Efforts to recover the more than $4 billion owed the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) is underway, the Minister of Niger Delta Affairs, Godswill Akpabio, said.
The said sum is owed by International Oil Companies (IOCs) operating in the Niger Delta region, after failing to pay the agreed three percent of their total annual budgets to the NDDC, according to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN).
Akpabio said, “NDDC is being owed over $4billion by the IOCs and the Federal Government is making every effort to collect the money.
“They were expected to pay three per cent of their annual budgets to the NDDC, all of them are owing the NDDC.
“The federal government owes a little bit on its own part that it should pay the NDDC. I believe that with the audit of the commission, we will begin to offset those things, working closely with the Ministry of Finance.
“There are plans to pay those debts. I want to see a balance sheet of the NDDC that is bankable.
“The IOCs are expected to pay to the NDDC three percent of their annual budgets. All of them have failed to do so at different times.”
He added that the commission was working with the federal ministry of finance to recover the funds through the ongoing forensic auditing.
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He said, “We are investigating the NDDC through the forensic audit. Since my assumption of office, l have checked and have not seen even a 5km road done by the NDDC.
“We are still searching to understand where the funds they spent went, and we are going to find them.
“The problem of the host community fund is not the percentage neither is it the problem of money.
“The Petroleum Industry Act, when implemented, is going to assuage the feelings of the people of the host communities, because they never had half a percent since oil was discovered in 1956 in Oloibiri.
“That is why I said that it is not the percentage that is the issue. Some communities could not even do this solar powered toilet, some have no drinking water, even water tankers supplying them water failed, because they had oil exploration and exploitation had destroyed their water system.
“But, now with the PIA, they will be able to do certain things for themselves without waiting on oil companies, the federal government or the state, to do it for them.”
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