Human Right Writers Association Of Nigeria (HURIWA) has accused the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) and the National Assembly of unmitigated corruption.

In a press statement made available to Independent onThursday, the Human Rights group lamented that the stench of corruption massively felt in the National Assembly and the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) is so staggering that Nigeria may need to set up an independent Judicial commission of Inquiry to investigate allegations and counter allegations of large scale heist of public fund.

According to HURIWA “Until the so called investigators at the National Assembly and the Interim Management Committee of the Niger Delta Development Commission are investigated to ascertain the veracity and validity of the accusations of huge scale corruptions levelled by both against each other, it will be time wasting to allow neither of the tainted and heavily discredited bodies to proceed to investigate each other.
“It is ethically unjust for someone to be a judge and a prosecutor in his own case and the legal maxim that to go to equity it is imperative to do so with clean hands applies here.”

*Onwubiko
HURIWA Chairman

HURIWA called for the disbandment of both the Interim Management Committee of the Niger Delta Development Commission and the Committees overseeing the NDDC in both chambers of the National Assembly to enable any form of forensic audits of the interventionist commission in the heavily neglected crude oil producing States of the Niger Delta Region (NDDC) and the accusations of bribery and financial inducements levelled against the National Assembly by the Interim Management Committee of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) to be holistically investigated.

In the statement, the group said “Indicted persons should be arrested, prosecuted and punished by the competent court of law whilst every Naira siphoned away from the Niger Delta Development Commission by either the Interim Management Committee of the Niger Delta Development Commission or the Committees on Niger Delta Development Commission at the two chambers of the National Assembly should be retrieved and returned to the coffers of the Niger Delta Development Commission for the purpose of infrastructural development and transformations of the marginalized Crude oil producing States belonging to the NDDC catchment areas.

National Assembly Complex
Citadel of Corruption?

The statement signed by its national Coordinator Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko and the National Media Affairs Director Miss Zainab Yusuf said “As it is at the moment, the media warfare going on by both the Interim Management Committee of the Niger Delta Development Commission and the National Assembly’s Committees on Niger Delta Development Commission has made it imperative that all parties in the show of shame must be suspended pending an outcome of a wholly independent INVESTIGATION by a credible platform such as a high profile Judicial commission of Inquiry to be headed by a respected Jurist of the Supreme Court of Nigeria and other representatives of the civil society, the academia, the security/Defence Sector and from the Supreme court of Nigeria.

“A situation whereby there is a free for all full scale media battles by these warring parties drawn from the Interim Management Committee of the Niger Delta Development Commission and the relevant committees of the Niger Delta Development Commission in the National Assembly, there will never be a credible investigation of either the NDDC by the so called Interim Management Committee of the Niger Delta Development Commission put in place by the President for the purposes of carrying out forensic audits of the commission or the relevant committees of the National Assembly which has launched a separate probe of the Interim Management Committee of the Niger Delta Development Commission over allegations of theft of N40 billion,” HURIWA stressed.

HURIWA noted that only this morning, the Acting Managing Director of the Niger Delta Development Commission, Prof. Kemebradikumo Pondei, had accused the committees of the National Assembly responsible for the oversight of the Commission of working against the forensic audit ordered by President Muhammadu Buhari.
The group quoted Mr. Pondei as alleging that the probe being embarked on by the National Assembly was distracting the Commission from focusing on the forensic audit, which all stakeholders, including Governors of the nine Niger Delta States, agreed with President Buhari as the way forward for the Commission.