Chairman of the Presidential Advisory Committee against Corruption, Prof Itse Sagay (SAN), on Tuesday disclosed that he had advised against the appointment of some the people into the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), but that his counsel was disregarded.
He also called on President Muhammadu Buhari to sack all top management staff involved in financial recklessness in the Commission.
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Sagay who spoke on Channels TV’s Politics Today, said, “I don’t know the way some appointments are made. When some of these appointment were to be made I spoke in my private capacity because we weren’t consulted at PACAC.
“I said one or two of them were not fit for the responsibilities they were about to be given but they were still appointed. And now we are seeing the result. The whole place is in a total mess, accusations and counter accusations, we are talking of billions and very frightening”,
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The Senate had set up an Ad-hoc committee probing the alleged financial recklessness to the sum of N40bn by the Interim Management Committee (IMC) of the NDDC between January and March this year.
This led to allegations and counter allegations of misappropriation and misconducts between a former acting managing director of the Commission, Dr. Joy Nunieh and the Niger Delta affairs minister, Godswill Akpabio.
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Sagay said allegations of financial recklessness in the Commission had given the Niger Delta region a bad name and everyone involved in the case under probe should be fired.
He said, “What worries me is that the rest of the country will say ‘well, we have sympathy for your condition, we made provisions for you hut your own people have spoilt everything.’ It gives a bad name to the Niger Delta I must say”, Sagay said.
Calling on president Buhari to sack everyone involved in the ongoing probe, Sagay said the president could appoint new set of people to have a board and order a forensic audit of the commission.
“I think the first thing the president has to do is to clear all the people involved out. The president should appoint a new set of people temporarily so that a permanent board and management can be established in the place that can be monitored.
“I do not see why a forensic auditing cannot take place when you have a regular board in place. I don’t see the point of having this temporal board which is an anomaly, which has proven to be such a disaster. My view is everybody should be removed. Sweep it clean.”