The Nigerian Aviation sector has been in the news lately for all the wrong reasons. At the center of the sleazy stories flying left, right and center, eye candy Aviation Minister, Stella Oduah, sits adorning her make-up like the ‘princess’ she is incongruously called. Her incompetence and light fingers atop the rarefied atmosphere of the country’s aviation sector are beginning to nauseate the senses.
A few hours after an Associated Aircraft killed all but seven persons within its bowels two weeks ago, the woman who oversees the country’s runways and skies stunned the world media when she glibly put down the mishap to “an act of God”. It was under Madam Oduah’s watch that another “act of God” visited the land on a black Sunday in June last year–a Dana Aircraft carrying 163 persons nosedived in Lagos, incinerating everyone on board. A day after the Associated Airlines’ crash, a Kabo Airlines’ Boeing 747-400 plane carrying 512 pilgrims, made an emergency landing at the Sokoto airport with deflated tires and damaged the airport’s Instrument Landing System.
There have also been several reported near misses every other month, with air travellers reeling out sordid tales of near death experiences while flying within Nigeria’s airspace. In one incident, a teenage stowaway lad made his way to Lagos from Benin; tucked in the tyre compartment of an aircraft and is now being feted in King’s palaces. Such has been the lowering of flying standards under Princess Oduah’s watch that Aero and Arik–the country’s two major operators–have been having a field day dishing out harrowing consumer experiences to Nigerians with the regulatory agencies content with looking the other way.
Last week, an online news portal blew the lid on another unsavory tale involving the Aviation goddess. According to the second in a series of stories by Sahara Reporters detailing Madam Oduah’s acquisition of two BMW bulletproof cars at taxpayers’ expense,
“Nigeria’s Aviation Minister Stella Oduah has admitted that she used the funds of the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) to buy two BMW armored cars for her personal use, according to an official ministry response published by The Punch, Nigeria’s leading newspaper.
The paper’s report is carried in its October 17, 2013 edition and titled, “Ministry confirms purchase of N255m vehicles for Oduah”. The story, reported for Punch by Udeme Ekwere, stated, “The Ministry of Aviation has confirmed that the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority bought two bulletproof vehicles worth $1.6m (N255m) for the Minister of Aviation, Ms. Stella Oduah.
“An online news medium, SaharaReporters, had reported on Tuesday that the armored vehicles were delivered to the minister in August.
“The medium reported that documents in its possession showed that the transaction for the purchase of the two BMW cars started in June, but the request for the delivery of and payment for them was fast-tracked between August 13 and 15, 2013.
“The transaction involved the NCAA, First Bank of Nigeria, and Coscharis Motors Limited, according to the report.
The Ministry of Aviation’s defense was that the two BMW vehicles were acquired for the Minister “in response to the clear and imminent threat to her personal security and life following the bold steps she took to reposition the aviation sector.”
The statement was silent on why the Minister needed two BMW vehicles to secure her life and whether due process was followed or not in the acquisition of these ‘toys’. The Minister’s reason for purchasing the cars also conflicts with that put forward by the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) which had stated, in a desperate attempt to fend off attacks on the agency, that the cars were purchased to be put to use by foreign dignitaries and the Minister–a pointer to the fact that someone is desperately trying to be clever by half. In any case, the Aviation Ministry’s defence of the latest mess involving the Minister was insensitive and puerile. We always knew we ran a corrupt system where government officials steal with so much impunity, but to return to rub it in our faces like Stella Oduah did with her defense last week was gut wrenching.
Stella Oduah has only proven her mettle thus far where least required: hounding the private jets of political opponents of the President with glee and gusto and carrying out a series of cosmetic improvements on a clutch of Airports while throwing safety standards and infrastructural improvements to the dogs. Obviously, here is one Minister who prefers giving the head a facelift while the body atrophies underneath it.
Her closeness to the President is why the headline of this piece may amount to water off a duck’s back. Madam Oduah, several sources have alleged, is one of a coterie of Ministers with the President’s ears. Like the graft loving Diezani Allison, it will perhaps take a holocaust of presidential proportions to have Jonathan relieve Oduah of her appointment, no matter how long she bumbles at her duty post and no matter how many lives are endangered daily on her account. She is the Lady no one dares touch. She is one of Aso Rock’s blue eyed ‘babies’. And for a President who still maintains that corruption is not Nigeria’s major problem, pulling the trigger on ‘beloved’ Stella in the face of malfeasance may equal the ninth wonder of the new world.
But maybe the President can still pull a surprise like he did recently when he fired a few Ministers who were on the other side of his skewed political divide. With her latest involvement in the BMW scandal and glaring incompetence in her designated role adorning the front pages of the dailies and several online fora, even a President who has been described as “having no balls”, would have to agree that Stella Oduah has become the unsavory poster Lady for a hollow “transformation agenda”. Her denouement couldn’t have arrived any quicker.
It is time to kick Stella Oduah out of the federal cabinet for all the jewellery in Dubai; if for nothing else but as a deterrent to all public officers across the land. There comes a time in the life of every administration where a warning shot has to be fired by the man at the helm and the President should not let this opportunity slip by.This beauty queen has pushed her luck too far and relieving her of her appointment sooner rather than latter would be the most sensible thing to do in the circumstances.
Except that common ‘sense’ is often in short supply in Abuja.
The writer, a Monday columnist on this forum, is on Twitter as @egbas
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