Ondo group threatens legal action over NDDC appointment

Indigenes of Ondo State oil producing communities have urged President Muhammadu Buhari to nullify the appointment of the Managing Director of Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) given to Delta State or face imminent legal actions.

They said that the appointment was a contravention of the Act establishing the commission in 2000.The people, under the apex socio-cultural group of the only oil producing local council, Egbe Omo Ilaje, in Ilaje Local Council of the state, said that the position of the managing director should be reversed from Delta State to Ondo State.

The group said that the NDDC Act had been breached severally, “particularly in the position of the managing director, which had been held exclusively by four member-states of Akwa Ibom, Rivers, Delta and Bayelsa, contrary to the Act.”

The National Secretary of the group, Edamisan Ogunfeyijimi, who led other members while addressing journalists yesterday at the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ) Press Centre in Akure, noted: “There is also no greater act of corruption than a government violating its own laws.”

Ogunfeyijimi, who affirmed that it was the turn of Ondo State to occupy the position of the managing director after other states had utilised their turns as clearly spelt out in the NDDC Act, said: “The position of the chairman of the commission, having been held respectively by Abia, Akwa Ibom, Bayelsa and Cross River states, the office ought now to go to Delta State in the alphabetical order of the member-states in line with the relevant position of the act.

The group, however, implored Buhari to rectify the abnormalities of the appointments and also urged the National Assembly, saying: “We are ready to challenge government in the court of law. Besides, our youths in Ilaje are ready to go to any length to demand for their rights legitimately.”

“We believe some cabals worked to ensure that the appointments were done when the President was not around. But we believe very strongly that the President is an upright man and will rectify this,” they said.