The Acting Managing Director of the Niger Delta Development Company, Prof. Kemebradikumo Pondei, and his team, walked out on lawmakers investigating an alleged N40 billion irregular expenditure in the Commission on Thursday.
Pondei, who accused the Chairman of the committee, Olubumi Tunji-Ojo (representing APC Ondo) of corruption, stormed out of the hearing, saying, “We in the NDDC are not comfortable with the Chairman of the committee presiding over the matter. He is an accused party. He is an intrested party and we do not believe that the NDDC can have justice because he cannot seat on his own case.
“We have no issue of appearing, we appeared before the Senate ad hoc committee and as long as he remains, we will not make any presentation.”
The NDDC had at the beginning of the sitting told the Chairman to recuse himself from the committee, saying it was not proper for him to be there.
Tunji-Ojo had been accused at an earlier hearing by the Interim Management Committee of the NDDC of inflating a N750 million road contract to N2.5billion.
He was also accused of inserting N6.4billion into the 2019 budget as training cost and of collecting N3.8billion from the said amount before releasing the signed copy of the budget.
But members of the committee said the Chairman would continue on the committee since there were no documents before them to authenticate the NDDC management’s claims.
Having met a brickwall, the Acting NDDC MD sought the permission of the lawmakers to leave. He did not wait for their permission before leaving the venue of the hearing.
The lawmakers, however, passed a vote of confidence in their Chairman, accusing the NDDC interim management of trying to frustrate legislative functions and therefore said a warrant of arrest should be issued against the MD.
