President Muhammadu Buhari has terminated the appointment of Kemebradikumo Pondei as acting managing director of the Niger Delta Development Commission.

Presidential spokesman Femi Adesina announced in a statement late Saturday that a new interim administrator, Effiong Okon Akwa, has been appointed in his stead.

Mr. Akwa, who was formerly an acting finance director at the NDDC, is expected to oversee the operations of the commission pending the completion of a forensic audit ordered by President Buhari.

The president’s media aide hinged Mr. Pondei’s ouster on a “plethora of litigation and a restraining order issued recently against the Interim Management Committee of the NDDC by a Federal High Court in Abuja.”

Mr. Pondei, a professor of medicine, had dramatically collapsed before the House of Reps‘ committee on Niger Delta, in the heat of interrogation on alleged financial impropriety and extra-budgetary expenditure on July 20.

The academic, who had been in the saddle since February 2020, was accused by the committee of misusing over N81 billion between his time of appointment and May.

Listed among questionable expenditures of the Pondei-led interim board included N122.9m on condolences, N3.14bn on COVID-19, N486m Duty Travel Allowance, N85.6m on foreign travels, and N1.3bn on community relations.

Others were N248m on stakeholders’ engagement, N83m on consultancy, N220m on maintenance, N1.121bn on public projects communication, N744m on security, N8.8bn on staffing-related payment, N900m on legal service, N1.956bn on Lassa Fever, and N790.9m as imprest.

Mr. Pondei’s dramatic collapse while fielding questions from the parliament on the bloated spendings, was widely perceived as contrived in a bid to evade his public probe.