The All Progressives Congress (APC) has said President Goodluck
Jonathan may become an accessory to corruption if he continues along his
current path of shielding Aviation Minister Stella Oduah from the
consequences of the massive corruption and abuse of office over the
purchase of two armoured cars at an inflated cost and without following
due process.
In a statement issued in Lagos on Sunday 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 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 100 million naira 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,” it said.
•Stella Oduah : breached the rules
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.”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 his 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 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,” the
party said
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!
”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 some credence to the joke,” APC said.
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.
”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 sub judice,” it said.
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 administrati
