“Tinubu Orders Timely Funding for Regional Commissions, Warns Against Another NDDC-Style Waste”

Tinubu Orders Release of Funds to Regional Development Commissions: After 26 Years, Is Nigeria Finally Getting the Results?

President Bola Tinubu has ordered the timely release of funds due to Nigeria’s Regional Development Commissions, while warning their boards and management against corruption, waste, politicisation and projects that offer little direct benefit to Nigerians.

He gave the directive while declaring open the first North Central Stakeholders Development Summit in Abuja, where he was represented by Secretary to the Government of the Federation, George Akume.

But the announcement is bigger than another presidential directive.

Nigeria has spent more than two decades experimenting with special development commissions designed to tackle problems that ordinary government structures have struggled to solve.

The Niger Delta Development Commission, NDDC, was established in 2000 after years of environmental degradation, poverty, poor infrastructure and political agitation in the oil-producing region.

The North East Development Commission followed in 2017, largely in response to the destruction caused by Boko Haram insurgency.

The Tinubu administration has now expanded the model across the country’s six geopolitical zones.

That creates a much bigger question. After years of commissions, billions of naira and thousands of projects, is Nigeria actually getting the development it is paying for?

The NDDC was the original experiment

The logic behind the NDDC was straightforward.
The Niger Delta produced a substantial share of Nigeria’s oil wealth, yet many communities remained poor and badly connected.

Oil production also brought environmental damage, especially in communities affected by spills and other forms of degradation.

The commission was therefore created to coordinate development across the region. It has built roads, bridges, schools, health facilities and electricity projects.

But its history also contains the warning that should concern the new commissions. The NDDC has faced repeated allegations of abandoned projects, poor contract execution, political interference and financial mismanagement.

A forensic audit covering its operations from 2001 to 2019 was eventually commissioned by the Federal Government.

The lesson is uncomfortable
A development agency can spend enormous amounts of money without producing proportional development. The number of contracts awarded is not development.

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The number of projects commissioned is not development. What matters is whether the projects work and whether communities become more productive.

Then came the North East

The NEDC was created for a different emergency. Boko Haram had destroyed communities, schools, businesses and public infrastructure across the North East.

The commission was designed to support reconstruction and long-term development.
It has since undertaken roads, schools, health facilities, housing and other interventions.

But the region still struggles with insecurity, displacement, unemployment and poverty.
Again, the lesson is mixed.
There has been activity.
There has been spending.
There have been completed projects.
But the underlying development challenge has not disappeared.

Tinubu’s six-zone experiment
The newer commissions are an attempt to make regional development a national system.

The North West, North Central, South West and South East now have dedicated development commissions alongside the older NDDC and NEDC structures.

The argument makes sense.
Many economic problems do not stop at state boundaries. A farmer in one state may need a processing plant in another.

A manufacturer needs transport corridors that connect several states.

A regional rail network can achieve more than isolated roads.

Agriculture, tourism, industry, mining and human capital can also be planned across state lines.

The danger is that Nigeria could simply create six new bureaucracies without creating six new engines of development.

Tinubu’s warning against white-elephant projects is therefore significant.

The North Central test
The North Central Development Commission is proposing a 20-year development plan titled “The Great Leap Forward: A 20-Year Economic, Infrastructural and Social Development Plan for the North Central Region.”

That plan matters because long-term development cannot work if every new administration starts again.

The region has enormous agricultural potential.
It has mineral resources. It sits around the country’s political centre.

Yet infrastructure gaps, insecurity, weak processing capacity and poor industrialisation continue to hold it back.

The real test will be whether the plan survives political transitions.

A 20-year development plan that changes every four years is not really a 20-year plan.
It is a political document.

So, is the model working?
It is too early to judge most of the new commissions. Some were only fully operationalised recently.

But the NDDC and NEDC provide enough history to know what can go wrong.

The new commissions should therefore publish their projects, locations, costs, contractors, deadlines and completion status.

Nigerians should be able to ask six simple questions:
What was budgeted?
What was released?
What was built?
What did it cost?
Who benefited?
What changed?

That should become the scoreboard. Because Nigeria does not need another impressive list of agencies.

It needs roads that last, schools that teach, hospitals that work, factories that employ and farmers who can move their produce.

Tinubu has ordered the money to move.
Now the commissions must prove that the money can move Nigeria.