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Rights activist, Chief Rita Lori-Ogbebor, has faulted the composition of the board of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), alleging that President Muhammadu Buhari breached the rotational clause in the enabling law establishing the interventionist agency.
Maintaining that it was the turn of Delta State to produce the chairmanship and managing directorship of the commission, she cited Section 4 of the NDDC Act 2000 to drive home her point.
The provision reads: “The office of the chairman shall rotate among the member states of the commission in the following alphabetical order – Abia; Akwa Ibom; Bayelsa; Cross River; Delta; Edo; Imo; Ondo and Rivers.
During a press briefing in Lagos, she argued that since it was Delta in line of succession to Senator Victor Ndoma-Egba, the Cross Riverian who last held the chairmanship of the commission, it would, therefore, be constitutional to appoint from the area with the highest oil quota in the state to the post and that of the chief executive.
Lori-Ogbebor sought a reversal of the composition in the interest of peace in the Niger Delta region.
The women leader claimed that the current managing director nominee, Chief Bernard Okumagba, an Okere-Urhobo native of Warri, was not from an oil-producing area as spelt out in the extant law, adding that in the spirit of justice, the position and that of chairman should go to the Itsekiri as the “highest producer of crude oil in Delta State.”
The Igba of Warri kingdom threatened to head for court on behalf of the ethnic nationality to right the “anomaly.”
She wondered why an Edo indigene, Dr. Pius Odubu, was appointed chairman “considering that ‘D’ comes before ‘E’ ”.
Her words: “We demand that the recent appointments into the board of the NDDC are cancelled and a new one be made in tune with the rule of law, equity, fairness and justice.”
