Africa Press-Nigeria:
The House of Representatives has summoned Minister of Niger Delta Affairs, Senator Godswill Akpabio, as well as the Acting Managing Director of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), Prof Kemebradikumo Daniel Pondei, to appear before it on Monday to answer questions on allegations against them.
The House Committee on NDDC issued the summon on Friday at the continuation of its investigative hearing into the alleged missing N40 billion from NDDC funds.
Meanwhile, the immediate past acting Managing Director of NDDC, Joi Nunieh, finally gave her testimony on Friday when she joined the probe panel via Zoom following a failed attempt by the police to arrest her on Thursday and her rescue by Rivers State Governor, Mr. Nyesom Wike, from police siege.
A contingent of policemen from the Force Headquarters, Abuja, had in the wee hours of Thursday invaded Nunieh’s house to arrest her, thus preventing her from testifying before the committee.
While giving her own aide of the story, she explained that she only spent N8 billion throughout her tenure, which was from from October 29, 2019 to February 17, 2020.
On the forensic audit, Nunieh said the President had written a letter to the National Assembly appointing the forensic and suspending the appointment of the board and that he was appointing the IMC to supervise the forensic audit.
She stressed that what she met wasn’t exactly what was going on as the minister insisted on supervising the forensic audit.
According to her, I reminded him (Akpabio) and showed him a letter that the President had written. There’s no way that we can spend the money that’s in our budget. He requested in his memo to the President that money for the funding of the forensic audit be gotten from the service wide votes. President Buhari in his wisdom refused that request and in writing said that it should be put in the NDDC appropriation budget, making NDDC the procuring entity.
Nunieh stated: “I said that to take the money and send it to the ministry will be like Federal Ministry of Health asking the federal medical center that they will like to implement what’s in the budget now. On the audit, while I was there, I was the one who prepared all the document in the forensic audit.
“After that argument, I now came up to say that everything that’s done will be in accordance with the Act, the first thing I did was to go through the procurement of the lead consultants. Many people have misunderstood clearly the procurement process of the lead consultants. Because I didn’t want any illegality or the forensic audit to be discredited, I ensured with the help of real consultants to help me come up with the terms for these auditors.
“The lead consultant that everyone is talking about is not a forensic auditor, only the other forensic auditors, the role of the lead consultant is to gather all the forensic auditors, all the reports and put it together and give it to the lead consultant who will do the reporting, that’s just his role.
