The NDDC Albatross

Sam Edem

Hack writers and hired guns descend on the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) and its Managing Director, Timi Alaibe, following the juju scandal involving the commission’s suspended chairman, Sam Edem, even as investigations link controversial businessman, Chris Uba, in the matter
By Chidiebere Onyemaizu
Since the N800million juju scam involving now suspended chairman of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), Ambassador Sam Edem, came into the public glare, one poser which has ceaselessly agitated the minds of everyone is: where did the money come from?
For many Nigerians, adept at sweeping generalisations, the money must have come form the coffers of the interventionist agency – and if this were so, then all other top officials of the agency must have been having a field day fiddling with the resources solely meant for the development and empowerment of persons within the nine states which make up the NDDC.
Yet, to all intents and purposes, the amount of money which Edem lost (N800million by his own admission), was simply too large to be simply wished away. Or left to the technicalities of the law court to unravel. So, again, where the money come from?
In seeking an answer to this titillating poser, The Source tapped at several sources, including Edem’s own statement to the Police regarding the source of the funds.
According to a report dated August 15, 2008 and authored by Ali Amidu, a Commissioner of Police who is in charge of the Inspector-General of Police (IGP)’s Special Investigation Unit, Edem had stated that the money in question largely come from donations when he wanted to contest the 2007 gubernatorial polls in his native Akwa Ibom State. The report quoted Edem as having stated that “for instance, one Chief Chris Uba, a business magnate, donated about N550million to him.”
He mentioned other source of the money as N50million from some unnamed friends, and another N50million realised from his family business. These various amounts, Edem told the police detectives, and earnings from his hotel business of over 20 years made up the amount of money which he alleged was fleeced off him by one Dr. Perekabowei Ogah, alias Mathew Sonoma.
Although Edem’s claims, especially as it concerns Chris Uba, has not been collaborated, since the later is currently away to the United States of America (USA) on business trip, the sordid episode is causing s much disquiet in the NDDC as several interest groups appear to have seized the opportunity offered by the scandal to attempt to pull down the commission.
Indeed, were the Niger Delta region to be a human being, perhaps a dotting mother, it would have since cried out against meddlesome mothers and fetish uncles, urging them to leave her only vibrant son alone – the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) – and mind their businesses. But the region is only a nomenclature, an abstract used to depict states bearing Nigeria’s meal ticket – crude oil – and therefore cannot talk. Conscious of this handicap, individuals and groups have taken up the gauntlet on its behalf and that of its baby, the NDDC.
They are basically asking elements who are primed at destroying the commission via various campaigns of calumny against it and its Managing Director, Timi Alaibe, to retract their steps and tread the path of sanity. An interventionist agency wonderfully attending to the screaming infrastructural barreness of the Niger Delta region, it is not out of place for the NDDC to constantly attract high voltage media searchlight; just like the negative one wrought on it by the Edem episode.
The blood-chilling accounts of how the NDDC's suspended chairman, Edem allegedly accorded elegance to primitiveness by wasting approximately one billion naira on Ogah. a sorcerer whom he had allegedly contracted to, through diabolical means, snuff life out of Alaibe, work on the duo of Akwa Ibom State Governor, Godswill Akpabio and Vice President Goodluck Jonathan so that the two South south political leaders would always do his biddings.
Edem had reportedly mandated the witch doctor to place a spell on Governor Akpabio and hypnotise him into awarding him a seven billion naira contract. He also allegedly asked Ogah to employ the same means in ensuring that the Vice President would always protect him from sack. For Alaibe, he had a much more lethal design. He allegedly paid the sorcerer handsomely to kill the NDDC Managing Director so that he, Edem would have unfettered access to the Commission’s till.
Desirous of a quick action, Edem, followed Ogah's instructions to the latter, including allegedly burning to ashes the sum of N270 million which he, Edem bathed with in a public cementry in Port Harcourt. But as it turned out the witch doctor did not deliver on Alaibe as the NDDC top shot refused to die, because according to him, “his spirit was too strong.”
Incensed that the greatest target of his fetish outings, Alaibe was still breathing fresh air and diligently carrying out his task of bringing development to the region via the NDDC, Edem fell out with his comrade-in-primitiveness, and demanded a refund of his money thus setting the stage for the unfolding of the sordid affair on the public domain.
The Edem – Ogah diabolical liaison, it does appear, has given new impetus, however, to the reactionary forces in the region in their push for the scrapping of the NDDC. This, of course, is exemplified by the resurgence in the activities of a nondescript group, “Patriotic Niger Delta Mothers”.
Three months ago, the group had launched a vitriolic attack on the Commission and what it called its “managers”. They accused the “managers” of mismanaging N3.8 trillion which they alleged accrued to NDDC since inception. The “Mothers” went further to urge the federal government not to release the over four hundred billion naira it owed the commission “because if this money is released, the managers who have shown that they are more interested in patronising their political surrogates, may invest the fund in the mismanaged ventures and also use the same to oil their political machineries that may aid their inordinate political ambition ahead of the 2011 election while the communities continue to wallow in abject poverty.”
After that virulent outing the “Mothers” have staged a come-back with a response to the Edem affair.
In what seems the unmasking of their real intention and target of their tantrums three months ago, the group in an advertorial of Tuesday, August 12, 2008, explicitly called for the head of Alaibe, for in their estimation, the NDDC boss is as liable as Edem. The “Mothers as: “We are very confident that after Edem, the chief accounting officer of the commission, Timi Alaibe will also be made to answer for his deeds in the commission since he assumed office. The net has caught the first fish; the second will follow soon and very, very soon.”
The group’s stand on Alaibe and the NDDC, viz-a-viz the Edem scandal is however attracting the ire of a broad spectrum of groups and individuals in the Niger Delta. For example, a Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO), Concerned Niger Delta Citizens (CNDC), has cautioned persons and groups in the region against politicising Edem’s misadventure and using it as a veil to rubbish perceived political opponents.
CNDC is particularly not happy with the position taken by the “Patrotic Niger Delta Mothers.”
The group, speaking through its arrowhead, Duoye Diri, former Bayelsa State Commissioner for Sports aver that the ploy by the “Mothers” to resume their blistering attack against top members of the NDDC bespeaks malice and mischief.
His argument: “The alleged plot of Edem to kill Timi Alaibe should not be used as a ploy to visit Alaibe with another kind of death by the so-called Patriotic Niger Delta Mothers … if they are truly mothers, they should rejoice over the failure of the plot, not introduce this base and dehumanising politics into a matter as serious as life and death.”
CNDC further argued that the “Mothers” call for the probe of NDDC in the wake of the Edem scandal does not hold water because there was no direct correlation between the suspended NDDC chairman’s plot and accountability or lack of it in the Commission. Thus, according to the CNDC, the ignoble plan of Edem, a part-time member of the Board of the Commission cannot now be used to undermine the commission and its operations.
CNDC: “It is grossly illogical for this faceless group to accuse Alaibe of corruption, whereas the reason why Edem wants Alaibe dead is to enable him have his way in the commission. If Alaibe was conniving with Edem, why would he want him dead?”
The CNDC is not alone in carpeting “The Patriotic Niger Delta Mother.” Another group, the Grassroots Development and Empowerment Foundation (GDEF), has no kind words for the “Mothers” and their like. GDEF in a statement issued by its leader, Blessom Akpuluma rued, in its own words that “this obession to eliminate Mr. Alaibe, physically and from the NDDC, appears to have become the pastime of these “Mothers.”
It then argues that "based on their most recent advertorial calling on the police to arrest Alaibe, the police should indeed explore the possibility of inviting the Mother-in-chief of this group on a charge of conspiracy after the act of an assassination attempt. They would have to explain what they know about the whole matter because it, interestingly, tallies with their own obession to also cause the elimination of Alaibe from the NDDC…”
Keen watchers of the unfolding drama in the Commission in the aftermath of Edem’s inelegant adventure and the opprobrium the sad incident has continued to generate are still trying to situate Alaibe in the entire episode. Analysts, for example, find it difficult to connect the Edem-Witch doctor unholy alliance to murder Alaibe because he, Alaibe, refused to open the commission’s treasury to looters, with the calls by certain individuals in the region to arrest him, or the calls for the dissolution of the commission.
The illogicality of the above scenario is not lost on the GDEF: “These “Mothers” are blinded by their need to service the interest(s) which promoted their warped cause. They have lost their sense of intuition and sense of reasoning in their now blind quest to eliminate Mr. Alaibe.”
The Ijaw Youth Congress (IYC) Lagos chapter is also not enamoured by calls for NDDC’s dissolution. According to the body, such calls were unfounded and misdirected. IYC chairman in Lagos, Oyas Officer argued that “though there may have been some error of judgement on the part of a few Board members, that does not call for its dissolution… you don’t throw the baby and the bath water because you no longer need the water after usage.”
The Edem distraction, notwithstanding, the NDDC and Alaibe himself say they are focused on attending to the infrastructural needs of the Niger-Delta people. For example, shortly after Edem was suspended by the Federal Government on account of his alleged satanic romance with a witch doctor and Bassey Dan Abia, Commissioner representing Akwa Ibom State on the NDDC Board appointed in his stead in acting capacity, the Commission issued a statement, emphatically restating its commitment to bettering the lives of Niger-Deltans via its people-oriented projects.
The NDDC, through Abia, also assured stakeholders that the Commission’s finances were not tampered with in the entire Edem-witch doctor saga.
Abia: “We wish to reassure our stakeholders, as well as the public, that the accounts and operations of the Commission have passed all checks and balances and have been found to be in order… We reaffirm our commitment to continue to discharge our responsibilities to the people in the finest tradition of service… we will not derail from this God-ordained service to the people.”
And in apparent response to the “Mothers” and their like such as the “Rivers People Movement (RPM) which last week joined the fray on the side of anti-NDDC/Alaibe elements, the acting NDDC chairman said that antics of such groups are either uniformed or ill-advised. The RPM had in an advertorial published on Wednesday, August 20, 2008, aligned with “the Niger-Delta Mothers” in their attack on Alaibe and the NDDC.
Unlike the “Mothers” who in their August 12 advertorial explicitly mentioned Alaibe by name and called for his removal, the RPM choses, instead, to employ innuendos in getting at him.
For example, the group does not see the relevance of the training which Alaibe organised for some Niger-Delta militants in Lekki, Lagos recently with the view of steering them away from militancy, hence it attacked him thus: “It smacks of deceit for the NDDC to think that by sending a select group of militants for a so-called training and by paying them a paltry N20,000 at the end of the training that violence will stop in the region… how are we even sure that this same boys will not be used by some self-seeking politicians in the NDDC for their political ambition?”
Clearly towing the “Mothers” line as regard the calls for the suspension or arrest of Alaibe just as Edem, the RPM cries thus: “We cannot wait for November to see the end of this deceitful regime of the NDDC Board. The federal government should call key players to step aside while activities into their activities continue. After all an MD of that Commission had been suspended before.”
Watchers of Niger Delta politics say the current resurgence in petition writing and media war against certain key officials of the NDDC are all part of the larger Bayelsa politics, especially the state’s 2011 guber contest. GDEF also thinks this way. The group: “It is all about Bayelsa politics; it is all about pull him-down syndrome.” Alaibe himself also holds a similar view: “It is unfair sometimes when people, out of mischief and deliberate misinformation, just go out to disparage people. You see that a lot in politics… we know it is politics. We know it is the way of our people are sometimes, because one of the industries in the Niger Delta is that of petition writing and engineering bad press… that is why I am concentrating on my job in the NDDC.”
Meanwhile, after about two weeks in the dragnet of the police temporal respite came the way of an embattled Edem last week when an Abuja High Court where he is standing trial in connection with the scandal granted him bail.
The trial judge, Justice Olasumbo Goodluck granted the suspended NDDC chairman bail in the sum of N50 million with two sureties in like sum on the ground that the prosecution had failed to prefer charges against him.
The police investigation could also not establish the veracity or otherwise of Ogah's assertion that on his instruction, Edem burnt the sum of N270 million on a public cementing in Port-Harcourt with which he, Edem bathed with the ash of the burnt naira notes. The police’s inability to determine the veracity or otherwise of this allegation is anchored on the fact that the chaff of the burnt money was not seen at the cemetery and there was no place in Edem's statement of account where the sum of N270 million was with drawn after wards paid into Ogah's account. But the Police was able to ascertain that a total of N650 million was actually paid into Ogah's Oceanic Bank account by Edem. The investigations continues.