By Chidiebere Iwuoha
Owerri
Imo state indigenes are worried that for some time now, the state is yet to get a representative on the Board of Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) in the name of commissioner.
An attempt to fill this gap was made earlier on when Senator Osita Izunaso was appointed by President Muhammadu Buhari, but he rejected the offer knowing that his community, Ohakpu and local government area of origin, Oru West, were not part of the oil-producing areas of the state.
A former Managing Director of Imo State Oil Producing Areas Development Commission (ISOPADEC), Prince Henry Okafor, who is a frontline contender to the position with enough experience in oil producing areas management, lamented that the state was missing in action as a result of non-representation on the Board.
He pleaded with the President to hasten up and bridge the gap by using his discretion to appoint one of them in order to give the state a sense of belonging.
Another strong contender to the position, Zion Uka, collaborated with Okafor, but added that it was a spiritual problem which would eventually come to pass with his emergence as NDDC Commissioner for Imo.
He boasted that the delay was because his name had already been penciled down and that he had had that kind of experience before.
On the presence of NDDC projects in the state, especially as the presidency had ordered contractors to go back to site, Okafor lamented that there were a few of them in the oil producing areas of the state, especially Oguta LGA which were not major empowering projects as is the case in other major oil producing states in the country.
He, however, expressed satisfaction that eventually, the once abandoned projects would be completed and hoped that an NDDC Commissioner would be appointed for Imo to enable him to supervise and attract more projects to the state.
