10 years after, Oil communities in perpetual underdevelopment despite $5.8bn paid to NDDC

Eket, NIGERIA/ Oil producing communities in Akwa Ibom State have complained of untold suffering despite $5.8bn in mandatory payments made to the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) by oil and gas companies between 2011 and 2020.

The communities stated this during a Town Hall Meeting organised in Eket, Akwa Ibom State, by Policy Alert, a Civil Society Organisation promoting economic and ecological justice in the Niger Delta in partnership with BudgIT Foundation.

Senior Programme Officer of Policy Alert, Mfon Gabriel, said: “Data from NEITI Oil and Gas audit reports show that the NDDC has received about 5.8 billion dollars as mandatory three percent payments by oil and gas payments in the 10 years between 2011 and 2020, in addition to other funding streams. Yet the Commission has no transparent system for managing these revenue flows or accounting for their utilisation. Neither have the people of the region seen tangible development projects on the ground to justify these huge inflows.”

The NDDC Act 2000, the law establishing the Commission, requires that  oil producing and gas processing companies operating in the region contribute 3 percent of their annual budgets to the Commission’s Fund for the development and well  being of the region. However, stakeholders at the meeting lamented over what they described as “high level poverty and neglect” in the  region owing to the failure of the NDDC to carry out its mandate to facilitate the sustainable development of their communities despite multiple revenue streams, including the mandatory 3 percent.

They also complained about their exclusion from the NDDC’s  needs assessment and budgetary decision making processes while decrying the high rate of abandoned projects in their communities.

Among other demands in the Communique of the Town Hall Meeting, the community representatives called for a review of Section 14 of the NDDC Act 2000 to place the management of the 3 percent mandatory payments under a Trust in a manner similar and complimentary to the Host Communities provisions in the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA) 2021. They urged the oil companies to promptly publish their annual budgets and their payments to the Commission on their websites each year to enable civil society and communities to monitor their compliance and also hold the NDDC accountable.

The stakeholders further called for disclosure of the detailed NDDC budget and asked the federal government to discontinue the practice of sending the NDDC budget late after the rest of the annual budget had been deliberated in the National Assembly as the practice discourages citizen participation and accountability. They also tasked the Commission to reactivate the now moribund NDDC Project Management information system.

On the report of the NDDC forensic audit submitted to President Muhhamadu Buhari since 2022, the Meeting called on the President to make good his vow to recover every stolen kobo and ensure that the law catches up with all those found culpable.