BY AHMED MUSA
The Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) has spent N25 billion on regional contingency road repairs as opposed to the N800 million which was appropriated for by the National Assembly in its 2019 budget.
Mr Johnson Kolawale, Head, Directorate of Research and Programmes, Act for Positive Transformation Initiative, a non governmental organization, (NGO), said this in a statement issued on Sunday in Abuja.
Mr. Kolawole said that the figures were part of revelations of extra budgetary spendings by the new NDDC management, which he made open on a live television programme on Thursday.
Recall that the NDDC has been in the news for an alleged N40 billion irregular expenditure by the Interim Management Committee (IMC) of the commission.
Kolawale said: “Sequel to the flurry of petitions to the National Assembly, both arms of the institution had resolved to investigate the alleged N40 billion irregular expenditures”.
According to him, “there is a lot of extra budgetary spending in the commission in the last few months which is directly in breach of the law”.
“However, in a clandestine move to cover up for the alleged fraud, the IMC, is a secret letter to the National Assembly, is asking for virement running into billions of naira”, he said.
Kolawale noted that “in the letter, the IMC claimed to have spent N250 million on economic summit when only N30 million was provided for in the budget and the question is, where was this summit held”?
“The IMC claimed to have spent another N200 million on another sustainable development forum when only N45 million was budgeted for it.
“The IMC claimed to have spent another N75 million on annual peace summit without telling the public where it held”, the statement added.
According to the Ondo-borne anti corruption activist, “another N300 million on proposal for regional security summit (phase 1) had been spent and the IMC claimed to have spent N13 billion on headquarters project this year alone”.
“The IMC claimed to have spent N500 million on office administration and Human Resource when only N150 million was provided”, he said, adding that there was need to know those they employed.
“The IMC claimed to have spent N5.5 billion on awareness campaign on communicable disease and N7 billion on training of Niger Delta youth in welding, electrical fittings in few months.
“This is aside from another N3.4 billion spent on invisible entrepreneural development program.
“In a few days’ time, I will be telling Nigerians the unimaginable amount they claimed to have spent on security and health and we will audit them openly,” he said. (Daily Independent)
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