NDDC: INC Lauds Buhari For Sacking Effiong, Push For Constitution Of Board

The foremost Ijaw socio-cultural organisation, the Ijaw National Congress, INC, has commended President Muhammadu Buhari for his bold step to end the administering of the Niger Delta Development Commission, NDDC, by persons other than those recognized by the law setting up the agency.

The INC, in a statement by its President, Prof Benjamin Okaba, noted that the President’s sacking of the Sole Administrator of the Commission was one sure way to pacify the people of the Niger Delta region, who had for long asked for the sanitisation of the NDDC by ensuring that the interventionist agency was run by the law establishing it.

The group recalled that when it visited the President a few weeks after its inauguration, he made a firm promise to end the illegality in the NDDC with the constitution of a substantive Board, stressing that the President had proved himself a listening leader to be trusted in that regard.

INC, in the statement signed by its National Publicity Secretary, Engr Ezonebi Oyakemeagbegha, urged President Buhari to ensure that only credible persons with the interest of the Niger Delta region at heart were appointed to the various positions in the Board.

It stated that the Niger Delta region had been denied the interests the NDDC was set up to serve, leading to infrastructural inadequacies and general underdevelopment, despite the immense contribution of the region to the economic growth of the nation and expressed the hope that the expected Board would hit the ground running, when constituted, to address the developmental needs of the people.