Posted by The management of the Niger Delta Development Commission, NDDC, the North East Development Commission, NEDC, and other organizations have been urged to promptly follow President Bola Tinubu’s instruction on board dissolution and stop claiming exemption by a transparency group known as the League of Nigerian Democrats, or LND.
The organization encouraged President Tinubu and SGF George Akume, CON, to make sure they swiftly transfer authority to the most qualified public servant in their respective offices in accordance with their seniority hierarchies.
The group claimed in a statement released on Tuesday and signed by its National Coordinator, Yomi Adelakun, that the disbanded CEOs of organizations and MDAs, including the NDDC and NEDC, are unwilling to follow the president’s order and have engaged in a N200 billion looting spree over the past three days.
The statement read, “The President’s directive is clearly referring to the Most Qualified Civil Servant Director who automatically becomes the Chief Executive Officer that will refer matters requiring the attention of their Boards to. The dissolved board members and chief executive officers were all appointed and screened by the National Assembly as members of the same board and on the same platform.
The President’s order is pretty explicit. The governing boards of all federal parastatals, agencies, institutions, and government-owned businesses nationwide have been approved for immediate dissolution by President Bola Tinubu. All of these agencies’ and MDAs’ chief executives were a part of the governing boards that were disbanded.
Following last week’s announcement by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu for the freezing of accounts and potential dissolution of the boards, Adelakun had on Monday raised an alarm over the alleged looting spree by officials of the Ministries, Departments, and Agencies. Adelakun claimed that the management of the NDDC’s claim that they were exempted is a clear display of disrespect and affront on the President’s directives.
In a previous statement, Adelakun and the LND claimed that despite President Tinubu’s order from last week, the country may have lost more than N200 billion in the previous few days due to a covert looting spree and the illegal payment of fraudulent contracts by some Ministries, Intervention Agencies, and Parastatals.
According to him, some of the unauthorized payments and withdrawals occurred over the weekend with the complicity of some top bank personnel.
Adelakun claimed that the group is gathering data for a formal petition to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu in cooperation with several transparency groups in Lagos, Port Harcourt, and two northern states.
According to him, “the group received the announcement made by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu with mixed feelings as it prepared these looters to embark on a looting spree despite the Presidential order for the freezing of MDA’s accounts.”
“We are also concerned that the looting spree—which is carried out under the guise of rapid payments of unfulfilled contracts—is an obvious instance of theft. Even on the weekends, these wicked transactions have been linked to the NDDC, the North-East Development Commission, the CBN, and others. In order to handle alleged fraudulent payments over the weekend, several of their finance department workers were assigned to hotels.