SAN FRANCISCO, June 04, (THEWILL) – Peter Nwaoboshi, Chairman of the Senate Committee on Niger Delta has revealed that Godswill Akpabio, Minister of Niger Delta affairs, got a N300 million contract for the fencing of Federal Polytechnic Ukana, Akwa Ibom, (N200 million), and Federal Government College, Ikot Ekpene (N100 million) with nothing to show.
According to the Senator, the former Akwa-Ibom governor got the contracts from the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) when he was the senator representing Akwa Ibom north-west.
Aside the N300 million for fencing, he said Akpabio got N150 million for entrepreneurship training on the use of modern farming implements for youths and women of Akwa Ibom north-west senatorial district and another N50 million for the renovation of a hostel at University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Enugu state.
Nwaobosho told journalists on Wednesday that the contracts were fully paid for but there was nothing to show for it adding that the projects were requested to be put into the NDDC budget at the time.
“Findings show that while there was no physical evidence of implementation of these projects, checks show contracts were awarded and fully paid for,” Nwaoboshi said.
“Such practices have turned the region to sites of abandoned projects.”
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After President Muhammadu Buhari ordered a forensic audit of the operations of the NDDC from its inception in 2001 to 2019,
THEWILL recalls that Akpabio himself, as Minister, had lamented that the NDDC had become known for abandoned projects as politicians “turned it to their ATM“.
“We have also had a lot of political interference, people have not allowed NDDC to work as it ought to, people coming with ideas not to move the region forward but to move their pockets forward.
“I think people were treating the place as an ATM, where you just walk in there to go and pluck money and go away, I don’t think they were looking at it as an interventionist agency,” he had said.
He later on declared that he would not allow the NDDC to be raped under his watch following allegations by Kemebradikumo Pondei, Acting Managing Director of the NDDC, who accused the federal lawmakers of witch-hunt, alleging that they inserted non-existent projects in the budget of the commission.
