How ibim semenitari took nddc back to the communities 1

Her calm mien belies her intellectual restiveness. Ibim Semenitari was appointed the Acting Managing Director of the Niger Delta Development Commission in December and has worked to turn around the behemoth she agreed was into rent-seeking like all agencies of government. She speaks with Ahamefula Ogbu on how she has turned things around in the NDDC,while debunking allegations that she was appointed to raise funds from the commission for elections among other issues.

What did you meet at NDDC when you assumed duty? I am really weary of trying to do a post-mortem but I would just say that by the time we came, there was a lot of lull in activities; we met a bit of dormancy both in the workforce as well as on our project sites — the reasons I might not know immediately but basically we met a bit of a lull.

It was that kind of situation where one felt that things ought to have been done slightly differently, whether in terms of accountability, transparency or service delivery. Were you alarmed or concerned about the situation you met on ground? In some cases I was alarmed; in all cases I was concerned. What have you put in place to make a difference from what you met?

Besides being an award-winner herself, Mrs. Semenitari is a mentor to several award-winning journalists.

The first thing that we tried to do was that we opened up our processes so that the flow from directorates to MD and back is open so that everyone along the chain can explain the process. Therefore, if for instance, we are making payment for a contract, everyone along the payment chain can say we are paying X,Y,Z contractor for X, Y, Z reason.

So we tried to open up the processes to reduce the turnaround time for transfer of documents, I inherited a backlog of files, some as far back as , It is really 24 to 72 hours except where I am out of town that files might linger for a week. We know that when changes like that happen in an entrenched organisation that resistance follows.

What resistance did you face trying to turn things around?