Members of the Senate Committee set up by the red Chambers were stunned on Thursday when the acting Managing Director of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), Kemebradikumo Pondei, admitted that the commission spent a whopping sum of N1.5 billion for staff as COVID-19 palliatives.
Pondei made the revelation at the investigative hearing on the N40 billion corruption allegations levelled against the commission.
Recall that the Senate had on May 5, set up a seven-man ad-hoc committee to investigate the “financial recklessness” of the Interim Management Committee (IMC) of the NDDC.
According to the lawmakers, the Commission had within the last three months spent over N40 billion of the commission’s fund ”without recourse to established processes of funds disbursement, which has opened up further suspicion among stakeholders of the Niger Delta Region.”
The Committee equally faulted the IMC’s ”arbitrary use of executive power in an alleged wrongful sacking of management staff without recourse to established civil service rules and practices with the aim of allegedly concealing the fraudulent financial recklessness they have committed.”
Chairman of the Committee, Olubunmi Adetumbi in reading the audit report said N3.1 billion was spent as COVID-19 funds between October 2019 and May 2020.
“N10 million was paid to one person, N7 million to two people, N5 million to three people, 148 people took N3 million each, 157 people got N1.5 million each, 497 people got N1 million each and 464 people were paid N600,000 each.”
He further revealed that another sum of N475 million was given to the police to purchase face masks and hand sanitisers.
However, in his response to the allegations concerning COVID-19, the NDDC staff said “only N1.5 billion was used to take care of staff” not minding that government was still paying their salaries.
He equally claimed that part of the fund was for the youth of Niger Delta.
“The youth were given palliatives to help cushion the effect of the pandemic on the people. The youth were idle and to avoid violence, they were paid,” he said.
“Five million for youths and five million for women and five million for people living with disabilities in each senatorial district,” he stated.
According to him, the remaining fund was spent on staff of the commission.
“We used it to take care of ourselves. We are NDDC, we need to take care of ourselves too,” he said.
When asked why the police was given N475 million, Mr Pondei said a request was made from”the high command of police and the management took a look at it and approved it.”
The investigative hearing is expected to continue on Friday.
Credit: https://dailyasset.ng
