Crisis Looms in Delta over Non-passage of DESOPADEC Budget

Crisis Looms in Delta over Non-passage of DESOPADEC Budget

Another round of crisis is again brewing in Delta State as oil producing communities have threatened to resort to violence over the non-passage of the N28 billion budget of the Delta State Oil Producing areas Development Commission (DESOPADEC).

The oil producing communities, under the auspices of Delta Oil and Gas Stakeholders Group (DOGSG), warned that the refusal of both the state government and the House of Assembly to pass the budget, four months to the end of the year, is an invitation to anarchy.

According to a statement issued and signed by the President of the group, Dr. Tagbiretse John, and External Affairs Officer, Obakpo Goodluck, "We believe that we must speak out now in view of the precarious security challenges in the Niger Delta region and the need  to avoid giving violence-prone elements an opportunity to latch onto the present despondency to unleash further havoc on oil facilities and our communities because of the deliberate decimation of DESOPADEC by the powers that be in the state."

It accused both the state government and lawmakers of deliberately denying the DESOPADEC of 50 percent of the 13 percent derivation funds for the development of the oil bearing communities in the state.

"We have watched with growing exasperation the indolence and systematic rot that has currently crept in and overtaken theDESOPADEC since the present administration took over in 2015.

"We can no longer sit down and do nothing while a colossal conspiracy to cripple the only hope of oil producing communities in the state is unraveling before our eyes," the group noted.

The group decried the "2016 missing budget of DESOPADEC," noting that it is the reason the commission has failed in its responsibilities towards the development of the oil bearing rural communities.

It said emphatically that the 2017 budget of the commission is supposed to be wrapped up by October, but wondered how that could be possible when that of 2016 is yet to see the light of the day, four months to the end of the year.

"If the government is organised and sincere and the House of Assembly is effective, the 2017 budget would have been in the final stage of its development. Conversely, it is a shame of colossal magnitude that the 2016 DESOPADEC budget is still ‘lost in transit’. The most painful part of the debacle is that as at today, nobody knows what the budget looks or how much is contained therein.

"Nobody knows if the N28bn budget presented to the assembly in March remains or if it has been changed and how it has been altered. In this era of 'budget padding', there are disturbing reports that the Hon Monday Igbuya-led assembly is performing abracadabra with the budget, while it is also passing like Ping-Pong from the Government House to the House of Assembly. Nobody is able to account for its whereabouts today.

"This, no doubt, is a carefully orchestrated plot to deny fund to the commission and the oil producing areas. It is too much of a coincidence that the saga of DESOPADEC ‘missing budget’ started after a principal member of the assembly was accused of demanding a whopping sum of N1billion to facilitate its passage.

"Since then, we have been inundated with reports of how the N28billion budget has been bastardised and balkanised by the various interest groups in the executive and legislature. 

"Up till this moment, there is no hope that the budget will become operational even by the end of this month or the next, what a shame and disappointment to a government which prides itself as providing ‘Prosperity for all Deltans’,” it added.