The Tax Payers Association of Nigeria (TAPAN) has demanded that the Aviation minister roll the BMW cars back to Coscharis motors, where they were purchased from.
Speaking to newsmen yesterday in Abuja, National President, TAPAN, Mr Philip Thomas Ilukholo said, “if such a huge sum of money could be used to purchase two vehicles, it is a pointer to grand connivance between some public officers and unscrupulous contractors to loot the nation’s treasury. To this end, we call on the Minister of Aviation to roll those vehicles back because the distance from where the vehicles were purchased to the Ministry of Aviation is less than two kilometers. To us, we see that those vehicles have not be driven within two kilometers. Therefore, the way they rolled them to the Ministry of Aviation is how they should roll them back. This is our position.”
In a related development, the Action Congress of Nigeria has said President Jonathan is stalling what should ordinarily be a straight forward matter in the decision to sack Stella Oduah.
According to a statement from Lai Mohammed, National spokesperson of the party, Stella Oduah has clearly violated the law and constitution, but is being shielded by Mr. President.
The statement reads in part, “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 N100 million 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.”
The party said: “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 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’s 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.”