Group Writes to President Muhammadu Buhari and NASS Concerning NDDC Contractors’ Unpaid Bills

In order to permit the management of the NDDC to start paying hundreds of the agency’s contractors, a group called the Movement for Sustainable Development of the Niger Delta (MSDND) has sent a petition to President Muhammadu Buhari and the leadership of the National Assembly (NASS).

The group claimed that even though the chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on NDDC, Hon. Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo, had every right to question the payment’s legality given the delay in the commission’s budget defense, the immediate start of contractor payments would lessen regional residents’ suffering.

It demanded that Buhari, Niger Delta Affairs Minister Umana O. Umana, and Tunji-Ojoto collaborate with the Federal Ministry of Finance to release the more than N200 billion in NDDC funds that had been held back over the course of several years.

In a statement issued on behalf of the MSDND, Chief Ayibatekena Olodin, the organization’s national coordinator, stated that “despite support for the National Assembly Committee’s efforts to ensure proper corporate governance, accountability, and probity in the NDDC, there is a need to start paying contractors while the NDDC budget defense is still being perfected.”

Olodin urged Umana Umana and the NDDC management team to request presidential authorization for the N46 billion approved in partnership with the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) for the purchase of housing facilities, food, and medical aid for millions of displaced families throughout the Niger Delta states.