A twist has been added to the list of some federal lawmakers and former governors who allegedly benefited from the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) contracts:
NDDC said on Tuesday that Niger Delta Minister Godswill Akpabio, who submitted the list to the House of Representatives last week, is not the author but past management of the commission.
The commission however enjoined those whose names appeared in the list before the House not to panic because it had found that some people used their names to get the jobs.
Prominent among those whose names are in the list compiled in 2018 are former Governor Orji Uzor Kalu (Abia), James Ibori (Delta}, Emmanuel Uduaghan (Delta), and Senator Peter Nwaoboshi. But they have all denied ever enjoying such favours from the commission.
The NDDC which in a statement on Tuesday, said the 2018 list was part of the avalanche of documents submitted to its forensic auditors, added that there were other sets of lists of emergency project contracts awarded in 2017 and 2019 not submitted to the National Assembly.
It explained that the 2018 list was released to the House to expose committee chairmen in the National Assembly who used fronts to collect contracts from the commission, some of which were never executed.
“The IMC of the commission stands by the list, which came from files already in the possession of the forensic auditors. It is not an Akpabio list but the NDDC’s list. The list is part of the volume of 8,000 documents already handed over to the forensic auditors,” the NDDC said in the statement by its Director, Corporate Affairs, Charles Odili.
Odili added that the list did not include a case of 250 contracts, which were signed for and collected in one day by one person for members of the National Assembly.
According to him, the ongoing forensic audit would unearth persons behind the contracts.
He said that the commission had positioned 185 media support specialists to identify the site of every project captured in its books for verification by the forensic auditors.
Odili advised members of the public to discountenance the “avalanche of falsehood being orchestrated by mischief makers,” regretting that “more insinuations and accusations may be thrown into the public space by those opposed to the IMC.”