Replying to President Buhari’s order of forensic audit into the commission, Mr. Pondei said the padding went as far as over 500 non-existing projects
The MD expressed worry that the commission has been reduced to petty designs instead of championing major intervention projects
Kemebradikumo Pondei, acting managing director of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), has alleged that the agency’s budget in 2019 was inflated with about 500 fake projects by the National Assembly.
Pondei made the disclosure on Tuesday, May 26, while responding to allegations of corruption and misappropriation of funds levelled against the interim management committee.
Addressing journalists in Rivers state, the NDDC’s acting MD said the discovery was made while investigating the 2019 appropriation to the commission.
He said “We discovered that after NDDC forwarded its budget to the national assembly committees on NDDC, what was sent back to the commission was no longer recognisable,” Pondei said. “The 2019 budget was classically over padded, with almost 500 new projects inserted to it when it was sent back to us. “We found out the budget appropriation was done in such a way that meaningful projects were allocated very little sums of money.”
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