Group Berates Sylva for NDDC Board Delay; Lauds Akpabio’s Choice of Dimaro as MD

A Civil Rights Group, The Niger Delta Oil and Gas Producing Communities, (NDOGPC) has accused Chief Tmipre Sylva, the Minister of State for Petroleum for the seeming delay in constitution of the board of the Niger Delta Development Commission, (NDDC).

In a statement by the group’s National Coordinator, Chief Preye Olomu, the group stated that Sylva’s interest of nominating an inexperienced young Maxwell Okoh, or his former Chief of Staff, Samuel Ogbuku, who is already an apointee as SSA to Senate Deputy Leader, Senator Ovie Omo Agege, both are candidates from his own Bayelsa East District which has enjoyed majority of the federal appointments already is causing disaffection and uproar from people of the Bayelsa West District who have been shortchanged by Sylva’s ethnic bias
against them in spite of their commitments and contributions to the party.

Chief Olomu while commending the Minister of Niger Delta Affairs, Senator Godswill Akpabio for his choice of an Ekeremor son from Peretorugbene, Senator Denyanbofa Dimaro to be the Managing Director for the forthcoming board, hinted that Sylva has single handedly without consultations nominated other federal appointees without ceding any to the Bayelsa West District.

The group mentioned names of recent federal appointees in the APC to be persons from the East District (where Sylva is from) and a few from the Central District with no appointee from the Bayelsa West District so as to maintain the equitable balance of federal appointments in the state.

The group calls on Sylva to step down his nomination of Samuel Ogbuku (his former Chief of Staff) or Maxwell Okoh (who is still in his 30s – too young with no cognate inexperience in the sector) both from OGBIA, as MD of the NDDC and allow Akpabio’s nomination of a roundly qualified, matured and experienced Senator Dimaro (whose pedigree as an astute leader is not in doubt from the deprived West District) to sail through as Akpabio had consulted with people of the district and the state at large before to the choice of Senator Dimaro was unanimously accepted so as to do justice, equity and fair play to party faithful across the state.

The group warns that if Sylva fails to heed this warning by routing for his own stooge, then he should be further held responsible for the factionalisation and crisis that would erupt in the party due to his non consultative and authoritarian mode of running the party as a sole administrator to suit his whims and caprices!

The group lauded President Mohammadu Buhari for his strides and listening ear to people of the district as they urge Senator Akpabio to continue his good plans for the region while the board is inaugurated and the forensic audit continues to completion.

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