Members of the National Working Committee, NWC of the All Progressives Congress, APC, seem to be at loggerheads with the Managing Director of the Niger Delta Development Commission, NDDC, Dr Samuel Ogbuku, over his alleged refusal to intimate the party about the agenda of the NDDC for the region.
A source close to an NWC member from one of the states within the Niger Delta region told journalists that in line with the party’s desire to ensure that the Renewed Hope agenda of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu is successful, the members of the NWC from these nine states, namely Abia, Akwa Ibom,Bayelsa, Cross Rivers, Delta, Edo, Imo, Ondo and Rivers, as well as the Zonal Chairmen of the SouthEast, SouthSouth and SouthWest regions had requested a parley with the NDDC helmsman to understand how he has managed so far the affairs of the commission since his emergence at the commission.
The source noted that the NWC members took this path because of the information reaching them that the NDDC helmsman had not lived up to the demands of the office and wanted to know why the region had little or nothing to show despite billions of tax payers money which had been pumped into it. The party, the source noted had a duty to ensure that the region was not being shortchanged by the management.
The parley was however, said to have been shunned by the MD without any justifiable reasons, and this had angered the members further. They bemoaned such a treatment despite the fact that the NDDC MD’s position is a mandate from the ruling party’s administration and NWC members from the zone, who are keen on the success of the Tinubu administration. They insisted that they cannot fold their hands and watch him destroy the hopes of millions of Niger Delta citizens, who obviously deserved better than what is obtained presently.
The source also drew our correspondent to the fact that the NWC members had been inundated with stories about how the NDDC MD had allegedly been living lavishly while staff of the NDDC were reportedly owed salaries and contractors had stopped work on several turnkey projects scattered all over the areas, which make up the Niger Delta.
This has prompted the NWC members to adopt measures to get Ogbuku to respond to their request for the parley, which would include calls for his sack, if he continues to think that he is indispensable and can ignore them as stakeholders responsible to the people who voted the APC and whose welfare they must protect if they are to seek these votes in future elections.