South-East and South-South Professionals Forum have called on the embattled minister of Aviation, Princess Stella Oduah, to step down in light of the weighty allegations and evidence of corruption against her person.
President of the Forum, Emeka Ugwu-Oju, spoke during a meeting to galvanize their position on the national confab in Benin, Edo State.
Ugwu-Oju said, “We are not saying she is guilty but for what has happened in the ministry under her watch, it is clear the ministry could afford such money for some frivolous purposes. It is a wrong thing to do and somebody has to take responsibility.
“We are of the view that the current minister of aviation should go. She is going not because she is found culpable but we are looking at the overall picture of values.
“The honourable thing for her to do is to step aside and go.”
In a related development, the chairman of the House Committee on Public Procurement, Hon (Mrs.) Jumoke Okoya-Thomas has said that for violating procurement laws, Stella Oduah and Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) officials are risking a 5 year prison term.
She quoted Section 58 (5) of the Public Procurement Act which 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.”
She said the arguement that the procurement was done under a lease agreement did not hold any water.
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.”