Senate, NDDC Row Over Budget Fraud Allegations Deepens

The budget padding row between the Senate and the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) Interim Management Committee (IMC) deepened on Sunday.

The Senate accused the IMC of cheap blackmail and of making “unfounded” allegations against it.

The National Assembly had launched a probe of “reckless” spending of N40 billion by the NDDC IMC.

The Senate and the House of Representatives set up separate ad-hoc committees to investigate the allegation.

But the IMC accused the National Assembly of frustrating its forensic audit of the agency and its leaders of padding the  2019 budget.

Chairman, Senate Committee on Media and Public Affairs, Senator Ajibola Basiru, described the IMC’s allegation as cheap blackmail.

The agency had accused the NDDC committee chairmen in the Senate and House of Representatives of making undue demands and injecting projects worth over N80 billion in the commission’s last year Budget.

NDDC Executive Director of Projects (EDP), Dr. Cairo Ojougboh, claimed that unknown to other lawmakers, the two chairmen, Senator Peter Nwaoboshi and Rep Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo, “raised and vandalised” the commission’s 2019 budget.

He said: “The problem we have with these two chairmen is that when we submitted our budget, they vandalised our budget, they raised our 2019 budget. NDDC must be allowed to function. The purpose of which it was instituted must be allowed to happen.

“If you look at what the two chairmen did in the National Assembly, all the regional projects of Mr. President were removed from the budget. Look at what they infused and injected. The total sum that they brought is N85 billion worth of new projects.

“They removed annoyingly the regional projects of Mr President. When the forensic audit is concluded, Nigerians will be shocked.

“We submitted our 2020 budget two months ago; nothing has been done about it. The two committee chairmen sat on it, asking for anything they want to ask for and we said no, it cannot happen.”

But Senator Basiru said the allegations were “baseless and unsubstantiated”.

He said in a statement in Abuja: “Apparently Dr Ojougboh is ignorant of the constitutional mandate of the National Assembly to carry out oversight function, over all agencies expending government resources to expose and prevent corruption and abuse.

“It stands logic in the head to claim that by invoking its constitutional power of oversight to investigate the activities of the IMC, the National Assembly intends to scuttle forensic audit. The outlandish claim is illogical.

“Dr Ojougboh as a former member of the House of Representatives should know that the National Assembly is vested with the powers of appropriation for all government ministries, departments and agencies including the NDDC.

“It will appraise the budget and its operations of the Commission like other agencies to entrench a culture of transparency and accountability.

“Therefore, on the allegations in respect of the budget, one wonders whether this is not a ruse as to why it is being brought up in the wake of exercise of oversight function by the National Assembly. It clearly smacks of cheap blackmail predicated on a falsehood.

“Also, one would have expected an organisation of integrity to have formally made complaints to the anti-corruption agencies of the purported allegations against senators and members of the House of Representatives committees on NDDC if there are facts to substantiate same.

“The Senate and indeed the National Assembly is also committed to exercising its constitutional mandate and will not be cowed by spurious allegations of the likes of Dr Cairo Ojougboh.”

An All Progressives Congress (APC) chief in the Southsouth, Sunday Frank-Oputu, said the legislators’ squabble with NDDC was unnecessary.

He said the agency’s Acting Managing Director, Prof. Kemebradikumo Pondei, should be allowed to do the work President Muhammadu Buhari appointed him and other IMC members to do.

Frank-Oputu said: “Prof Pondei was appointed because he is non-partisan and a professional. He is capable of ensuring the success of the ordered probe.”