NDDC Abandoned Projects: Ex-Chairman wants EFCC to arrest defaulting contractors

…thanks Works commissioner for blowing whistle on PDP members


A former Chairman of Eket Local Government Area of Akwa Ibom State, Chief Aniekan Akpan, has called on the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to arrest and prosecute contractors that abandoned projects of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) if they fail to heed the commission’s two-week deadline to return to site.

In an interview on a live radio program, TEAM NIGERIA, on Planet FM, a private radio station in Uyo, Akpan tasked the anti-graft agency to ensure it recovers all the money running into several billions of naira paid to contractors who abandoned the commission’s projects if they fail to return to site. He commended the Akwa Ibom State Commissioner for Works, Mr. Ephraim Inyang for keying into the whistle-blowing policy of the Federal Government by blowing the whistle last week on his party members who collected and abandoned NDDC contracts in the past.

He also commended the Senator Victor Ndoma-Egba-led NDDC Board for the measures put in place to revamp the commission, especially the measure to stop abandonment of projects.

While speaking on the state of affairs in Akwa Ibom, the ex-council boss frowned at the way Governor Udom Emmanuel was running the state, alleging that the governor was playing politics with the issue of insecurity and industrialisation in the state.

Akpan said the governor as the Chief Security Officer of the state has failed the people, with the renewed wave of violence in the state, stressing further that if the governor pockets a whooping sum of N2 billion monthly as security vote, he should take the responsibility of providing adequate security for the people the state.

He said public funds were not meant for office holders to satisfy their personal interests and urged the people to rise and ask government to account for all the federal allocations that accrued to the state.

Akpan, while describing Emmanuel as “Akpabio’s foster son”, urged the immediate past governor of Akwa Ibom State, Senator Godswill Akpabio to stop commissioning projects in Rivers State executed by Governor Nyesom Wike but return to Akwa Ibom to help the governor execute and commission projects because the state had not witnessed any project commissioning 23 months since Udom became the governor.