Oduahgate: Jonathan’s Probe Panel Diversionary, Says APC

Posted by African Examiner Ayo Balogun, Featured, Latest Headlines, News Sunday, October 27th, 2013

By Ayo Balogun, Lagos

The All Progressives Congress (APC) says President Goodluck Jonathan may become an accessory to corruption if he continues along his current path of shielding Aviation Minister, Stella Oduah from the consequences of the massive corruption and abuse of office over the purchase of two armoured cars at an inflated cost and without following due process.

: Embattled Minister of Aviation, Stella Oduah

In a statement issued in Lagos on Sunday by its Interim National Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, the party said it reached that conclusion after juxtaposing the evidence that had come out on the scandal against the actions so far taken by the president.

”It has now emerged that the money spent to purchase the armoured cars was not appropriated, which is a violation of the Nigerian Constitution; that due process was not followed in buying the cars, as the Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP) has testified, and that the Minister, who was said to have approved the purchase, violated the law by approving an expenditure over the 100 million naira limit.

”These revelations make the Oduahgate a straightforward case that should have been summarily dealt with by the President. Instead, he has engaged himself in a rigmarole by setting up a diversionary administrative panel in what is now looking like an orchestrated ploy to buy time, hoping this issue will die down and the Minister will escape being sanctioned.

”Unfortunately for Mr. President, Oduahgate is not just another scandal, but a referendum on his administration’s fight against corruption, and on the legacy he intends to leave in this critical area,” it said.

APC also accused the president of thumbing his nose at Nigerians, who had expressed outrage at the action of the Minister, by approving for her to travel to Israel as part of his entourage.

”No one believes the dummy that is being sold to the public, that the minister was denied access to the President in Israel. The egregious act of putting the Minister on his entourage, at a time she is at the centre of a terrible scandal, calls to question the president’s sense of propriety and his commitment to the war against corruption.

”This indecorous action of making a minister who is under investigation for monumental corruption and abuse of office one of the faces of Nigeria in a foreign land is an embarrassment to the country and its people, and a further dent on the poor image of the Jonathan administration. We condemn it most whole-heartedly. We now understand why corruption has grown wings under the Jonathan Presidency, and why the administration may well go down as the most corrupt in the country’s history,” the party said.

It said through his body language, President Jonathan was sending a signal to his Ministers that it was alright to be corrupt, wondering whether the president was aware of the joke making the rounds that there were five super ministers in his cabinet whom he could neither sanction nor remove, irrespective of their actions, because they were the ones ferreting funds into his war chest for 2015.

“In other words, any of his ministers whom he perceives as key to his re-election can even loot Aso Rock and get away with it! We do not know whether this is true or not, but we do know there is no smoke without fire, and that the seeming attempt to sweep Oduahgate under the carpet lends some credence to the joke,” APC stated.

The party noted that because of the president’s waffling in dealing with what was a straightforward case of corruption, misguided people had now resorted to crowd hiring to protest against the growing calls for the minister to be sanctioned over the scandal-a very sad case since those being hired for such disgusting protests were the real victims of the mindless corruption that had permeated the land.

”These sponsored protests are just the beginning. Next, they will either engineer or hope that a spectacular violent attack, a la Boko Haram, will occur to take attention away from the scandal. They may also charge some out-of-luck folks to court over the scandal and then say they cannot act on the issue anymore because it is sub-judice,” it said.

APC said, however, that the party as well as other concerned groups and citizens were closely following the developments on Oduahgate, and would not allow it to be swept under the carpet, in the interest of the millions of Nigerians who had been consigned into the lowest rung of existence by a rapacious administration.