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Blessing Ibunge in Port Harcourt

A former spokesman of the Pan Niger Delta Forum (PANDEF), Anabs Sara-Igbe, has reinstated support for the Managing Director of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), Dr. Samuel Ogbuku.

This as the Niger Delta elder statesman condemned the recent call by a group under the aegis of Niger Delta Elders and Stakeholders seeking the removal of Ogbuku, as the managing director of NDDC.

Sara-Igbe, who spoke with journalists in Port Harcourt, River State, said the group raised a false alarm that there was anger in the region after President Bola Tinubu refused to sack Ogbuku from the position.

The national coordinator of South-south Leadership Forum said the call for the sack of the NDDC boss was made by a “faceless and non-existing group called ‘Niger Delta Elders and Stakeholders’.

He also condemned the allegation that the commission’s leadership was involved in “reckless spending, fraud, shoddy deals, and disloyalty during the February 25, 2023, presidential election and unnecessary spending of public funds and payment of outstanding contractual obligations.”

Sara-Igbe said the leadership of the said group is an alleged enemy of the region, insisting that “there is no visible anger in any of the states of the Niger Delta region.”

He recalled that “respected organisations, including the various ethnic nationalities, South-south Leadership Forum, MOSENG, and the Phase 1-3 Ex Agitators of the Niger Delta region led by PANDEF recently paid a solidarity visit to the managing director and his team at the NDDC headquarters in Port Harcourt.”

Sara-Igbe, who noted that Ogbuku was a Niger Delta activist, and a former secretary-general of the Ijaw Youth Council (IYC), wondered how he would be accused of not having the capacity to lead the commission, adding that some of the petitioners against his stay at the NDDC are betrayers and traitors of the region.

He said the alleged sponsors of the publication were ‘those who see the commission as a cash cow and looted it dry, and now that they are no longer in charge by directly controlling the NDDC, they have, therefore, resorted to blackmail and all kind of antics to remove the present leadership and replace it with their cronies, so that they will further loot the commission dry.”