President Goodluck Jonathan has said that the Niger Delta Development Commission,NDDC, has failed in the area of finance management, a problem he claimed was responsible for the dissolution of the commission’s former board.

President Goodluck Jonathan of Nigeria insisted that the NDDC has failed to justify the funds it is getting from the Federal Government, and there is an urgent need for improvement before things get out of hand.

According to him, “From three per cent to one intervention or the other, if you aggregate the total amount of money the Federal Government has spent on this agency, it is enormous and I don’t believe that we have something on ground to show very clearly.

“People are so inquisitive now, society is becoming more open and of course the freedom of press laws and so on, so everybody will want to know what is happening in the NDDC and it is your responsibility to do things differently.

“The former board, at a time, had to be dissolved because instead of the board to work with the management to make sure that people from the area benefit from the NDDC, they were busy quarrelling over money.

“The money does not belong to the board members or the staff, the money belongs to the people yet they were quarrelling. “If the money that belongs to the people is being spent the way it should, there will be no reason why people should quarrel. There are guidelines in terms of procurement and managing of funds and if the Managing Director or Executive Director is doing things contrary to expectations, there are lines of reporting, there are lines of authority and I will expect you to follow.

“I don’t expect you to go and start quarrelling. I expect you to be committed, both the board and the management, so as to ensure that the people from the area benefit from the resources.”