In a statement issued in Lagos yesterday by its Interim National
Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, the party said it reached that
conclusion after juxtaposing the evidence that have come out on the
scandal against the actions so far taken by the President.
It said: “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.”
APC also accused the President of thumbing his nose at Nigerians, who
have expressed outrage at the action of the minister, by approving for
her to travel to Israel as part of his entourage.
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.”
It said through his body language, President Jonathan is sending a
signal to his ministers that it is alright to be corrupt, wondering
whether the President is aware of the joke making the rounds that there
are five ‘Super Ministers’ in his cabinet whom he can neither sanction
nor remove, irrespective of their actions, because they are 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!
APC said, “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 credence to the joke.”
The party noted that because of the President’s waffling in dealing
with what is a straightforward case of corruption, misguided people have
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 are the real victims of
the mindless corruption that has permeated the land.
It said, “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 subjudice.”
APC said, however, that the party, as well as other concerned groups
and citizens, are closely following the developments on Oduahgate, and
will not allow it to be swept under the carpet, in the interest of the
millions of Nigerians who have been consigned into the lowest rung of
existence by a rapacious administration.
TAPAN ask Oduah to return cars to place of purchase
Meanwhile, an association under the aegis, Tax Payers Association of
Nigeria, TAPAN, yesterday, urged the embattled Minister of Aviation,
Stella Oduah who is alleged to be involved in the purchase of two BMW
bullet proof cars at N225 million, to as a matter of urgency, roll them
to the place of purchase, just as it condemned the action, describing it
as mind-boggling and a national embarrassment.
Addressing newsmen 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.”
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