The Ondo State chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC) has asked President Muhammadu Buhari to dissolve the board of Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC).
The party made the call on Sunday in a statement by its Publicity Secretary, Abayomi Adesanya.
It drew the attention of the president to the fact that the tenure of the current board expired in December and warned against an attempt by the board to overstay its tenure.
The APC said it was aware of some surreptitious moves by “powerful persons at the Presidency” to extend the tenure of the board beyond the December 8, 2017, tenure.
“Any extension of the tenure of the board is unconstitutional and an attempt to give Cross River and Akwa-Ibom states undue advantage of serving for a continuous period of six years as chairman and managing director, respectively, to the detriment of other member states,” the party said in the statement.
“For the fact that it is the turn of Ondo State, as the fifth highest oil producing state in the country, to produce the next managing director of NDDC, President Muhammadu Buhari must compensate the people of Ondo State for their commitment to the party (APC) and the victory of the President in the 2015 presidential election.
“It is on record that of all the nine oil producing states in Nigeria, it was only in Ondo State that President Muhammadu Buhari had an overwhelming victory in the 2015 presidential election and we have not been so compensated,” the APC said.
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The party called on Mr. Buhari to urgently dissolve the board of the commission and appoint new and committed party member from Delta as chairman and managing director from Ondo states.
President Buhari had in July 2016 appointed a former Senate Leader, Victor Ndoma-Egba, the new chairman of the commission.
Also appointed was a former Deputy Governor of Akwa Ibom State, Nsima Ekere, as the managing director of the commission.
Mr. Ekere succeeded Ibim Semenitari, who had been the acting managing director of the commission since December 2015.
Mr. Ndoma-Egba, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), who hails from Cross River State, took over from Bassey Ewa-Henshaw, also from the state.
He was a member of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) until September 2015 when he resigned from the party following his inability to secure its governorship ticket.
He joined the ruling All Progressives Congress in November of the same year.
Mr. Ewa-Henshaw-led Board was sacked by the federal government on July 16, 2015, though it went to court to challenge the action.
The board members argued that by virtue of sections 2, 3 and 5 of the NDDC Act, they were entitled to four years unbroken tenure from December 16, 2013, to December 15, 2017.
