President Muhammadu Buhari has removed the Eket-born (Akwa Ibom State) Bassey Dan-Abia as managing director of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC).
In his place, the President named Ibim Semenitari, the immediate past commissioner of information and communication in Rivers State, as the new managing director, pending the appointment of a substantive Managing Director/CEO.
THEWILL can report that the board of the NDDC was the first to go as soon as Buhari came to power. Calls continued for the sack of the management and possible probe, but the Federal Government merely received an audit report on the Commission, which may have revealed abandoned projects of many years standing.
Dan-Abia was only appointed managing director exactly two years ago (December 13, 2013), and has just revived the stakeholders forum that reviews the progress of the Commission.
Semenitari, an award-winning journalist and media manager, had served in the communications directorate of the Buhari Presidential Campaign Organisation during the 2015 presidential election.
Before then, Semenitari, married to Henry Semenitari, a former Managing Director, Unity Bank plc, who had also won several global awards as a banker.
As Commissioner of Information and Communications in Rivers State under the administration of the immediate past governor, Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi, Ibim stood out as the pillar of the administration and became a bone in the throat of the opposition in the state.
Her appointment may send shock waves across the oil region as all eyes had fixed in the NDDC as many groups looked up to the Commission for one favour or the other. Ibim may inherit a list of abandoned projects worth over N1.5 trillion.