The Minister for Niger Delta Affairs, Senator Godswill Obot Akpabio has said that the events of the last few days at the National Assembly were a clear indication that corruption is fighting back at him.

 Akpabio who is a former Governor of Akwa Ibom State and one-time Senate Minority Leader was speaking in reaction to allegations levelled against him by a former Acting Managing Director of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), Joi Nunieh. He said he was being vilified for his determination to end the sleaze in the system.

“My decision to reduce the illegal cash flow at the NDDC to corrupt individuals through the forensic audit ordered by President Muhammadu Buhari is the reason for these attacks,” said Akpabio.

The Minister claimed the NDDC had bled for too long in the hands of politicians who reduced it to their cash cow, adding that those who are incensed with him and the Interim Management Committee are fighting back to stop further blocking of the leakages in the system.

Akpabio observed that in the last couple of months, he and the NDDC IMC have come under a barrage of attacks in a fierce fightback by politicians wounded by the forensic audit. These attacks, he believes, manifest in sponsorship of petitions to the National Assembly and media blackmail by politicians who are evidently hurt by the efforts to sanitise the Commission. Again, according to the minister, these attacks which have continued unabated, constitute a huge distraction to the work  he and the NDDC management are doing as directed by the President.

He however assured that he would not be deterred in his resolve to lead the desired change at the Commission to justify the confidence of President Buhari as well as the support and goodwill of patriotic citizens of the Niger Delta region, noting that “forensic, forensic and forensic alone is the way forward to give the NDDC back to the people for which the agency was created.”

 On an optimistic note, he said that with the successful conclusion of the forensic audit of the NDDC, the Commission will in future be free from the profligacy of the past and the Niger Delta itself will no longer be a museum of abandoned projects.