The revived Niger Delta Improvement Board (NDDC) appears to contact base with vital centres and nerves within the unstable oil area. The technique for the reason that the new administration led by Samuel Ogbuku, an activist, got here to the limelight, now backed by a brand new board chairman, a lawyer, Chiedu Ebie, appears to be to start by assuaging the grievances and anger of the icons that command the love of the folks, and people for whose struggles the Fee was created in 12 months 2000.
One such icon is the late Ken Saro-Wiwa, and the NDDC has marked out his group, Bane, in Khana LGA of Rivers State for pressing consideration.
This technique, coupled with the welfare and human capital growth strategy of the Rivers State Consultant on the seventh board of the NDDC, Tony Okocha, appears to win hearts quickly and massively up to now, not less than in Rivers State, the headquarters of the Fee is situated.
Okocha led the NDDC to distribute aid commodities for victims of flood catastrophe, rescued cholera victims in Soku, and stormed Bane with solar-powered road lights.
This new contact appears to melt the hearts of the folks of the area who had been severely injured by the inactions of the NDDC before now 20 years coupled with information of wasted N6 trillion discovered within the forensic audit that former president Muhammadu Buhari ordered.
Okocha, while justifying his strategy (welfare and human capital growth), argued that if people were allowed to perish, no one would use the initiatives folks discuss.
The visit to the hometown of the late Ken Saro Wiwa appeared to impress pleasure and enthusiasm from the plenty and leaders alike.
It was thus a carnival on Thursday, February 29, 2024, in the neighbourhood because the NDDC, by way of the Rivers State Workplace of the Fee, flagged off the set up of about 300 hybrid solar-powered streetlights.
The Rivers State consultant within the NDDC board, on a courtesy go to the palace of the Gbenemene of Ken-Khana kingdom, Barile Yornah Deebom, posited that the seventh NDDC board, headed by the Chiedu Ebie, and the MD/CEO, Samuel Ogbuku, discovered it worthy to mild up Bane Group by way of to Ken Saro-Wiwa Memorial Park, in commemoration of the late icon, Ken Saro-Wiwa.
He promised that NDDC would additionally consider the Bane Group Highway immediately.
Addressing the press after the official flag-off of the undertaking, Okocha emphasised that the project was in step with President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s ‘Renewed Hope Agenda’. This, he stated, guarantees that the welfare of the folks was made prime precedence.
He thanked President Tinubu for constituting the seventh Governing Board of the NDDC with the very best of the very best. He reassured that the board is poised to rewrite the historical past of NDDC by guaranteeing that the folks of the Niger Delta felt the effect of the Fee.
The Gbenemene, in his ‘Thank You’ speech, recommended the NDDC for this gesture. He specifically thanked the state’s consultant on the NDDC Board for this unusual present of affection to the Bane Group by bringing these large initiatives to the group.
Others who spoke on the occasion, expressing gratitude and appreciation to the NDDC for the undertaking, included the President of KAGOTE, Emmanuel Deeyah; the chairman of Khana LGA, Thomas Bariere; environmental rights activist and chieftain of APC, Celestine AkpoBari; Caroline Nagbor, and the elder brother of the late Ken Saro-Wiwa, Harry Wiwa, amongst others.
The spotlight of the occasion was the observance of a minute of silence in honour of the departed icon led by Okocha.
Video clips out of Bane confirmed that pupils have been studying seated on sandy flooring. Hope was thus renewed that such can be a factor of the previous in Wiwa’s hometown.
(Supply: Jacobs Chimezie Happiness, SA on Media to Rivers State Rep within the NDDC Board)
