Development Integrated Centre, also known as Social Action has called on the Federal Government to inaugurate a substantive NDDC Board and address other misconducts in the Commission. The latest demand was contained in a statement signed by the group’s Programmes Coordinator, Botti Isaac and released in Port Harcourt, Rivers State capital over the weekend. There has been unending calls by stakeholders who have consistently demanded that the NDDC Act should be complied with in the governance of the Commission, noting that it is illegal to have contraptions of interim management committees/sole administrator to administer the NDDC and arbitrarily utilise the monthly sums due to the Commission. Social Action therefore charged the citizens of the Niger Delta region to take the bull by the horn and drive the change narrative for the most advantageous performance of the Commission. “We call on the people of the Niger Delta region to work with other civil society organizations to collectively push the bar of accountability and strengthen the regional mechanism to ensure an improved NDDC.” According to Botti Isaac; “in our shared responsibility to achieve a transparent and accountable governance system, all CSOs must join hands with the citizens of the region to demand an open, transparent, and responsible NDDC.”It is only by mobilizing all the arsenals at our collective disposal that we can get the NDDC to its right course and advance the sustainable development of the region.” He wrote.The group is saddened that despite the fact that “resources from the region account for over 70% of the nation’s revenue and 90% of foreign earnings (export), the years of neglect and abandonment have increased the suffering of the people of the region.” While applauding different groups from the Niger Delta region that have “continued to demand accountability and transparency from the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC)”, Social Action noted that “this is indeed instrumental in the call for an effective and efficient commission.” Meanwhile, a broad assemblage of Niger Delta stakeholders also believe that by ending the ongoing illegality of sole administratorship in NDDC and inaugurating the Commission’s substantive board in compliance with the law, to represent the nine constituent states, it will inevitably ensure proper corporate governance, checks and balances, accountability, transparency, and probity in managing the Commission. The groundswell of agitation for the inauguration of the substantive board of NDDC in compliance with the law, has continued to rise following the recent appointment of Obong Umana Okon Umana as the Minister of Niger Delta Affairs, moreso with his promise to “meet the yearnings of the people of the Niger Delta for development.”Social Action called on all stakeholders to engage their political representatives “to ensure that NDDC delivers on its mandates of catalyzing development in the region.”