THE National Assembly has assured Nigerians that it will assist the Niger Delta Development Commission to recover all monies owed the interventionist agency.

The Chairman, Senate Committee on Niger Delta, Senator Peter Nwaoboshi, made the pledge on Tuesday during a meeting in Abuja between his committee and the management of the NDDC, led by its Acting Managing Director, Mrs. Ibim Semenitari.

Nwaoboshi explained that proper funding would help the NDDC to ensure sustainable development of Niger Delta, describing the challenge of developing the region as enormous.


 
The lawmaker said in a statement signed by the Head, Corporate Affairs of the NDDC, Mr. Chijioke Amu-Nnadi, that all relevant contributors to the commission must play their roles diligently.

“The Senate Committee on Niger Delta, in discharging its oversight functions, will ensure that every contributor to the NDDC pays what they owe the commission.

“This is because we cannot afford to toy with the development of that very important region. We owe it to the country to make sure we improve the living conditions of the people of the region,” he added.

Nwaoboshi said that the committee was ready to do what it would take, including amending necessary laws, to ensure full compliance by agencies statutorily obligated to contribute funds to the NDDC.

Promising to do all that was necessary to resolve the impasse over the non-payment by gas-processing companies to the NDDC funds, Nwaoboshi said, “It is important that the NDDC gets all that is due it and from the Ecological Fund Office, for instance.”

The lawmaker also declared that the budget of the oil companies should be made public so that the commission would be aware of how much was due to it in order to avoid shortfall in remittances.

Presenting the status report of the NDDC, Semenitari had informed the Senate committee that the NDDC had yet to receive contributions from the Ecological Fund Office since inception in 2001.