N3 trillion needed to develop N/Delta -Orubebe

By The Rainbow

It will require about N3 trillion to initiate new projects and complete ongoing ones in Niger Delta, the Minister of Niger Delta Affairs, Godsday Orubebe, said on Thursday.

However, Orubebe  said that the Ministry receive annually over N200 billion from the Federal Government.

Orubebe spoke in Abuja at the ongoing 2013 ministerial score card to commemorate the mid-term anniversary of the present administration.

He said the ministry had been using in the development of the region.

Cataloguing  some of the projects in the region, he said that the ministry had trained over 701 non-militants in the areas of Oil and Gas, Maritime and Agriculture and that the East- West had been more than 50 per cent complete and would be fully completed by December 2014.

He said East-West road was inherited by the Ministry from the Ministry of Works after the creation of the Ministry without a development plan. He therefore said that the Ministry had provided a development plan for the road since its inception.

Orubebe further said that the five out of the nine skills acquisition centres constructed across the nine Niger Delta States would be completed this year.

On his purported suspension from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP),  Orubebe dismissed it the antics of  a faction of the party in Burutu Local Government Area chapter, Delta State.

Factional chairman of the party in the council, Kenneth Ogeibiri had announced that the Minister had been suspended from the party in his local government along with nine others over allegation of 'gross misconducts likely to bring about disrepute, hatred, contempt and anti-party activities.'

But fielding questions from State House correspondents in Abuja on Wednesday, the Minister said that the faction which purportedly suspended him was an illegal body which was not recognised either by himself or the party.

He explained that the duly elected executive committee of the party in the council was still in place while the faction was merely engaged in attention seeking behaviour by announcing his suspension from the PDP.