President Goodluck Jonathan may have finally succumbed
to public pressure to move against the embattled
Minister of Aviation, Ms Stella Oduah, who is currently
being probed over the N255m bulletproof cars bought for
her by the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority.
The development came to the fore with the last-minute
decision to stop Oduah from signing the much-publicised
Bilateral Air Services Agreement with Israel.
The ceremony was given by Presidency officials as the
main purpose of her inclusion in the President’s entourage
to Israel for this year’s Christian pilgrimage.
In her stead, Minister of State I, Foreign Affairs, Prof. Viola
Onwuliri, signed the agreement on behalf of the Federal
Government while the Deputy Israeli Foreign Minister, Mr.
Zeer Elkin, signed on behalf of the Israeli government.
Presidential spokesman, Dr. Reuben Abati, after releasing
a photograph on Monday on the signing ceremony,
issued a statement in which he confirmed that Onwuliri
signed on behalf of the government.
Abati did not however explain why Oduah was not
allowed to sign the agreement despite the fact that the
photograph released by her aides showed that she was
present at the event.
The President had come under criticisms for allowing the
minister to be on his entourage at a time he set up a
three-member panel to investigate the purchase of the
cars.
A top Presidency source on the entourage of the
President in Israel told our correspondent on the
telephone that the decision to stop Oduah from signing
the agreement was taken shortly after Jonathan arrived
in Israel.
That same reason, he added, informed the decision of the
President’s aides to keep the minister away from the
President since their arrival in the country.
The Special Adviser on Media to Oduah, Mr. Joe Obi, had
on October 22 said in statement that the minister travelled
to Israel to sign the pact. Two days after, the Ministry’s
Permanent Secretary, Mr. George Ossi, told the House of
Representatives Committee on Aviation that Oduah could
not appear before it because she “was leading the
Nigerian delegation to Israel to sign the BASA.”
A former Minister of Aviation, Mr.Femi Fani-Kayode, who
shed light on the development, said Jonathan must have
prevented her from signing the BASA because of the
situation she was in.
He said, “BASA is supposed to be signed by the aviation
minister or she could delegate it to the permanent
secretary in the ministry. The agreement has nothing to
do with the Foreign Affairs Ministry. I signed quite a few
during my tenure.”
• Oduah, NCAA chiefs risk five years in jail
Before Abati’s statement, the House Committee on
Public Procurement had said in Abuja that Oduah, and
officials of the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority risked five-
year jail term if found guilty of breaching procurement
regulations in the purchase of the bulletproof cars.
The committee Chairman, Ms Jumoke Okoya-Thomas,
who accused the minister of shunning 12 invitations
previously extended to her by the committee, explained
that the Public Procurement Act clearly spelt out the
penalty for any breach.
Section 58 (5) of the Act states, “Any persons, who, while
carrying out his duties as an officer of the Bureau or any
procuring entity who contravenes any provision of this
Act, commits an offence and is liable to a conviction of
cumulative punishment of (a) a term of imprisonment of
not less than five calendar years without any option of
fines and (b) summary dismissal from government
services.
Okoya-Thomas dismissed the explanation by the NCAA
that the cars were procured through a lease agreement
and pointed out that no government official or agency
could claim to be ignorant of the provisions of the Act.
According to her, what is important is that since public
money was involved, its spending must follow legal
procedure.
She added, “Argument about lease purchase does not
hold as long as they are going to pay with public funds
and to say that the NCAA is within the threshold makes
it look like splitting the budget, which is another case on
its own under the Procurement law.
“Our committee has the responsibility to oversight BPP
and since the core objective of public procurement is to
ascertain value for money, we have been having issues
with the Ministry of Aviation and agencies under it for
sometime now.
“It may interest you to know that we have issued out not
less than 12 invitations to the Minister of Aviation, but
she has not deemed it fit to respond even for once.
“She has always been giving us one excuse or the other.
Apart from the fact that there are issues on the
rehabilitation of airports around the country over issues of
value for money, which Nigerians are not getting, if she
had taken her time to honour our invitation, maybe she
would have been able to avoid this issue of threshold.
“What these heads of agencies don’t realise is that when
we send out letters like that, it is not to intimidate
them but to rub minds and enlighten them on the nitty-
gritty of the provisions of procurement laws.
“If she had been honouring our invitations, by now a lot
of things would have been known to her and she would
not have found herself in this situation.”
Punch ng
Continue reading here
Follow on twitter @ Trendperch
Like our Page on facebook @ Trend Perch Global for up to the minute news
No comments:
Post a Comment