Buhari nominates Lauretta Onochie as chairman of NDDC Board

24 Nov Buhari nominates Lauretta Onochie as chairman of NDDC Board

President Muhammadu Buhari has nominated Lauretta Onochie as the substantive chairman of the Niger Delta Development Board (NDDC).

Buhari also nominated an administrator from Bayelsa State, Samuel Ogbuku, as the substantive Managing Director of the NDDC, while appointing 15 other nominees as members of the board.

The appointments were contained in a letter to the Senate President, Ahmad Lawan, who read it out at the start of plenary on Wednesday.

Onochie, currently a special assistant to the president on new media, was enmeshed in a controversial appointment into the electoral umpire, INEC, in 2020. She was appointed by Buhari as an INEC commissioner to represent Delta State.

The appointment generated public outcry from individuals, civic groups and opposition parties who wrote petitions, staged protests and called on the Senate to reject Onochie’s appointment.

Many also described the appointment as unconstitutional – majorly because she is partisan and has openly campaigned for the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC).

Although she had told the Senate committee on INEC that she quit politics in 2019 and that she was no longer partisan – a claim which turned out to be false, she was rejected by the Senate in July.

The basis for her rejection was however not her partisanship. The Senate had said her appointment was rejected because “it breaches the federal character principle.”