By Kayode Odesola, Port Harcourt
More facts have emerged of how a former Managing Director of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), (names withheld) advised the now embattled former Managing Director, Joy Nunei, to disregard any directive from the Supervising Minister and run the Commission as she desired.
According to a competent source in the commission, who pleaded anonymity, ” the problems of Madam started the moment she chose to accept the advice of some serving and former stakeholders in the commission, who advised her to assert her independence from the supervision of the minister.
” While pondering over the advice, what really swept her off her feet was that of a former MD of the Commission who told her that while he was the MD, he had no business with the Minister, because he ran his show in the Commission and merely briefed the Minister if he so desired.”the source disclosed.
The source, who described the relationship between the Minister, Senator Godswill Akpabio and the sacked MD as cordial, disclosed that their cordiality nosedived shortly after Nunei’s meeting with the former MD.
Peesreporters reliably gathered that Nunei became more emboldened when the said former MD took her to the late Chief of Staff to the President, Abba Kyari, without the knowledge of the Minister.
Her meeting with Kyari, it was further learnt emboldened her in her determination not to take orders and directives from the supervisory ministry.
The meeting was also said to have given her a phyrhic confidence that with her direct access to the CoS office, she could run the Commission without any recourse to the Ministry.
Several letters written to her by the supervisory ministry were not acknowledged not to talk of responding to them.
While she was treating the office of the minister with disdain, a petition was sent to the same office she ran to, challenging her eligibility for the office she was occupying. Apart from her parading forged NYSC discharge certificate, her disrespect to the office of the supervisory minister led to her removal as the MD.
Senator Akpabio stated this much in his in his official response to the myriad of allegations leveled against him by the sacked MD, while featuring on a live interview session in Abuja on Saturday night.
According to Akpabio, ” She was not relieved of her appointment because of corruption. But she was relieved of her appointment because of insubordination. My ministry that supervised her wrote seven letters to her. She never responded. And then she said she was bigger than the Minister of Niger Delta.”
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