14 September 2011, Sweetcrude, Abuja- President Goodluck Jonathan said in Abuja that his administration would order law enforcement agencies to apprehend contractors identified as having defaulted after receiving funds to execute Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) projects.
The president stated this at the State House after receiving the reports of the NDDC Presidential Monitoring Committee headed by Chief Isaac Jemide.
He also said he would direct a clinical review of the reports submitted by the committee to identify such contractors and fish them out for prosecution.
The president declared that the era of contractors abandoning projects after receiving funds from government was over in the country.
He said: “Project abandonment is totally unacceptable to us. The era of contractors taking money and not doing their work is over.
“If the NDDC is to act as a catalyst for development in the Niger Delta, then we must act to redeem the situation.”
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the president also received another report presented by the presidential committee set up to undertake an inquiry into the crises in the commission.
The committee, which was inaugurated in July was headed by the former Head of Civil Service of the Federation, Mr Stephen Oronsaye.
Speaking in the same vein, Jonathan said his administration would take prompt and decisive action to sanitise the NDDC and transform it into a more effective organisation.
He pledged that the Federal Government would implement remedial measures to ensure that the commission began to give the people of the Niger Delta real value for the huge sums of money committed to it annually.
Earlier, Oronsaye had said that the committee undertook its assignment expeditiously and with proper diligence.
He described the NDDC as “acutely crises ridden” and recommended immediate intervention to reverse the decay in the commission.
Oronsaye told the president that the committee visited the NDDC Headquarters in Port Harcourt and interacted with its management, staff and stakeholders.
According to him, the committee also received a memorandum from the Presidential Monitoring Committee on the NDDC which substantially corroborated its own findings.
