By Omoniyi Salaudeen
The agitation for regional development commissions has finally run its complete cycle.
Last Tuesday, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu assented to the North Central Development Commission (NCDC) Bill 2024 recently passed into law by the National Assembly.
With the latest creation, each region of the country now has a development commission to take care of its peculiar challenges.
The President of the Senate, Senator Godwin Akpabio, who announced the signing of the bill during plenary said that the commission would drive development at the grassroots.
To be clear, the initiative of the development commission was the brainchild of former President Olusegun Obasanjo.
Under his administration, the Federal Government established the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) in 2000 as an intervention agency for the development of the oil-rich Niger Delta region of Nigeria which had suffered environmental devastation as a result of oil exploration activities.
Following the same line of thought, the National Assembly passed another bill creating the North East Development Commission (NEDC) in 2017 to underscore national concern with the devastation suffered by the region due to the Boko Haram insurgency.
It was expeditiously signed into law by erstwhile President Muhammadu Buhari who inaugurated the board of the commission.
The Act gives the North-East Development Commission the mandate to receive and manage funds allocated by the Federal Government and international donor agencies for the resettlement, rehabilitation, integration, and reconstruction of roads, houses, and business premises of victims of insurgency.
By the provision of the bill, the recovery and re-development of the region is expected to last for decades.
“The commission will among other things coordinate projects and programmes within the Master plan for the rehabilitation, resettlement, reconciliation, reconstruction, and sustainable development of the North-East Zone in the fields of infrastructure, human and social services including health and nutrition, education and water supply, agriculture, wealth creation and employment opportunities, urban and rural development and poverty alleviation.”
However, the activities of these agencies have been severely marred by the twin challenges of underfunding and endemic corruption in the system.
For instance, the NDDC forensic audit report conducted during the Buhari administration put the total fund released between 2001 and 2019 at over N6 trillion.
Yet, there is little to show for it. Instead, the gross misappropriation of funds has become a major albatross weighing heavily on the neck of successive management boards.
The story is the same with the NEDC which has received over N3 trillion since its creation in 2017. The problem of poor accountability has continued to dog its activities.
Despite all these shortcomings, the bills expanding the development commissions from two to six have been passed by the current National Assembly and signed into law by President Tinubu. These are the North-West Development Commission (Establishment) Bill, 2024, the South-East Development Commission (Establishment) Bill, 2023, South-West Development Commission Bill, 2024 and North Central Development Commission Bill, 2024.
Though the president cited the acceleration of development as one of the reasons for the new commissions, many stakeholders are skeptical about the impact of these interventionist agencies. Noting the power politics that has crept into the initiative, they have expressed concern over the proliferation of these regional development commissions at a time when the country is perceived to be bleeding due to the prohibitive cost of governance amid rising debt profile.
Though concerned stakeholders in the benefiting regions are excited about the newly created development commission, there is general cynicism that they may not necessarily drive any development other than adding to the cost of governance or becoming another conduit pipe for siphoning public funds.
In particular, the advocates of fiscal federalism and restructuring do not see any necessity in the new development commissions, insisting that only the local government structure closest to the grassroots can bring development to the people.
Intriguingly, the rush for the creation of the new commissions is coming at a time when the public is looking forward to the implementation of the Steve Oronsaye Report to prune down the number of federal agencies having overlapping functions.
The proliferation of development commissions across all six geo-political zones contradicts the recommendations of the Oronsaye Report, which advocated the streamlining and reduction of the administrative cost of governance.
Chief Chekwas Okorie, while not totally against the creation of the new regional development, expressed cautious optimism, saying that the realization of the ultimate goal would depend on the initiative of each commission to attract investments for self-sustenance.
While discussing with Sunday Sun in a telephone interview, he recounted the circumstances leading to the idea of creating a development by former President Olusegun Obasanjo.
His words: “The idea of creating development commissions started as a necessity, especially for the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) to calm down frayed nerves during the period of militant attacks on oil facilities. Former President Olusegun Obasanjo initiated the measure so that the economy could pick up again.
“Due to the damage done to the Northeast by the Boko Haram insurgency, former Muhammdu Buhari also considered the establishment of a similar commission for the development of the region.
“Way back in 2017, a member of the House of Representatives, Hon Onyeama from Anambra State, also proposed a bill for a commission to principally address the infrastructural deficit in the Southeast resulting from the civil war that ended in 1970. However, that particular bill did not go beyond the first reading. When this 10th Assembly came into office, the Deputy Speaker dusted the bill again. Perhaps because of better lobbying of the Southeast caucus in the House of Representatives, the bill was passed into law with the concurrence of the Senate and the President graciously signed it into law. And everybody was excited that for the first time since 1970, the issue of reconstruction would be addressed after 55 years the war had ended.
“The remaining zones then began to look at it as the Federal Government’s largesse, thinking that they would be marginalized if they didn’t ask for their commissions. So, it became a political matter from that point. With the newly created commissions, each geo-political zone now has a commission.
“Like they say, the taste of the budding is in the eating. So, what they make of it is what will make the difference. There must be room for the commissions to generate revenue through investment attraction; otherwise, they will turn out to be another organ for dispensing Federal government allocation.”
Also speaking, Alhaji Tanko Yakasai applauded the Tinubu administration for creating the new regional development commission, saying it would promote healthy competition among different geo-political zones.
“The new development centres were created for the development of different regions of the country. So, it will stimulate healthy competition in Nigeria. Every zone is now trying to make use of the best opportunity to provide services to the people.
“I am privileged to observe, first hand, the development of the country from the colonial government to the present. We started from three regions: the North, the Southeast and the Southwest. Now, we have 36 states with governors.
“I do not foresee any problem about funding the commissions because we now have higher tax revenue generating capacity than before,” he posited
However, the Secretary of the Ijaw Elders Forum, Lagos chapter, Mr Efiye Bribena, in his response, described the proliferation of development commissions as a negation of the original idea about the establishment of the NDDC.
He said: “It’s a funny development that this is happening in a country where people perpetuate all kinds of injustices against the minority.
“The NDDC was set up to take care of pollution and devastation of the environment as a result of oil exploration activities which unfortunately they have not been able to effectively managed. That is why you have oil-producing states that are not part of the Niger Delta on the NDDC list. So, the idea of creating different development commissions and lumping them together with NDDC is most unfortunate.
“The NDDC is not a regional commission. Rather, it was created to take care of the problems arising from oil exploration activities in the oil- producing states.
At the end of the day, the funding of these new development commissions will depend on the revenue coming from oil. It shows that this government is fraudulent in its activities. Otherwise, how can it promise to implement the Orosanye report and at the same time creating different layers of administrative costs?
“It shows that the government is not serious about its promise to implement the report. Some people just want to corner the Federal Government’s funds through the creation of these new commissions.”
