The Rivers State representative on the management board of the Niger Delta Development Commission, Chief Tony Okocha, has disclosed that a total of 953 abandoned projects of the commission are littered across the state.
Okocha stated this in Port Harcourt on Tuesday during an interactive session with members of the Rivers Council of Traditional Rulers.
While expressing worry about the number of abandoned projects, he said it was the more reason he and his team had begun work in earnest to correct some of the anomalies, saying he would have a scorecard to present at the end of his tenure.
Okocha stated, “Looking at our papers, I got a bit worried because I know that at the end of my stay in the office, it is like a student who has to write an examination and at the end of the examination you will show your report card. And I know that at the end of my stay in the NDDC, I will be required to show my report card. So, from day one what we did was to hit the ground running.
“In my study, it was clear to me that Rivers State is number two in terms of the states that have more abandoned projects. Rivers State has 953 abandoned projects of NDDC. And these projects are dotted along and across the nook and crannies of the state.”
He said the traditional rulers have a role to play by monitoring projects sited in their domains.
He identified three factors responsible for such project abandonment, including frequent changes of members of the board.
Okocha stated, “We find out that some of these projects were abandoned because of the splitting nature of some boards that will come and award their own contracts.
“One of the things that have bedeviled this developmental stride is the inconsistencies of government.
“Three months down the line a board is set up, and after three months the same board is dissolved and within the period that they existed, they would have awarded contracts to people to go and work.
“Sometimes they work with no mobilisation; sometimes people get their money to go to the field and once they get the money paid, that’s one scam and another one is that the boards are now dissolved. And the new board will have a tendency of awarding different jobs so that they will also make their own name and get their own cuts and that has been our own problem.”
On the way forward, he said the commission under his watch as the state representative would focus more on both human capital and infrastructural development.
