The late literary icon, Prof. Chinua Achebe, was at his proverbial best when he stated, in one of his novels, that the house the enemy wanted to pull down has caught fire on its own.
Aviation Minister, Princess Stella Adaeze Oduah, who had massed a lot of enemies, following her landmark reforms in the sector, is that proverbial house the enemy had long wanted to pull down. It is no secret that the Oduah reforms upstaged the applecart in the sector and left some entrenched interests, who had claimed the entire aviation patrimony as their personal estate, wondering what on earth hit them so fundamentally below the belt.
Coming from a woman with a quiet and unassuming mien and an almost vulnerable disposition was totally unexpected. Little did the cabal know that behind that cool exterior lies a steely determination to right decades of rape and desecration of the nation’s aviation sector. Having fed fat on the system and compromised every aviation minister along the line, the cabal felt it would be business as usual when Oduah came on board. By the time it dawned on them that the old order was truly over, several lopsided, inconsistent and in the words of the minister herself, “horrible” concession and lease agreements in the sector had either been reviewed or cancelled outright in the overriding public interest.
The battle line appeared clearly drawn and ever since then, the minister has hardly slept with both eyes closed, as the cabal swore to fight with every ounce in their putrefying vaults. The bulletproof car purchase brouhaha presented the excellent opportunity for them to exact their revenge with the hope of dislodging the minister and returning the sector to the ‘good old days of chop-make-I-chop.’ The concessionaires, who were affected in this cleansing exercise fall squarely into this disgruntled and vengeful category. This category is ignobly joined by the ubiquitous stakeholders, who believe self-righteously, that every aviation minister ought to worship every morning at their feet to acquire any form of acceptance or legitimacy.
This clan would later increase with latter-day converts, like a particular airline operator whose rabid dream of becoming the new national carrier is turning into a deadly obsession, governors whose executive impunity is no longer an acceptable conduct under the current reforms as well as the Northern elements, who are baying for President Jonathan’s life veins over his alleged 2015 ambition; and conveniently find in one of his most performing cabinet ministers, a perfect cannon fodder. There is also an amorphous group that has been crying blue murder, alleging undue interference by the minister in the running of the agencies.
Each of these individuals and groups has a dubious grievance against the minister, which has nothing to do with any altruistic or patriotic fervour. They equally have one desire in common: to see the minister quickly out through the back door. It is this coalition of the aggrieved that has coalesced to form the unofficial opposition that is now fuelling the car purchase controversy in the media beyond all reasonable boundaries. To them, this is no ‘ordinary’ story, hence all and every effort must be made to keep it alive in the public psyche; hoping and praying that the Presidency could, in the process, be blackmailed into taking a decision one way or another in their favour.
Perhaps, it is necessary to point out that apart from the oil and gas sector, it is difficult to point at any other sector in Nigeria that has more vicious and entrenched interests like aviation. But unlike the cabals in the oil and gas sector, those in aviation take no prisoners as the current controversy surrounding the purchase of two bulletproof cars has come to conclusively show.
As one reform after another was rolled out of the Oduah reform mill, and Oduah continued to receive one accolade after another, the number of those entrenched interests whose modus operandi was antithetical to the very essence of the reforms, kept multiplying. What the heck is going on here, they quipped indignantly, as decades of rot in the system was cleared and measures to pave the way for a more transparent, accountable and self-sustaining sector were being institutionalised?
It is against the foregoing backdrop that we must interrogate and hazard an unbiased understanding of the on-going controversy and the accompanying, unusual media hype. Now, Saharareporters.com broke the story of the alleged purchase of two bulletproof cars for the aviation minister. We must not lose sight of the main plank of the Saharareporters story. The story was built on the charge that the minister “compelled” the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) to procure the vehicles for her in the sum of N255 million. To be sure, every other aspect of that report but the fact of the purchase, has come out to be patently false. This is no surprise.
Tragically, however, no one seems to be paying any attention to the other lies peddled by the online medium. For starters, the lie that the minister ‘compelled’ NCAA to procure the vehicles has been exposed for what it is: A huge lie, as investigation by the House of Representatives committee has not proved any iota of compulsion on the part of the minister. Secondly, there has been no shred of evidence, supporting the claims in the report that the vehicles were bought for the minister. In all their testimonies before the committee, the minister, NCAA, First Bank and Cosharis Motors declared that the cars were bought for the operational use of the agency. Instructively, the committee has not found any evidence to the contrary. Thirdly, it has emerged that the alleged sum of N255 million was never paid to Cosharis Motors, as the vehicles were purchased under a lease financing arrangement by First Bank PLC. Fourthly, the claim that the bulletproof/security vehicles were not captured in the 2013 Appropriation Act is incorrect. Item six on the budget listed every other vehicle type and Nos. (for example five nos. Prado jeeps, 10 nos. Hilux pick-up vans, etc.) in addition to two nos. security/safety vehicles.
Now, if the House Committee on Aviation members are insisting they never appropriated bulletproof cars for the agency, it is incumbent on them to explain to Nigerians what those two nos. security/safety vehicles represent because every other vehicle type was listed by brand and quantity to be procured. If anyone were, therefore, to blame for the procurement of the bulletproof cars, it ought to be the committee that provided the opportunity for the NCAA to interpret the two nos. security/safety vehicles, whichever way it wanted. Or are we to take the Prado jeeps and Hilux cars, which were clearly spelt out both in brand name and quantity, to mean the same thing as security/safety vehicles? There is no way this can add up since there was only one item that contained two nos. security/safety vehicles. The honourable thing for the lawmakers to do is to admit that they erred by making an open-ended provision for the purchase of two nos. security/safety vehicles on Item six in the budget without specifying the brand. Or is there more to it than meets the eye, since we have been told severally that the committee earlier ‘rejected’ the request for bulletproof cars? Did someone play smart by inserting the two nos. vehicles by subterfuge?
Now we come to the real crust of the matter: The question of culpability or otherwise of the minister. If what we have read in the newspapers and online media is anything to go by, then it is very unfortunate. Reports indicate that the House Committee found Oduah guilty of ‘abuse of office’ by allegedly exceeding her approval threshold of N100 million. We must not lose sight of the fact that the said ‘reports’ were from unofficial sources. To be sure, the said reports appeared a clear 24 hours before the Certified True Copy of the report was laid on the House table in Plenary. Who leaked the report to the media and what was his or her motivation? Could it be that some underhand dealings had taken place, hence the rush to assure the paymasters that the ‘job’ had been done in accordance with the terms of the agreement?
Whatever the circumstances, the fact is that the leakage casts a long shadow not only on the reputation and integrity of the report itself but also over the committee and entire House. The integrity of a report that found its way to unauthorised hands and even widely published in the media, a clear 24 hours before it was due to be officially presented to the House, is, to say the least, already compromised. We are not even losing sight of the fact the syndicated report did not appear to take into any account, the testimony of the minister in arriving at its the final recommendations.
This scandal should not be allowed to pass as if nothing untoward has happened because this is against all known legislative practice and procedure. The leadership of the House must give the serious attention, which this matter deserves by mandating the committee to produce a fresh report that would not be tainted by any suspicions of compromise. This is the only way a report into this serious investigation will have any measure of credibility and command the legitimacy required of a document from the second highest legislative organ in the land.
Else, it would be taken to mean that the committee and the entire House are now the latest leg in the nebulous and ever-expanding axis of revenge, traducing the aviation minister for undertaking drastic reforms to reposition the aviation sector in Nigeria.
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