NDDC: “You Cannot End Probe Until You Hear All Prof K. Pondei Has to Say”…… Bishop Johnson Warns House Committee on NDDC

“As it stands right now, in the court of public opinion, the National Assembly is guilty, complicit, compromised and has things that it is hiding from the Nigerian people"....NDYF

"That is why it has abruptly ended the probe without fully exhausting its options by re-inviting the Minister of Niger Delta Affairs, Chief Godswill Akpabio after he had alleged that 60% of NDDC contracts were awarded to members of the National Assembly without providing any evidence”.

The Niger Delta Youth Forum, NDYF has warned that ending the House of Representatives Committee on Niger Delta Development Commission, NDDC probe before hearing everything Prof. K. Pondei has to tell Nigerians, will leave more questions than answers and will severely damage and taint the credibility and acceptability of the outcome of the probe.

Making this known is the Spokesman of the Forum, Bishop Johnson in a statement he issued late on Tuesday following the revelations at the ongoing Hearing of the House of Representatives where the embattled Acting Chairman of the NDDC, Prof. K. Pondei fainted on national television while responding to questions by the members of the panel.

According to the NDYF spokesman, “the reason given by the House Committee on NDDC that Prof K. Pondei had already submitted a written submission, therefore he does not need to return to the probe for further questioning puts cloud of suspicion on the actual intention of the probe”.

In the statement, he noted that “the essence of public hearing is to get more information on issues that may not have been revealed or covered in the written submission. Letting go Prof K. Pondei will short-circuit the process and deny Nigerians the opportunity of hearing from one of the major witnesses in the probe”.

“That the probe which was originally scheduled to last for only two days but had extended beyond that, is certainly not a good reason to end the probe when the current MD of NDDC, Prof Pondei still has more to answer”, Bishop Johnson reiterated.

“As it stands right now, in the court of public opinion, the National Assembly is guilty, complicit, compromised and has things it is hiding from the Nigerian people”.

“That is why it has abruptly ended the probe without fully exhausting its options by re-inviting the Minister of Niger Delta Affairs, Chief Godswill Akpabio after he had alleged that 60% of NDDC contracts were awarded to members of the National Assembly without providing any evidence”.

“To make the matter worse for the House Committee on NDDC, the interim chairman was misconstrued when he told Chief Akpabio that it's okay and he should turn off his microphone”, the NDYF spokesman stressed.

“If the House of Representatives is to have any respect and redeem its image after what the public has seen as an attempt to shut up the Honorable Minister of the Niger Delta Affairs, the House must postpone its forthcoming recess, re-invite Chief Akpabio and Prof Pondei and exhaustively, conclude the probe and answer the unanswered questions as to who are the members of the National Assembly who have benefited from NDDC contracts”. 

“The House of Representatives must also convince Nigerians that they did not deliberately let the honorable minister of Niger Delta Affairs get away without signing his oath when every other witness was compelled to do so”. 

The Forum spokesman reiterated that, “in other climes and democracies such as the United States Congress and the United Kingdom House of Commons, we have seen where parliamentarians postponed their planned recess to deal with urgent national issues”.

“Corruption in Nigeria is a very serious problem that threatens our national security. Corruption in our country, is the reason for the wide spread poverty; the likes of it not seen before. A high illiteracy rate and large number of out-of-school children that threatens our future as a nation, deficit in infrastructure that has largely limited our ability and capacity to grow our economy”.

“The mass youth unemployment that has since put the safety of lives and property of our citizens and the security of our nation in jeopardy, a broken education system and healthcare system in chaos and disarray with consequent avoidable and needless deaths”.

The NDYF spokesman in the statement stressed that, “the National Assembly must therefore, inconvenience itself just a little bit and make just this minor sacrifice by postponing its planned recess to adequately and exhaustively provide the answers to all the unanswered questions that have come in the last few days”.

“It is a patriotic duty for all of us particularly public servants to make little sacrifices for the collective good of all of us. Anything short of all these makes caricature of the entire investigative probe”, he stated.

 

Bishop Johnson is a former US Army Captain and the Spokesperson of the Niger Delta Youth Forum (NDYF).