NDDC scam: 1,000 Bayelsa youths back EFCC, want Jonathan’s
Aide imprisoned
Over 1,000 youths elders on Tuesday took to the streets in
Yenagoa, Bayelsa State capital, to support the recent arrest and prosecution of
a former top official of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), George
Turnah.
The embattled legal practitioner was alleged by the youths
to have fraudulently enriched himself while he served as Special Adviser to
two Managing Directors/Chief Executive Officers of the NDDC between 2012 and
2015.
The youths who carried placards with various inscriptions
commended the Economic and Financial Crimes (EFCC) for his arrest.
The groups lamented that they were shocked to hear the
revelation of how he shortchanged them during the period.
According to them, the painful part of the entire saga was
the Niger Delta Volunteer Program which was designed to empower 2,000 youths of
the region for four years with a monthly stipend of one hundred and fifty
thousand naira but he allegedly choose to pay them seventy thousand naira.
They accused former President Goodluck Jonathan of giving
Turnah the audacity to operate in an agency as sensitive as the NDDC without
being checkmated, leading to his involvement in the monumental fraud.
Their protest was coming on the heels of a similar
accusation leveled against Jonathan by Chief Perekeme Richard Kpodoh, a
chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and former security adviser to
the Bayelsa State Government.
Kpodoh who was also part of the protest had last weekend,
lampooned those who were celebrating what he described as six wasted years of
the Jonathan presidency, saying it is insulting and smacks of ignorance.
The APC leader had maintained that Jonathan failed to
attract meaningful project to the region but watched with excitement as his
aides, mainly from Bayelsa fretted the nation’s commonwealth through dubious
and phantom projects.
One of the leader of the protesters, Harold Zoukumor while
addressing the Bayelsa State Commissioner of Police, Amba Asuqo said as concern
indigenes of the region they are completely in solidarity with the EFCC for
justice to prevail in the matter.
He said ” We have seen and read in the media, the recent
arrest and detention of Mr. George Turnah. It is our desire that all said funds
recovered from him be returned to the youths of the region for further
development of their capacity as well as enhance the living standard of the
people.
“His action was a clear case of fraud which has impoverished
the ordinary people especially the youths more. So we insist that the loot
must be returned to either the NDDC or any agency to be disbursed to the youths
because it is our money and we appeal to you to use your good office to work in
line with our request.”
In his response, the Bayelsa State Commissioner of Police
thanked them for the peaceful way they conducted themselves and assured them
that their letter will get to the right place.
Turnah is now standing trial before Justice Ibrahim Watilat
of the Federal High Court, sitting in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, on a
12-count charge bordering on obtaining by false pretence, money laundering and
abuse of office.
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