Enmeshed in a soaring debt profile, the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), has repudiated contracts worth N200 billion in an on-going reform being carried out by its new management.
The organisation has also embarked on streamlining, restructuring and verifying the huge debt as well as the more than 10,000 contracts it inherited from the previous administration.
The commission which was established in 2000 to facilitate the rapid development of the oil rich region, presently has a ratio of one staff to 50 projects.
“The debt profile, is very high; whether real or not is another issue,’’ Mr. Victor Ndoma-Egba, the chairman of the NDDC, said on Friday in Abuja.
The commission vested with the task to ensure the region was economically prosperous, socially stable, ecologically regenerative and politically peaceful, he said was currently undergoing restructuring in order to focus on its core mandate.
Noting that the image of NDDC had dipped, he said, he had embarked on fine tuning and restructuring of its governance to take the commission back to focus on its core mandate.
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“The image of NDDC was very poor. It is not a good image. We can only change it through restructuring our governance,’’ he said.
“We need to create synergy with other agencies that share responsibilities for Niger Delta.
“We are now committed to doing things right,’’ he explained.
The former senator also explained that the commission was funded from the proceeds of oil and that it could be dangerous if the oil got out of favour.
“We must contemplate developing Niger Delta beyond oil,’’ he advised.
Earlier the Managing Director of the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), Mr. Bayo Onanuga, who paid a courtesy visit to the chairman, said that the agency and NDDC had had a long standing relationship, including a deal struck in 2016 on NAN services.
He explained that NAN which would be 40 by October 2018 had undergone reforms in order to be at par with other world news agencies.
Onanuga said NAN had fully gone digital and embraced multimedia.
He said NAN had also established free-to-read website, PRwire portal and a NANtv aside the regular subscriber based portal.
He explained that NAN had resolved to re-establish its Niger Delta Bureau with headquarters in Asaba to concentrate on robust press coverage and dissemination of information about the area.
The move, he stressed, would fast track development.
