Check development commissions’ proliferation

PRESIDENT Bola Tinubu’s recent assent to the North-West Development Commission (Establishment) Bill, 2024, and the South-East Development Commission (Establishment) Bill, 2023, has further expanded development commissions in the country. Most of them have failed to live up to the laudable expectations for which they were established. That cannot continue.

Though the President cited the acceleration of development as one of the reasons for the new commissions, the chequered trajectories of the Niger Delta Development Commission and North-East Development Commission offer strong inclinations to anyone to be sceptical about the impact of similar interventionist agencies.

The NDDC was established in 2000 to fast-track infrastructure development of the Niger Delta, train youths and arrest growing restiveness fuelled by militancy, among others.

Established in 2017, the NEDC mandate includes ensuring sustainable growth, rebuilding the North-East, the epicentre of the Boko Haram insurgency, and rehabilitating and resettling displaced citizens.

Though the agencies have complained about insufficient funding by the Federal Government and member states under the enabling acts setting them up, the gross misappropriation of funds has become their major albatross, rendering them as development commissions without development.

They have become rackets for politicians and regional kingpins, and conduits used to funnel public funds into private pockets, leaving behind uncompleted projects and aborted development dreams.

Rather than catalyse rapid development of the oil-rich Niger Delta, the NDDC has become a cesspool of corruption and a centre for contract inflation, misappropriation of resources, awarding of non-existent contracts, and gross disregard for procurement laws amid poor accountability.

An NDDC forensic audit report, which former President Mohammadu Buhari failed to implement, found that the commission received over N6 trillion between 2001 and 2019. But not much is on the ground to show for it.

The agency’s former Acting MD, Daniel Pondei, fainted when a Reps committee asked him to account for over N1 billion questionable payments made to companies for alleged phoney contracts.

About 1,587 projects valued at N612.4 billion under the NDDC have been terminated or abandoned. A report by the NDDC-PPP Committee said 1,262 projects valued at N407.75 billion have been terminated, while 325 projects worth N204.64 billion have stalled or abandoned.

In addition to the NDDC, the Presidential Amnesty Programme and Ministry of Niger Delta Affairs, amid a 13 per cent derivation accruing to states in the region, have failed to bring reprieve to the Niger Delta people.

Meanwhile, the NEDC is shopping for N31 trillion to actualise its North-East master plan, but it has been trailed by poor accountability for the over N3 trillion it has received since 2017.

The agency has been lampooned for budgeting N126 billion as personnel costs in a region with the highest number of IDPs, a serious humanitarian crisis and an unquenchable thirst for development.

There is no guarantee that the new commissions being pushed for the South-West and South-East will drive any development; rather, they will become new cost centres and conduits to channel public funds to political patrons and cronies of the people in the corridors of power.

The Federal Government should embrace and deliver National Development Plans through the MDAs and ensure proper monitoring. The NDDC forensic audit report should be revisited, and appropriate actions taken.

The N1 trillion loan given to the NEDC should be properly utilised; the government should ensure this.

Tinubu should scrap non-performing development commissions and subsume them under the appropriate ministries for optimum development. This will remove duplication of duties and reduce waste.

The Steve Oronsaye Report should be fast-tracked. Through proper fiscal federalism and restructuring, the local government system should work and bring development closer to the people faster than the development commissions without development.