NDDC finance director Bassey Ibanga dies amidst probe

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Bassey Ebanga Itang, the Niger Delta Development Commission’s (NDDC) Executive Director Finance has died.

His death comes amidst a probe by the National Assembly on the activities of the commission.

The Senate had challenged the agency to publish records of alleged multiple contracts awarded to senators.

The upper legislative chamber also asked the NDDC to invite the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to investigate allegations of financial misdeeds made against some of the lawmakers.

The NDDC Executive Director (Projects) and member of the IMC, Dr. Cairo Ojougboh, had in an interview alleged, among others, that some senators got over 1000 contracts from the commission.

The National Assembly had also been accused of “padding the commission’s 2019 budget with over 500 projects and raping the destiny of the Niger Delta people.” The Acting Managing Director of the IMC, Prof. Kemebradikumo Pondei, who made the allegation, said the planned probe of the agency by the legislators “is merely intended to make a mockery of the forensic audit ordered by President Muhammadu Buhari.”

At a briefing in Port Harcourt, Rivers State yesterday, Pondei claimed that the “overbearing stranglehold” of the National Assembly panels was responsible for the delay in the passage of the 2019 budget in March 2020.

He said the reason the NDDC applied to the National Assembly for the virement of its 2019 budget was “because the commission only got the letter of approval of the budget on March 20, 2020, after the agency was coerced by some lawmakers to pay 20 contractors.”

Pondei alleged: “We saw that the time frame was very short. And apart from that, the budget that was sent back to us was not recognisable by us. We have been hearing of budget padding. This was a classical case of budget padding. Almost 500 new projects were added to the budget and the appropriation was done in such a way that meaningful projects were appropriated very little sums of money.”

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