Nigeria: No, Nigeria's Niger Delta Development Commission Hasn't Released 'Biased' Internship Beneficiary List

24 September 2024
Africa Check (Johannesburg)
By Catherine Adeniyi

No, Nigeria's Niger Delta Development Commission hasn't released 'biased' internship beneficiary list

IN SHORT: The NDDC launched an internship programme for 10,000 young people in August 2024. However, lists of beneficiaries circulating online and criticised as biased were not from the federal agency, it said.

In August 2024, Nigeria's Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) launched an internship programme for 10,000 young people in the Niger Delta region. This, the agency said, was to drive the implementation of Nigerian president Bola Tinubu's renewed hope agenda.

The NDDC is an agency of the federal government. It was established in 2000 to address the environmental, infrastructural and socio-economic challenges facing the Niger Delta, an oil-rich region that has historically suffered from underdevelopment, pollution and environmental degradation as a result of oil exploration activities.

The Niger-Delta region is made up of nine states: Ondo, Edo, Delta, Bayelsa, Rivers, Imo, Abia, Akwa Ibom and Cross River.

The one-year internship programme provides participants with employability skills and a monthly stipend of N50,000 (about US$30).

But several posts on Facebook claim that the NDDC has already published a skewed list of selected candidates.

In the list attached to the Facebook post, several candidates were from Cross River state, sparking conversations that candidates from the state were being favoured.

One of the Facebook posts reads: "The recently released shortlisted candidates list for the NDDC internship training has sparked widespread dismay and outrage, laying bare the egregious marginalization of certain regions within Cross River State, notably the Akamkpa/Biase Federal Constituency."

Other Facebook posts echoed the claim here and here. (Note: See more instances of the claim at the end of this report.)

But has the agency published a list of successful candidates that favours one state over another? We checked.

'Disregard false list of beneficiaries'

In a statement published on its official website on 10 September 2024, the commission denied this.

The statement read in part: "We wish to clarify that no such list has been collated, approved or released and any claim to the contrary is false. Those who registered for the scheme should note that the process of selection is on-going."

The NDDC said the successful candidates would be drawn from the applicants who applied for the process, urging people to disregard the list in circulation and rely only on information from official NDDC channels.

The list of beneficiaries being circulated is fake.

The false claim also appeared here, here, here and here.

Read the original story, with links and other resources.
Africa Check is a non-partisan organisation which promotes accuracy in public debate and in the media. Twitter @AfricaCheck and www.africacheck.org

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