By NWADIKE UGOCHUKWU, Port-Harcourt
THE Niger Delta Development Commission NDDC has announced plans to hold a Partnership for Sustainable Development, PSD, forum on the way forward for the development of the nine states of the region.
The forum which, according to the Managing Director of the Commission, Bassey Dan-Abia, was last held about four years ago, is expected to hold from today and is expected to draw participants from outside Nigeria.
Briefing newsmen on the essence of the PSD forum, the Managing Director announced that the forum is normally for the review of development of the Niger Delta region.
“Partnership for Sustainable Development is a structure that had been set up to interact so that even a serious issue like budgeting we will bring other partners to review our budget and make input”, Dan-Abia stated.
He however regretted that in the last four years “that forum has not functioned and as such when this new management team came on board one of the issues we thought we should address is the PSD”.
He added that the latest forum is expected to receive position papers from various committees after which a communique would be issued.
He listed some of the partners at the forum to include all the oil companies operating in Nigeria, state governments of the nine Niger Delta states, their local government counterparts, National planning Commission, other relevant government agencies, Multilateral organisations like the UNDP, UNPFA, UNITA, among many others.