Senator Peter Nwabaoshi has said that the Minister of Niger Delta Affairs, Godswill Akpabio, got a contract of N300 million from the Nigeria Delta Development Commission, NDDC.
The contract was awarded during the time Akpabio was a senator representing the Akwa-Ibom North-West constituency.
The sum of N500 million was requested from the NDCC which gave N300 million to be used for fencing and N150 million to train youths and women Akpabio’s constituency on the use of modern farming implements.
Addressing newsmen, Nwabaoshi lamented that there is nothing to show for the contract awarded.
He said, “Findings show that while there was no physical evidence of implementation of these projects, checks show contracts were awarded and fully paid for.
“Such practices have turned the region to sites of abandoned projects.”
Recall that a few days ago, Akpabio had warned that he would never allow the NDDC to be used as an ATM by politicians.
He said, “We have also had a lot of political interference, people have not allowed NDDC to work as it ought to, people coming with ideas not to move the region forward but to move their pockets forward. It has always been so… I think people were treating the place as an ATM, where you just walk in there to go and pluck money and go away, I don’t think they were looking at it as an interventionist agency.”