The Minister of Niger Delta Affairs, Godswill Akpabio, has been accused by Senator Peter Nwabaoshi of getting a contract of N300 million from the Nigeria Delta Development Commission, NDDC.
Akpabio is said to have gotten the contract in 2017 when he was a senator representing the Akwa-Ibom North-West constituency.
The Minister had requested for N500 million from the NDCC which gave him N300 million for fencing and N150 million to train youths and women of his constituency on the use of modern farming implements. He was also given N50 million to renovate a hostel at University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Enugu state.
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Nwabaoshi told newsmen that there is nothing to show for the contracts awarded to Akpabio.
He said: “Findings show that while there was no physical evidence of implementation of these projects, checks show contracts were awarded and fully paid for. Such practices have turned the region to sites of abandoned projects.”
This comes a few days after Akpabio raised alarmed on abandoned NDDC projects and how the agency has been turned into an “ATM” by politicians.
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“We have also had a lot of political interference, people have not allowed NDDC to work as it ought to, people coming with ideas not to move the region forward but to move their pockets forward. It has always been so… I think people were treating the place as an ATM, where you just walk in there to go and pluck money and go away, I don’t think they were looking at it as an interventionist agency.”
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