Stan Okenwa
28 October 2009
The managing director of Niger Delta Development Commission NDDC, Mr. Chibuzor Ugwuoha has accused a section of oil multinational companies doing business within the nine-state NDDC region of denial of counterpart funding in agreed development projects.
This they do by owing the commission royalty of about 50million US dollars.
The NDDC boss gave this insight when the board of Nigerian Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, NEITI paid him a visit to fine-tune collaboration between the two agencies.
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Ugwuoha noted that the partnership was important so as to achieve greater result in the oil and gas industry as it affects the development of the Niger Delta region especially now peace is beginning to reign.
He charged NEITI to its service delivery to ensure that things were done properly. Among the areas the NDDC boss expects the agency's assistance include getting the government and international oil companies to pay up their debt to the commission.
According to him, the act that established the commission stated how the commission is to be funded and that was 15 percent of the volume of money going to the member states, three percent of Oil firms' annual budget and 50 percent of ecological funds going to the area.
Ugwuoha told Daily Champion that "part of the money due to the commission is yet to be remitted or paid by the commission or the oil firms", hinting that government is also defaulting in the payment of its due to the commission.
"We are equally aware that certain amount of money due to the commission from the government is yet to be paid and that makes development difficult because we need a lot of money to be able to develop the region".
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