By Emmanuel Nduka
Former Nigerian President, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan on Friday stated that indigenes of Nigeria’s oil-rich Niger Delta Region have “seen light” in the leadership of Dr. Samuel Ogbuku as Managing Director/CEO of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC).
Speaking in his capacity as Chairman of the Niger Delta Stakeholders Summit in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, Dr. Jonathan said the current leadership of the NDDC is “moving in the right direction”.
Heritage Times HT had reported years of slow progress and abandoned projects amounting to 13,000, scattered across the Niger Delta Region.
The intervention agency which was created in 2000 to drive critical infrastructural, economic and social development in the region, had been guilty of not living up to its mandate.
The former president recalled that the inaugural leadership of Godwin Omene as NDDC Managing Director, and Timi Alaibe as Executive Director of Finance and Administration at the NDDC, gave Niger Deltans hope for sustainable development.
He regretted that as the NDDC surged on over the years, “we the politicians took over the Commission and slowed down its progress”. He thus urged politicians from the region to desist from “stressing” the NDDC so that it can achieve its mandate.
While lamenting the quantum abandoned/uncompleted projects of the NDDC in the Niger Delta Region, Dr. Jonathan charged NDDC to have a will to maintain projects that they completed. “When NDDC builds a road for example, they can hand it over to the state government for maintenance,” he advised.
The Man of Peace warned that the oil in the Niger Delta may dry up soon in the face of global transition to fossil fuels, thus, Niger Deltans must begin to look at alternatives.
He advised the NDDC to provide funding support for private industry experts to push development in the region.
