NDDC works on 2025 budget with N1.9trn 2024 appropriation still unsigned by Tinubu

• 3 months to fiscal year-end

• To align budget cycle with national calendar

Ben Eguzozie

Three months to the end of the 2024 fiscal year and its N1.9 trillion appropriation passed by the National Assembly still unsigned by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, federal government quango, the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), is set to begin preparing its 2025 budget, Business a.m. has learnt.

The commission, which is often in and out of financial graft and contract controversies, has inaugurated an 18-member 2025 budget committee to prepare its budget proposals. The committee is headed by the incumbent managing director Samuel Ogbuku, with the commission’s executive director in charge of finance and administration, Boma Iyayi as alternate chairman.

Ogbuku said the committee would ensure that before the end of the 2024 budget cycle, the commission would have secured approval for its 2025 budget.

“As we are about to implement the 2024 budget, we must begin preparation for the 2025 budget by holding consultations with our stakeholders. The committee will ensure that the budget will reflect the needs of the people. We must have a stakeholders’ conference to get their buy-in. We are not doing it for ourselves; but for the collective benefit of stakeholders of the Niger Delta region,” he said.

However, the commission, which serially gets accused of wasting huge funds on other things, including acting as the pipeline for syphoning and funding the ruling political party’s campaigns and other matters, rather than “making a difference” in the oil producing Niger Delta region, has yet to have its 2024 budget signed by President Tinubu, with only three months left to the end the fiscal year. The budget of N1.9 trillion was approved by the National Assembly, but it has not got presidential assent till date.

Ogbuku said, going forward, the NDDC budget would focus on funding achievable projects: “We cannot develop the region in one year. So, we will endeavour to have a smart budget that will focus on projects that we can finish, especially ongoing projects. The (budget) committee will study the old projects and determine those that can be completed within a short time.”

NDDC’s projects are a lesson in opacity. The commission, in a quarter-of-a-century of its existence, has operated with phantom projects, muddy contracts, and phoney payments for bogus jobs.

In 2019, for instance, it (the commission) was said to be owing some N3 trillion to contractors. Later, a committee came out to declare that the commission owed “phantom contractors”, indicating that a serving senator then handled 300 contracts.

Cairo Ojougboh, its former executive director of projects, said at the time that 120 of the contracts were actually fully paid. But he did not state if the projects were executed.

Incumbent managing director, Ogbuku, said as soon as President Tinubu signs the commission’s 2024 budget passed by the National Assembly, it (the commission) would “raise a trillion naira to fund some legacy projects initiated by previous administrations. One of such projects included the Okrika-Borokiri link road in Rivers State”.

He observed that the NDDC directors in the nine mandate states of the commission, as well as a representative of the Oil Producers Trade Section (OPTS), would be incorporated into the budget committee.

“Let us be seen as an NDDC that is working; and not the one that is just awarding contracts without seeing to their completion,” he said.

Ogbuku’s statement lends credence to a general belief that till date, the commission does not have record of its actual number of contracts and amounts owed or paid out so far.