The Niger Delta Development Commission may be in for more trouble as the Office of the Auditor General of the Federation has transmitted an audit report on the finances of the commission to the House of Representatives.

In the report, the Auditor-General issued several queries on expenditures by the NDDC between 2013 and 2018.

The queried expenditures totalled N77,722,031,549.

The office also forwarded a report on the Nigerian Bulk Electricity Trading Company Plc to the House.

The Chairman, House Committee on Public Accounts, Mr Wole Oke, confirmed the receipt of the reports on Tuesday, and added that both would be given accelerated consideration when the National Assembly resumes from the current two-month annual recess in September.

The report on the commission was titled, ‘Special periodic checks on the activities and programmes of the NDDC for the period 1st January 2013 – 30th June, 2018.’

The PUNCH had on July 27, 2020, exclusively reported that the NDDC would face a fresh probe, as the House had summoned all serving and former heads of the commission to account for billions of naira allegedly unaccounted for.

The committee had issued the summons based on numerous queries earlier issued by the OAuGF on the accounts of the NDDC.

This is different from the probe being carried out by the Senate and the House over alleged illegal spending and mismanagement of funds totalling N81.5bn.

It was reported that the committee summoned both the current acting Managing Director and head of the Interim Management Committee, Prof. Daniel Pondei; a former managing director, Timi Alaibe; and the immediate past acting managing director, Dr Joi Nunieh, to explain alleged missing funds.

Oke had said the IMC could not answer the queries issued by the OAuGF, as some of the expenditures were done before it came on board.

The OAuGF has now forwarded more queries on the NDDC expenditures to the committee.

The cover letter of the latest set of queries was refrenced OAuGF/GEN.CORR./SSA/50 and dated August 18, 2020.

The AuGF issued queries on NDDC’s payment of N459.350m for medical check-up expenses to part-time board members; “excessive payment” of N1,358,300,000  imprest to the executive board members; and engagement and payment of external solicitors without the consent of the Minister of Justice and Attorney-General of the Federation for N1,582,986,030.

Others are irregularities in the award of contract for logistics and consultation services, N199,474,160.50; and award of emergency contracts without stating the contract prices, N3,001,517,063.27.

The OAuGF also queried the N1,714,074,999.93 spent on partnership on entrepreneurship development scheme without specific benefits or procedure for the recoupment of the NDDC investment in the partnership; payment of N190,956,527.75 as compensation through Chris Oghene Omoru & Co. without evidence of job execution; and N86,531,503 “irregular payment” of compensation.