The Niger Delta Development Commission Yesterday pleaded with youth leaders in Abia State to be agents of change by protecting its projects across the state.
Speaking on the occasion tagged “Capacity Building Engagement: Community Ownership and Protection of NDDC Projects for Niger Delta Stakeholders” in Aba, the Director of the Abia State Office of NDDC, Dr Anderson Ukeh, said, “We observed that most of our projects have been vandalised.
“It is from the community, the youths. NDDC invited the youths to engage with them so that they would understand that the project belongs to them and have a different mindset.
“We are organising this programme so that they will understand that this project belongs to them and they have to take responsibility for ensuring that these projects are being protected.
“What we learned from them is that they need us to engage them. To be part of this. That is what we are doing. Engaging them so all of us are on the same page. So they will realise and understand that this project belongs to them”.
In his presentation, the NDDC facilitator, Ikechukwu Okereke, said that the worries of the NDDC are that the level of the vandalisation of the commission’s projects is alarming, revealing that the commission has over 19,421 projects scattered across the member states.
“In summary, NDDC wants to achieve a shift in mindsets, especially where it has to do with the community stakeholders.
“Let us start thinking of the projects that NDDC put in our communities as our own, not theirs. It is only when we have this shift of narratives that we can actually have a culture of protecting the projects,” he said.
He listed the challenges and threats to NDDC projects to include “national disaster, sabotage, poor projects, usage, neglect, lack of maintenance, insecurity, non-availaBility of supporting elements, insecurity and lack of protection, cultural/religious bias and political, social/cultural conflicts”.
He advised, “Let NDDC projects be community-oriented, not politically oriented”.
Asking questions and making inputs, the youths across the state urged the commission to shun politicising their projects, and to involve them in the protection of their projects across the communities in the state.
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