the enabling Law to check all the anomalies that have bedeviled the Commission these past few years and was only worsened by the illegal contraptions called Interim Management or Sole Administratorship which are prone to abuse.”

In a letter to the Minister, jointly signed by its President, Hannibal Uwaifo Esq., and Publicity Secretary, Collins Steve Ugwu, SESSPN further urged the Minister to ensure that all those indicted in the recently submitted report of the forensic audit of the NDDC should be swiftly named, shamed, and every stolen loot recovered.

With regard to the monumental malfeasance at the Commission as detailed in the forensic audit report, the group stated that it is “partly relieved that for now, it is officially on record that the overwhelming corruption visited on NDDC amounted to over Three Trillion Naira (N3,000,000,000,000) expenditures and procurements, in nearly two decades of relentless larceny without reference impact on the Niger Delta people, were committed by those who were given the sacred responsibility of salvaging the Region from years of neglect.”

Consequently, SESSPN, which has pursued a consistent policy articulation for the development of the two regions urged the Minister to ensure “that everyone caught on this web of their sustained misery be served the exemplary justice of restitution and severe deterrence, if the much-touted anti-corruption slogan of the government in which you serve is to be taken seriously.”