HOW NOBLE PEPPLE IS UNDOING THE RSSDA Andy Briggs Report

The first director of the Rivers State Sustainable Development Agency (RSSDA) Bolaji Ogunseye, an SPDC man like Noble Pepple, rose to the challenges of the vision of the RSSDA, seizing the attention, if not the imagination of a lot of people in the state. Despite Ogunseye’s achievements, Andy Briggs Report did not hold its peace when he organized the Excellence in Local Government Initiative (ELGI) – an assessment of the performance of council chairmen, staging an award ceremony during which he presented thirty million naira cash prize and a Pajero Jeep to the winning chairman courtesy of Zenith and Oceanic banks. It was totally a violation of the code of conduct for public servants which forbids gifts in cash or kind. Still Bolaji Ogunseye has proved to be the best thing that happened to Amaechi’s RSSDA. He defined the agency and since he left in January 2010, his successor Noble Pepple has taken the agency into near dormancy. The interest in the activities of the RSSDA, the expectation stirred up at the grassroots during Bolaji Ogunseye’s two year tenure has since been killed off under Noble Pepple’s directorship.
Ogunseye was not just an SPDC man. He also had work experience at the United Nations in several African countries and he understood that a sustainable development agency paid for from the state treasury must have grassroots impact. He also understood that Governor Amaechi was in a hurry to see things working. So while embarking on projects which would take years to produce significant impact on the economy like the Songhai Rivers, he did not ignore projects which would immediately impact the grass roots. With a fund of about N16 billion, he was everywhere at once and all over Rivers State people took notice.
Noble Pepple has taken a different path. Following his so-called restructuring, he abandoned a great number of projects embarked on by Ogunseye, retreated from the public and turned RSSDA into an elitist organization with the result that most of the staff became idle, many RSSDA project sites were abandoned and currently apart from the work at Songhai Rivers driven by the governor’s interest and the award of scholarships, not much else happens at the RSSDA. He has attracted less money (N8 billion in 2010), he has initiated no core projects and he has had far less impact; that is the definition of nearly two years of Noble Pepple’s directorship as the tables below prove. The data for the tables which follow below were analysed from reliable sources including the RSSDA Compendium of Projects/Programmes of July 2009 and the 2010 Annual Report released in 2011.

WHAT HAS NOBLE PEPPLE DONE?
RSSDA DIRECTORS’ PROGRAMS: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS.

HUMAN CAPITAL DEVELOPMENT
Bolaji Ogunseye started the overseas scholarship program; sending 181 Rivers students to United Kingdom universities, 159 to Canadian universities and others to India, Singapore and Ireland. Launched oil and gas technical training for 230 students including overseas skills training (OST) in Norway.Sent 97 students to Singapore for ICT graduate training.Deployed capacity building training for RSSDA staff.
Initiated Graduate Work Experience Placement Scheme (GWEPS) placing 79 unemployed graduates in 12 organizations.
Initiated the Greater Horizon & Opportunities Program (GHOP) to give poor but talented school children quality education in elite secondary schools. Placed 123 children in elite schools across the country with fees paid for six years.

Noble Pepple continued the scholarship program but the credibility of the program has been smeared by allegations of corruption under his watch. Pepple has even admitted in his responses to allegations on www.andybriggsreport@wordpress.com that children of management staff of the RSSDA had taken advantage of the program. This is to the detriment of indigent Rivers youths for whom this program was tailored.
No fresh batch of Rivers youth have benefited from GWEPS and GHOP programs under Noble Pepple’s tenure. Pepple recently received students back from Singapore who had graduated from the ICT program. These students were the beneficiaries of Governor Amaechi’s program initiated by Ogunseye.

Instead of capacity building for RSSDA staff as Ogunseye had done, Pepple’s critics claim that he had been bringing over colleagues from SPDC as contractors and consultants and even tried to sack RSSDA staff; a move which is claimed to have been blocked by Gov. Amaechi. Only recently has there been some minor training in Pepple’s RSSDA.

Ogunseye impacted on many other areas where Pepple has had zero or negligible impact. These include provision of standardized teachers’ notes for teachers at primary school level.Provision of 100,000 branded exercise books for Rivers pupils. Development of Graphic Information System (GIS) to inform development decisions in the state. Training of 100 computer technicians (trouble shooters). ICT training for 250 teachers. Provision of 25 laptops for the best 25 teachers in the program. Provision of 32000 science textbooks to school children across the state. Rehabilitation and training of 54 youths in carpentry, farming and aluminum works.Entrepreneurship training for 800 repentant militants. Building of solar powered blood bank and vaccine cold storage facility in 5 General Hospitals along with provision of ambulance. Initiated construction and equipping of Workmanship and Technical Training Center (WTTC). Initiated Excellence in Local Government Initiative (ELGI), an assessment exercise of the performance of council chairmen in the state. At the end of the maiden edition in 2009, Ogunseye gave a cash gift of N30 million and Pajero to the winning chairman. This violated the code of conduct of public officers.

Work at WTTC has continued under Noble Pepple. He also continued with the ELGI. The 2010 version which he organized gulped a whopping N79,887,200 million. Sheer squander mania!

AGRO-ALLIED PROJECTS.
Ogunseye biult the Songhai Rivers Bungalows to provide accommodation for the staff. Other projects undertaken by the man include: Acquaculture Centers at Ubima, Korokoro, George-ama, Kalio-ama, Afamoku, Egberu, Umunachi, Umuagwu, Akabuka, Ihuaba, Elele and Buguma (in collaboration with Nigerian Institute for Oceanography and Marine Research.) Fish Hatcheries at Ebubu, Aluu, Degema, Onikwu.
Poultry in Korokoro, Ekporo, Elibrada, George-ama, Ikwerre-Ngwo, Elele and Afam Ukwu.
Cassava farms: 240 hectares in 16 locations. 3 Multipurpose cassava processing centers.
3 Snail farms in Okirika, Eleme and Emohua. Honey production in two locations in Etche and Gokana.

Pepple continued work on Songhai Rivers, completing the first phase of the center which include Administrative and hospitality section, an industrial park and the production center.

UNPRODUCTIVE PARTNERSHIPS.
In Noble Pepple’s 2010 Annual Report, it is written that ‘RSSDA has actively engaged in several partnerships aimed at the socio-economic development of Rivers State’. Then the report goes on to list a couple of these partnerships. They have contributed nothing to the state. RSSDA/DADTCO/SPDC/IFDC/StanbicIBTC MoU was signed in October 2010 for the production of 30,000 tons of cassava annually. A year later nothing has happened. RSSDA/UNITAR/RKK Norway partnership was supposed to establish a marine college. A year later, nothing has happened. RSSDA/UNITAR partnership was set up by Bolaji Ogunseye but in the 2010 manual, the current RSSDA directorate annexed this and many other programs initiated under the former director as its own which is an admission of Noble Pepple’s blunder in abandoning the many grassroots oriented projects embarked on before he was seconded to RSSDA. He claimed the expert advice of Accenture in making that blunder. What does Lagos based Accenture know about the development needs of rural Rivers State ? Also listed is a collaboration between RSSDA/RSUST. This has not yielded any results. The RSSDA/Project Novella, yet another partnership in the annual report was actually initiated at the tail end of the Odili administration. Attempts to make these look as achievements of the Noble Pepple run directorate is subterfuge.

QUESTIONABLE EXPENSES
The 2010 expenditure published by RSSDA in the 2010 report, Noble Pepple only accounts for N6,797,440,134 out of the N8 billion allocation he got from the state government. Perhaps this was an oversight. The expense sheet also claimed that N46,649,564 millions were used to put up a local government portal. This is outrageous, sheer highway robbery. WordPress, an American global concern which hosts a web site for Andy Briggs Report charges only $20 dollars a year. The RSSDA Compendium defines Open Local Government Portal (OLGP) as a knowledge-sharing website. Actually, it is not even a website but a link on a web site to web pages of councils. Perhaps, there was a printing error otherwise to spend almost fifty million naira to put a link on the RSSDA web site to Rivers State local government councils’ web sites is outright looting and should be probed.
Another appearance of financial misappropriation, if not outright embezzlement is the claim of N79,887,200 millions for assessment of performance of Rivers council chairmen under the ELGI program.
In 2009, Andy Briggs Report prepared a report of RSSDA activities to coincide with Amaechi’s second anniversary as governor of the state. The regional farms had fully taken off in that report and pictures of Zambian consultants and RSSDA management at the cassava farms were published as proof. Amazingly, Integrated Regional Farm Centers plus Cassava programs appear again in the 2010 report costing N148,357,050 millions more than a year later when it should be about harvest time. What are overseas scholarship front end activities costing N373,147,286 million? Noble Pepple can not afford to be so vague about something so expensive especially after claiming to have spent N1,732,280,536 billion on 391 Rivers students on scholarship in U.K universities, N1,148,419,063 billion for 292 Rivers students in Canada, N817,955,591 for 171 Indian based Rivers students and N144,411,316 for 24 Ireland based Rivers students.
RSSDA also claims N52,803,000 million for Complete School Project under Noble Pepple. Investigations show that there was no complete school project under Pepple. Complete School Project, according to the RSSDA Compendium of Programs include Training of Computer Trouble Shooters, Provision of Standardized Teachers Lesson notes, Provision of Exercise books, ICT Train-the Trainers program, provision of ICT manuals, provision of science text books and workbooks. None of these were done in 2010. Rainbow Book Club was the only recipient of a huge number of books from the RSSDA in 2010 and this was never part of the Complete School Project. Why again would it cost N18,940,000 million to place unemployed graduates on job trials in companies ? There was hardly any such placements under Noble Pepple as records show. The 2010 report claims that over 93 unemployed graduates had gone on these placements since the start of the program under Bolaji Ogunseye. RSSDA Information sheet published in July 2009, seven months before the end of Ogunseye’s tenure show that 79 of those placements had already been made. It is clear that since the project ran for another seven months under Ogunseye that he probably made the remaining 14 placements. Why then would the RSSDA under Pepple claim almost nineteen million naira for work done by his predecessor.
This is a misleading report and if the Rotimi Amaechi administration remains committed to transparency and accountability then Noble Pepple and his management team need to clarify these issues. It is also worth mentioning that the Promise Franchise and the special taxi schemes shown in the 2010 Report were projects initiated and procured under Ogunseye. The 2010 Expenditure table appears in the next blog