TheCable

The federal government has flagged off the physical verification phase of the forensic audit of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC).

Godswill Akpabio, minister of Niger Delta affairs, inaugurated the exercise during the strategic capacity building workshop of NDDC on Saturday.

Akpabio said 16 field auditors were selected to immediately begin to identify and verify the over 12,000 projects across the nine states of the Niger Delta region.

“It is the considered position of President Muhammadu Buhari that for us to have a properly constituted board for the NDDC, we should first take a look at what has happened to the Commission since inception,” he said.

“There was nothing our detractors have not done to stop the forensic audit and this has led some people to be left wondering if the forensic audit has been aborted.”

The minister said budgetary delays affected the progress of the forensic exercise which prompted Buhari to intervene to save the situation.

“The President is resolute that he cannot leave the Niger Delta and the NDDC the way he met it. As a demonstration of this commitment, he is funding the forensic audit from the budget of the Presidency,” he said.

He added that the security component of the audit exercise was very important because of the safety issues in the Niger Delta region and that “the field visit is a critical next step, after which we go into the office to produce the reports”.

Akpabio also stressed that the physical verification was a very serious exercise because the results of the findings may lead to the prosecution of the affected contractors, some of whom abandoned their contracts without completing them.

In his remarks, Joshua Basiru, the lead forensic auditor, said Buhari ordered the forensic audit of NDDC in 2019 as a result of the huge gap noted between resources invested and the infrastructural, human and economic development recorded by the commission.

“It is our collective responsibility to ensure that this forensic audit exercise is successfully executed, in a bid to re-position the Commission in terms of effectively delivering on its mandate, as well as improving transparency and accountability in NDDC,” he said.

Basiru urged the field forensic auditors and their teams to diligently and meticulously render their professional service.