Community leaders and activists in Nigeria’s oil-rich Niger Delta are mounting fierce criticism of President Bola Tinubu’s administration over delayed infrastructure and secretive finances at the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC).
The Federal Government has so far failed to release the long-awaited forensic audit report on the NDDC – despite it having spent hundreds of millions of naira to commission that audit.
At the same time, many of the agency’s flagship infrastructure projects remain unfinished, prompting questions about misused funds under Managing Director Dr. Samuel Ogbuku.
Critics note that, even as local communities wallow in poverty and decaying roads, public funds seem diverted to pet projects – including Ogbuku’s lavish 50th birthday celebrations.
This report pieces together the unfolding controversy, drawing on public records and recent journalism to assess the facts and implications.
Stalled Roads and Bridges
Local sources say a raft of NDDC road and bridge projects – long promised to alleviate the region’s infrastructural deficits – are still incomplete.
SaharaReporters lists several key projects still “dragging on” months or years after they began. These include the Kaa-Ataba Bridge (Rivers State), a 1.2‑kilometre link between Andoni and Kana LGAs meant to serve as an alternate route to Bonny Island.
Also undone is the Nasak Junction AON Road & Bridge (Akwa Ibom State), a 30 km highway intended to connect border communities to Abia State.
In Rivers State the Okirika–Borikiri Bridge remains unfinished, and the ambitious Bonny Ring Road – a 27.14 km highway with 13 bridges around Bonny Town – is still under construction.
- Kaa-Ataba Bridge (Rivers State, 1.2 km) – road and bridge connecting Andoni and Kana LGAs (alternate route to Bonny Island).
- Nasak Junction AON Road & Bridge (Akwa Ibom, ~30 km) – highway and bridge linking communities to Abia State.
- Okirika–Borikiri Bridge (Rivers State) – major bridge (details unspecified).
- Bonny Ring Road (Rivers State, 27.14 km, 13 bridges) – circuit road expected to link Bonny Town to surrounding areas.
These are projects meant to provide vital access and trade routes for remote communities. Yet they remain “yet-to-be-completed,” according to SaharaReporters’ investigation.
This paralysis comes at a high cost: NDDC’s own 2024 budget presentation quietly called for a ₦1.911 trillion allocation and “completion of more than 200km of roads” by year-end.
The discrepancy between these ambitious targets and on-the-ground reality has fuelled alarm among residents, who note that the Niger Delta – despite being Nigeria’s oil wealth engine – is widely regarded as the country’s poorest region. One youth group highlighted that the Delta contains “87% of all poor people in Nigeria” and ranks lowest on the Human Development Index.
With so much at stake, abandoned or half-built projects are seen as a direct betrayal of the NDDC’s founding mandate to alleviate the area’s poverty and neglect.
Audit Report and Spending Secrecy
Compounding the frustration over stalled projects is the secrecy surrounding the NDDC’s finances. In early 2023, shortly before President Muhammadu Buhari left office, the Federal Government commissioned a wide-ranging forensic audit of the NDDC to probe allegations of corruption. Public procurement records show the government paid ₦652.8 million for forensic audit contracts during 17–22 February 2023.
In fact, SERAP (a prominent anti-corruption NGO) later reported that roughly ₦1.4 billion was approved for the audit team. Yet as of September 2025 – more than two and a half years after Buhari’s 2019 order to audit the agency – the Tinubu administration has refused to publish a single page of the findings.
According to SaharaReporters and other watchdogs, this audit was supposed to reveal “the financial expenditures of the NDDC” over many years. SERAP has indicated the audit allegedly “implicated top officials and politicians in the disappearance of N6 trillion” from the NDDC between 2001 and 2019.
The terms of the lawsuit filed by SERAP in July 2025 allege exactly that – that the undisclosed audit report documents a ₦6 trillion embezzlement and over 13,000 abandoned projects in the Niger Delta. One of SERAP’s letters to the President warned:
“The missing N6 trillion and over 13,000 abandoned projects in the Niger Delta have continued to have a negative impact on the human rights of Nigerians, undermining their access to basic public goods and services, such as education, healthcare, and regular and uninterrupted electricity supply.”
In other words, communities suffer basic deprivation while vast sums of money remain unaccounted for. Civil society groups charge that the 2023 forensic audit was a white elephant – budgeted at a hefty price, but possibly commissioned “not to provide transparency and accountability, but merely as a ruse to defer and avoid it”.
Indeed, SERAP notes it was initially Buhari’s government that ordered the audit; now Tinubu’s team is accused of quietly shelving it. The Youth of the Niger Delta have openly accused the NDDC of failing to tackle the region’s poverty – one umbrella group even threatened a “peace march” in Abuja to demand action on endemic neglect.
Opulence Amid Decay
Worse outrage has come over reports of extravagance within the NDDC at a time of hardship. Most egregiously, Dr. Ogbuku’s own 50th birthday celebrations – held in 2025 – drew national attention.
SaharaReporters broke the story that the event was an international multi-city extravaganza “bankrolled, at least in part, by the same taxpayers the NDDC was created to support”. Commentators have estimated that the festivities may have cost over ₦5 billion in public funds.
“What could have been a simple and understated celebration of a public servant’s 50th birthday has instead ballooned into a lavish, multi-city spectacle,” one critic wrote.
Notably, this was a golden jubilee attended by President Tinubu himself – the Guardian reported that Tinubu praised Ogbuku’s “life of service, scholarship, and impactful leadership” during the Abuja ceremony.
In fact, the news media ran glowing profiles: the president hailed Ogbuku as a “transformational leader” for the Niger Delta, and a friendly NGO leader lauded him for an “unprecedented rollout of critical projects” (listing roads and power lines).
But local critics see a grim irony. The same Niger Delta that struggles with frequent blackouts, dirty water and impassable roads has reportedly funded its own neglect and the MD’s personal pageantry.
Saharareporters noted that even after a presidential directive to suspend non-essential activities, the NDDC “went ahead to distribute vehicles among the board members” in late 2023 – in other words, new cars for insiders. Meanwhile, around Bonny, Ikot Abasi, Ikom and elsewhere the NDDC has nothing to show.
“Dr. Ogbuku’s conduct reveals a deeper dysfunction in Nigeria’s public sector – a tendency toward extravagance that continues to undermine efforts to combat poverty in regions like the Niger Delta,” one activist commented
He added: “oil wealth is often diverted for personal indulgence instead of being used to improve community welfare”.
In sum, the optics are stark. On one hand, government and allied voices trumpet progress: federal officials and a host of business and political figures attended the MD’s birthday, and Ogbuku himself pointed to a string of commissioned projects and reforms. On the other, ordinary Delta citizens see festivity where roads should be, and a party budget when there should have been an audit.
SaharaReporters quoted an anonymous observer: if the birthday cost are true, “such a figure would not only highlight gross financial mismanagement but also raise serious ethical concerns”.
Growing Calls for Transparency and Probe
Amid this schism, pressure is mounting on the government for accountability. Several forums of Niger Delta leaders have publicly urged President Tinubu to break the silence.
In September 2025, a broad forum of Niger Delta ethnic nationalities – including ex-governors and community elders – commended the NDDC Board’s recent efforts while explicitly demanding release of the forensic audit report for transparency.
They warned that dissolving the Board could be disruptive, but they stressed that publishing the audit was necessary to sustain public confidence. Notably, the same Rivers State forum had earlier described Ogbuku’s leadership as bringing “hope and renewed energy”, showing the wide range of opinion in the region.
At the same time, activist groups have called for criminal investigations. The Ijaw Publishers’ Forum (IPF) – representing local journalists – publicly appealed to the anti-corruption agencies (EFCC and ICPC) to probe Ogbuku’s tenure.
The IPF spokesperson criticized recent favourable statements by the EFCC toward the NDDC, calling them “unhealthy and suspicious,” and urged investigators not to become “a part of the NDDC” but rather protect the people’s interests.
In August 2025 they amplified demands for a full probe of “ghost projects,” contract scams and substandard work – effectively painting Ogbuku’s administration as rife with fraud.
Other voices include grassroots and civil society activists. The NGO SERAP has gone to court: in July 2025 it and four citizens filed suit at the ECOWAS Court seeking to compel the government to publish the audit report.
SERAP pointed out in that suit that withholding the audit appears to violate Nigerians’ rights to information; the group highlighted that the forensic audit reportedly names those behind the alleged disappearance of ₦6 trillion.
Likewise, the Unemployed Youths Association of Nigeria (UYAN) in late 2024 declared its frustration: it threatened marches on Abuja and Port Harcourt for the removal of Ogbuku, charging that Delta youths “have not felt any impact in the NDDC” and urging urgent intervention to save the region from “impending doom”.
Even global norms have been invoked. SERAP’s letter to Tinubu cited international law – e.g. Article 25 of the UN Convention against Corruption – obliging Nigeria to penalise those who obstruct corruption probes. The letter warned that failing to publish the audit report would erode public trust and violate constitutional transparency requirements.
In sum, a consensus is growing that the status quo is untenable: without public accountability for NDDC’s finances, poverty-alleviation efforts will remain frustrated, and the Niger Delta will continue to feel the sting of both official neglect and suspicion.
NDDC’s Mandate and Community Toll
To fully grasp the stakes, one must recall why the NDDC exists. Established in 2000 amid widespread agitation, the Commission was charged by law with addressing the “environmental damage, economic neglect, and social instability affecting the oil-producing Niger Delta.”
Its key objectives, as the founding Act states, are “promoting sustainable growth, developing infrastructure, and reducing poverty” across all nine Niger Delta states. These include Abia, Akwa Ibom, Bayelsa, Cross River, Delta, Edo, Imo, Ondo and Rivers – a region that despite its hydrocarbon wealth remains materially deprived.
If that mission is to be believed, the Chief Executive of NDDC holds a pivotal responsibility over the welfare of millions living with polluted lands and failing services. Yet local advocacy groups say daily life in these communities tells a different story.
Many Niger Delta villages still lack all-season roads, schools, clean water and reliable electricity. One SERAP report bluntly notes that vast portions of Nigeria’s poorest citizens live here, and that thousands of abandoned NDDC projects have denied them education, healthcare or opportunity.
Corruption has become part of that narrative: to villagers, news that huge sums were spent on a birthday or paid to “ghost contractors” rings hollow when their own families have no clinics or bridges. The contrast between intent and outcome has even political overtones.
Calls for restructuring – devolving more control to local units – have been tied to calls for proper leadership at the NDDC. Critics argue that if true accountability were enforced, the Federation might avoid the “skyscraper on a bungalow” situation they allege exists, where top-down NDDC spending has created few real assets on the ground.
As one veteran activist put it, Ogbuku’s birthday “became a symbol of excess – one from which the people he was meant to serve were excluded, even as they unknowingly financed it through misused public funds”.
Conclusion: Demand for Accountability
The unfolding saga of the NDDC under Sam Ogbuku poses a stark test for President Tinubu’s government. On the one hand, the administration has insisted (implicitly) on handling the audit quietly, perhaps fearing political fallout. On the other, the Niger Delta – battered by decades of neglect – is demanding a reckoning. Without the forensic audit in the public domain and with high-profile spending scandals to address, many observers now question whether the NDDC is living up to its mandate.
For now, the projects lie unfinished, the funds unaccounted for, and the audit report gathering dust. The People of the Niger Delta want to see evidence that oil wealth is being used to lift them up, not line the pockets of officials.
As SERAP and others have argued, democracy and human rights in Nigeria require that the NDDC’s finances be laid bare and its leadership held answerable. Anything less risks deepening the region’s grievances.
In the end, transparency may be the only way to turn Nigeria’s oil revenues into the “lasting solution” the NDDC was created for, rather than the squandered promise it now seems.
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