Civil society organisations have written a letter to President Muhammadu Buhari, urging him to stop the ongoing house cleaning being carried out by the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) over the alleged corruption in the commission.
They called on Buhari to institute and usher in holistic reforms in the Commission in order to purge it of all corrupt elements and re-set it on a path of transparency, accountability and effective public service delivery in line with its establishment.
The letter was signed after a meeting in Port Harcourt, Rivers State capital, by the heads of 29 civil society organisations, including Ms Vivian Bellonwu of Social Development Integrated Centre (Social Action, Nigeria); Chido Onumah of African Centre for Media and Information Literacy, AFRICMIL; Jaye Gaskia of Take Back Nigeria Movement, and Auwal Ibrahim Musa of the Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre (CISLAC). The letter reads in part: “Your Excellency, this rot in the NDDC is not a recent phenomenon.
It dates back to almost the time of commencement of the Commission. What started as bribery cum inducement to influence and get contracts, and to which authorities then paid a blind eye, quickly up-scaled and snowballed in both dimension and magnitude, to what we see today. “As has clearly emerged today, all known and unknown means are contrived in the Commission to beat due process, by-pass regulating laws and side-step checks and balances. CHANGE