Niger Delta Development Commission

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The Niger Delta Development Commission is a federal Government agency established by Nigerian president, Olusegun Obasanjo in the year 2000 with the sole mandate of developing the oil-rich Niger Delta region of southern Nigeria.

[edit] Background

The genesis of the NDDC is largely a response to the demands of the population of the Niger Delta, a populous area inhabited by a diversity of minority ethnic groups. During the 1990s these ethnic groups, most infamously the Ijaw and the Ogoni established organisations to confront the Nigerian government and multinational oil companies like Shell. The minorities of the Niger Delta have continued to agitate and articulate demands for greater autonomy and control of the area's petroleum resources. Their grievances are justified by the extensive environmental degradation and pollution from oil activities that have operated in the region since the late 1950s. However, the minority communities of oil producing areas have received little or no currency from the multi-billion dollar a year industry which lines of the pockets of foreign multinationals and corrupt government officials; environmental remediation measures are limited and negligible. The region is highly underdeveloped and is one poor even by Nigeria's low standards for quality of life.

The circumstances eventually precipitated active and sometimes violent confrontation with the state and oil companies, as well as with other communities. As a result, oil production has been hamstringed as disaffected youth or organisations deliberately disrupt oil operations in attempts to effect change. These disruptions have been extremely costly to the Nigerian oil industry, and both the multinationals and the federal government have vested interest in permitting uninterrupted extraction operations; the NDDC is a result of these concerns and is an attempted to satisfied the demands of the delta's restive population.

[edit] Mandate and operations

President, Olusegun Obasanjo (left), Rivers State Governor Peter Odili (center), and NDDC Chairman, Onyema Ugochukwu (right) at the opening of the NDDC headquarters in Port Harcourt.

The NDDC operates under the mandate of improving social and environmental conditions in the South-South region, which it acknowledges as horrific in its own reports. However, the organisation has come under scrutiny and according to some is generally regarded as vehicle of corruption and prebendalism. [1] [2]

To achieve its mandate, the NDDC board identified the following areas of focus:

• Development of social and physical infrastructure
• Technology
• Economic revival and prosperity
• Ecological/environmental remediation and stability
• Human development

[edit] Executive Chairman

The position of Executive Chairman of the NDDC has been a subject of much debate. A compromise was reached where the position would be rotated within the nine oil producing states in alphabetical order: Abia, Akwa Ibom, Bayelsa, Cross River, Delta, Edo, Imo, Ondo and Rivers.

* As of January 2007, NDDC Finance Director, Timi Alaibe was appointed as the acting Managing Director of NDDC [3]

[edit] References

• NDDC: When ambitions flow like rivers
• Alaibe, New NDDC Boss, Sets Targets
• Senator Ararume Lauds NDDC
• NDDC is reconstructing the destruction of 50 years
• Boost for Nigeria Delta

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