NDDC

EXCERPTS FROM 'ANALYSIS & COMMENTS ON THE NIGER DELTA DEVELOPMENT COMMISSION (NDDC) BUDGET: FY2008'

Remembering President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua of blessed memory. He was indeed committed to solving the Niger-Delta problem through peaceful and socially beneficial ways. I was commissioned on an individual and independent technocratic basis to work on above subject matter for then Mr. P some 10 years or so ago. The entire submission including the covering letter to Mr. P from NDDC Management was handed to me to do the analysis and prepare a report in a secluded government 'special facility' under maximum classified circumstances. Nobody else outside Mr. P and the then CEA was to know at the time.

It was part of his effort at putting together a coherent and comprehensive strategy for ameliorating the problems of the Niger-Delta region that formed one of his 7-point Agenda. Part of the recommendations of the Report together with the feedback received from an almost concurrent Mr. President's initiative on dialogue and consensus building in the Niger Delta gave impetus to the creation of the 'Presidential Amnesty Committee' and the specific appointment of a 'Presidential Coordinator' on the Amnesty Programme that was to report to the Presidency.

I was not even meant to have a copy of my own report but I somehow managed to retain a copy that I stumbled into recently while ruffling through my old pile of documents. I still find the issues raised therein as germane today as they were yesterday. But for purposes of confidentiality I provide only a few excerpts that are general in nature and still speak to the underlying issues begging for attention.

It is my hope that this should enable us assess and gauge what progress has been made since then and what needs to be done going forward.

''BACKGROUND
The problems of the Niger-Delta are very well-known and have continued to engage the attention of different interest groups. The common consensus seems to be that the region requires a massive injection of resources to fast-track sustainable development, combat environmental degradation and restore tranquility to parts of the region that have experienced long-drawn crises.

Given the revolution of expectations from the then newly elected democratic government for a quick fix, the NDDC was created in December 2000 by the Federal Government as a critical development intervention initiative. This institutional framework was vested with the necessary legal powers and resources to tackle the problems of the Niger Delta and rapidly develop the region, defined in that context as consisting of nine States: Abia, Akwa-Ibom, Bayelsa, Cross River, Delta, Edo, Imo, Ondo and Rivers States. The NDDC Act 2000, particularly section 7(1) (a) to (j) clearly sets the functions of the NDDC (see Annex A Note 1)..................

GENERAL CRITIQUE: THE NDDC

* The NDDC operates an unwieldy bureaucratic structure (too many directorates), with duplication of functions across departments and Units (see Annex B Table 2). For instance, there definitely is some avoidable overlap in the functioning of the office of the Non-Executive Chairman and the Managing Director, which impinges on both cost-efficiency and administrative convenience.

*The projects being undertaken by the NDDC are required to only complement the activities of the 3-tiers of Government and not to supplant them. It seems there is no clearly defined framework to ensure congruence and avoid duplication of functions and waste of resources.

*The NDDC was enacted to be a 'Development-focused Agency'. It may be counter-productive for it to operate as a regular Federal Government bureaucratic parastatal.

*It does seem the 2008 budget was prepared with a view to expanding costs to meet the so-called ''10% benchmark'' of expected revenue supposedly approved by the Governing Board. The 10% ought to be seen as a guide for non-project expenditure at the take-off stage of the Commission rather than as a slush fund that has to be frittered away year after year......................

CONCLUSION

It must be noted that despite the huge sums already expended on the execution/implementation of projects, together with the development of the NDDC Master Plan, crises continue to loom large in the Niger Delta region, generating insecurity and hampering oil outputs, as well as contributing to oil price volatility and colossal loss in revenues for Nigeria. Why? It could simply be the case that seven years after its creation, the NDDC is yet to find the right handle to delivering on its core mandate.

Some of the misty areas in its operations are to be found in the emerging mammoth bureaucratic structure of the NDDC, lack of proper conceptualization and implementation of projects, projects mismatch, weak responsibility and accountability framework, as well as a failure to engage the people, feel their pulses on desired deliverables and obtaining their buy-in and ownership of projects. It is against this hue that Mr. President's initiative on dialogue and consensus building in the Niger Delta may prove to be the needed balm that would heal the troubled area.

In light of the foregoing, the following corrective measures could prove helpful towards ensuring proper and timely achievement of the laudable objectives of the NDDC:

1) There is need for appropriate restructuring of the Commission to ensure efficiency in service delivery, significant reduction of un-needed staff, cut in bureaucracy and savings in personnel and other recurrent expenditure.

2) Strong, regular performance monitoring process needs to be established to ensure that project outcomes satisfy the overall objective of the expenditure.

3) A 'logical framework' could be adopted for the projects and programmes. This should lead to cost-efficient project implementation, verifiable project outcomes and easy assessment of the overall social impact of the projects on target communities, as well as providing a sound basis for easy monitoring.

4) The methodology of contract awards must be clearly specified in line with the requirements of due process and the rule of law, and the projects should not fall outside the core mandate of the NDDC.

5) The role of the NDDC should be more focused on identifying the needs of the relevant stakeholder communities through bottom-up consultation with the intended beneficiaries, as well as initiating, implementing, supervising, completing and eventual hand-over of the projects to the benefiting communities.

6) There is need for stock-taking on projects already executed and completed together with on-going projects to assess their congruence with NDDC's core mandate and the masterplan, as well as to identify any weaknesses in planning and implementation of the projects vis-a'-vis the poor or non-achievement of the desired social impact.

7) It may be necessary and logical to appoint a ' Presidential Liaison Officer' (PLO), who consistently monitors, regularly evaluates and reports on the activities of the NDDC as relates to the implementation of projects and execution of the Master Plan in line with Mr. President's 7-Point Agenda.............., Etc.''

August/September 2007

I am hoping that the above information is still relevant today as it was yesterday for the reform of the NDDC and priming the agency to deliver the dividends of development to the people of the Niger Delta.

Cijeyu Ojong
Abuja

May 2018