A prominent Igbo socio-political organization has urged the Senate Committee on the South East Development Commission to step back and allow the agency’s leadership the space to execute its mandate before rushing to allegations of frivolous spending that the group said were based on incomplete investigation.
Igbo Agenda leader Chief Chekwas Okorie, speaking at a press conference in Enugu, said the committee had acted in undue haste in publicly accusing SEDC management of renting a single room office in Abuja for N153 million and awarding wasteful consultancy contracts. He said his own inquiry showed that the Abuja space was in fact a furnished and equipped office complex in Maitama, not a single room, and that engaging consultants to conduct feasibility studies and groundwork before approaching investors and financial institutions was standard practice for any development agency with credibility.
Okorie said the committee appeared to have staged a public performance without first verifying its facts, and warned that if politicians were not careful, the SEDC risked suffering the same fate as the Niger Delta Development Commission, which had been paralyzed by cycles of legislative interference and never fulfilled its potential for the communities it was created to serve.
He noted that the SEDC received nothing of the N140 billion allocated to it in the 2025 financial year and that the Senate Committee raised no complaint about that deprivation. He said it was telling that the committee’s vigorous oversight interest appeared only after N16 billion of the N150 billion 2026 allocation was released, constituting barely six percent of the budget, and that launching an inquisition after the management had been in place for less than six months was premature by any standard of institutional accountability.
Okorie said he remained strongly in favour of transparency and accountability in public fund management but that the committee should demonstrate the same energy it brought to questioning management spending in investigating the earlier failure to release funds to the commission.
