LAGOS JUNE 15TH (URHOBOTODAY)-A coalition of activists and stakeholders drawn from the nine states that make up the Niger Delta Development Commission, NDDC, yesterday insisted that it was the turn of Delta State to produce both the Chairman and Managing Director of the next Board of the commission.
Speaking to newsmen after a meeting of the group in Port-Harcourt where the headquarters of the NDDC is located, one of the conveners of the meeting, Mr Youkori Gibson held that the NDDC Act 2000 made it explicit on how appointments into the Board are to be made.
Youkori, a leader of the All Progressive Congress, APC in Delta State quoted the relevant portions of the NDDC Act 2000 to support his claim thus, saying; “there shall be for the Commission, a Managing Director and two Executive Directors who shall be indigenes of oil producing areas starting with the member states of the Commission with the highest production quantum of oil and shall rotate among member states in order of production”.
Quoting another segment as the Act, he said; “the office of the Chairman shall rotate amongst member states of the Commission in the following order: Abia, Akwa Ibom, Cross River, Delta, Edo, Imo, Ondo and Rivers States”.
While condemning in strong terms the report credited to one Chief Perekeme Kpodoh from Bayelsa State faulting the claim of Delta State to the two positions, the stakeholders took a swipe at Kpodoh, saying there was contradiction in his ( Kpodoh) statement acknowledging that it was actually the turn of Delta State to produce the occupants of both positions.
Faulting Kpodoh’s request that the present Managing Director who is from Kpodoh’s Bayelsa State should be allowed to continue, they accused Kpodoh of “primitive nepotism.”
To this end, they called on President Muhammadu Buhari to follow due process and the law to let Delta State produce the occupants of both offices as enshrined in the NDDC Act 2000 in order to promote equity, fairness and justice and sustain the current peace in the region.
Vanguard