Ex-Akwa Ibom NDDC chief gets three- year jail for stealing

An Akwa Ibom State High Court has sentenced a former commissioner representing Akwa Ibom State on the board of Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), Mr.Godwin Moffat Eyo to three years imprisonment. Eyo was sentenced by the court sitting in Uyo for stealing 56 transformers meant for oil producing communities.


He was prosecuted by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), on a 56 count-charge bordering on stealing and conversion of 56 electricity transformers released to him by NDDC for distribution to communities in Akwa Ibom State.

He was found guilty on 37 of those counts by Justice Idongesit Ntem-Isua and sentenced to three years imprisonment on each of the counts. He was however discharged and acquitted on 19 counts. The sentences are to run concurrently. The convict was said to have applied for 90 electricity transformers and four generators from NDDC for Akwa Ibom State sometime in February, 2006. 

Approval was given for 70 transformers but he diverted same to his house  on the pretext that there was no space to accommodate the 70 units at the NDDC office in Uyo. 

He was thereafter said to have sent only 14 Units to the NDDC office while he withheld 56 units which he could not account. The 56 transformers are valued at Two Hundred and Twenty million, One hundred and Seventy Six thousand, Three hundred and Twenty Naira (N220, 176,320). One of the counts reads: “That you Pastor Godwin Moffat Eyo, being a former Akwa Ibom State representative on the Board of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) on or about 14th April, 2006 at Uyo in the Uyo Judicial Division did fraudulently steal a 300 KVA/33/0.415 Transformer Serial No. 1712496 valued at Four Million, Eighteen Thousand, Five Hundred and Sixty  Naira (N4,018,560.00), property of NDDC and thereby committed an offence of stealing contrary to Section 399 and punishable under Section 404 of the Criminal Code Cap. 38, Volume 2, Laws of Akwa Ibom State, 2000.”