The Africa Network for Environment and Economic Justice, ANEEJ has commended the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) for steps taken to improve transparency, accountability and effectiveness of the commission. This followed the recent release of the commission’s first quarterly report for 2016 which has also been made available to the public through the NDDC website.
The commendation is contained in a statement issued in Benin City by the Executive Director of ANEEJ , the Rev David Ugolor and made available to journalists as a reaction to the release of the first quarterly report by the NDDC, titled The New Face of Progress.
The Acting Managing Director of NDDC, Mrs. Ibim Semenitari had during an interactive session with Niger Delta Civil Society organizations in January 2016, committed to promoting transparency and accountability through the publication of quarterly reports, including the income and expenditure of the Commission. The commission had also recently adopted new measures aimed at ensuring high standards in its service delivery to communities in the Niger Delta region.
“This singular action of NDDC has gone a long way to improving citizen’s perception about public institutions and has set a clear precedence for other institutions, especially the Oil and Gas commissions in Edo, Delta, Ondo, Imo and Abia States to follow”, the ANEEJ Executive Director said in the statement.
“One of the ways to end conflicts in the Niger Delta is for institutions established to develop the region to be open to its citizens. It is for the institutions to be transparent and accountable to them because if people have information, they can ask the right questions and hold their leaders accountable and that is what the new NDDC leadership has done and we commend them.
“What is next is for us to scrutinize the reports and engage the commission with advocacy points that will help them improve on their services to the people. But as a first step, we encourage the NDDC to sustain these lofty initiatives and urge the leadership to actualize commitments made to CSOs for their inclusion in the Commission’s project monitoring framework and the establishment of CSO Liaison Desk/Officer at NDDC office to serve asa platform for unhindered interaction with the CSOs and encourage healthy stakeholder relationship”, the Rev. Ugolor said
“To concretize these measures, the commission needs to take a step further by up loading the 2016 budget as well as previous budgets on its website for the public to access and as well adopt a bottom – top approach to project identification and decision making”, Ugolor maintained in the statement.
