An Indigenous Oil Producing Group under the aegis of Ilaje Parapo Forum (IPF) urged the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Hon Tajudeen Abbas, not to appoint Hon. Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo as Chairman House Committee on Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) in the 10th Assembly.
The Group’s National Secretary, Bode Orofin, in a statement titled: ‘Dont reappoint Tunji Ojo as the House Committee Chairman on NDDC,’ made available to Parliamentary Correspondents on Monday, accused the lawmaker of boasting of doling out money for the emergence of Hon. Speaker of the House of Representatives.
According to the Group, “speculation remains rife that Ojo is lobbying intensely and might use his influence to get back to the Chairman House Committee on NDDC’s seat after allegedly defrauding the peace-loving inhabitants of Niger Delta Region of Ondo state in the Ninth Assembly.
The Group, in the statement, stressed that it recalled the Lawmaker in the 9th Assembly allegedly conspired with the Interim Management Committee of the Commission, IMC, of the NDDC between 2019 and 2022 to deny the people of Ilaje/Ese Odo Federal Constituency in Ondo State their right place in the Commission within the time frame mentioned above.
The Group also expressed regrets that the “anticipated development of the Niger Delta region has continued to elude the region largely because of corruptions and self-aggrandizement of politicians, thus leaving the region in a State of perpetual environmental degradations, human and socio-economic squalor.
It also emphasized that the House Committee on NDDC in the 9th Assembly under the chairmanship of Ojo create unprecedented calamities in the Commission for the people of the oil-producing Area of the state in terms of projects allocation, empowerment programs, training, Scholarship, and employment of new staff into the Commission.
“As part of his constitutional duties to oversight all projects in the region, Hon Olubunmi Tunji Ojo did not visit the oil-producing Areas of ILAJE and ESE-ODO for his four years reign as NDDC Committee Chairman, and he never consulted stakeholders in the oil-producing communities before imputing Ondo State projects in the NDDC budget. Additionally, he diverted NDDC projects and programmes to the Akoko Area of Ondo State at the expense of the suffering oil-producing areas in the state.
“In the recent appointment made for junior and senior officers in the Commission, out of 56 officers, Hon Olubunmi Tunji Ojo used his position to employ 45 from Akoko, his federal constituency that does not have a single drop of oil but gave only 11 to the applicants from the oil-producing areas.
“Privilege information before us reveals that Hon. Tunji Ojo has been bragging to people that he doled out money to the emergence of Hon. Speaker of the House of Representatives and that the Speaker is under compulsion to consider him for any position of his choice in the 10th Assembly.
“We therefore call on the House of Representatives leadership not to yield to pressure to retain/ reappoint Hon. Tunji Ojo as the Chairman House Committee on NDDC, rather for fairness and justice, we advocate for true representation by the lawmaker from the mandate areas of Ilaje/Ese Odo Federal Constituency, who is raised amidst the pains and suffering incurred through oil exploration.
“Bearing in mind that NDDC is an institution established to cater for environmental degradation occasioned by oil exploration in the degradation occasioned by oil exploration in the Environmental Management Plans (EMP), as an important aspect and response to Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA), as best practices across the world,” the Group said in the statement.
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