Urges communities to own public assets
The Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) has raised an alarm that half of the projects it has executed in the Niger Delta region have been vandalised, rendering them unusable and abandoned.

According to NDDC’s capacity-building facilitator, Francis Abayomi, more than 50 per cent of its projects implemented in communities across the Niger Delta have been vandalised or abandoned.

He disclosed that a forensic audit revealed that out of 19,421 projects implemented by the agency, 13,000 had been vandalised.

He said the growing vandalism had prompted the NDDC to engage communities in the region to monitor and protect the projects.

“This engagement is about deepening development in the region to get the communities to be aware of their roles and responsibilities in ensuring that projects implemented by the interventionist agency are protected within the communities by getting stakeholders involved in the ownership of those projects for sustainability,” he said.

Abayomi, who is also the coordinator of Peace and Development Projects, said that many of the projects were being vandalised or destroyed due to ignorance and a lack of awareness among these communities that the projects are theirs, not NDDC’s.

He also urged stakeholders to ensure that contractors do a thorough job with the projects rather than harass them for handouts. Abayomi added that such would guarantee the delivery of solid projects that would serve them longer.

NDDC’s Assistant Director, Dr Sweet Odunlami, said vandalisation of NDDC projects compelled the commission to engage the communities to halt the problem.

Meanwhile, the Edo State Office Director of the agency, Mrs Mercy Babawale, yesterday, at a one-day workshop, themed ‘Capacity Building Programme for Stakeholders Across the Niger Delta Region on Community Ownership and Protection of NDDC Projects,’ in Benin, charged communities where NDDC projects are sited to take ownership of such projects by protecting and safeguarding them.

Babawale, who said the core mandate of the NDDC is to ensure the Niger Delta region is developed, added that the workshop was initiated to create awareness and to interact with communities to know what is happening in their various communities.

She said: “Most often, people in communities where our projects are sited feel they are government projects, so they have no business with them; it shouldn’t be so. We should rather take charge and protect projects situated in our communities. We should ensure that they are not vandalised. We should ensure that we don’t have people coming to undo what has been done to us because these are benefits in our communities.”