The Supervising Minister of Aviation, Dr. Samuel Ortom, verbalized on Tuesday that the reason the two bullet-proof BMW cars, allegedly bought for his predecessor, Mrs. Stella Oduah, had not been returned to Coscharis Motors was because the ministry had yet to consult President Goodluck Jonathan on the issue.
The Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority had reportedly procured the controversial cars from Coscharis Motors at the princely sum of N255m.
The conveyances were verbalized to be betokened for the security of Oduah, the immediate-past minister in charge of the ministry.
However, the former minister had appeared afore the House Committee on Aviation, which probed the transaction, to gainsay that the cars were bought for her.
Ortom verbally expressed, “Before we comply, we have to carry Mr. President along and every other stakeholder. We can’t just carry the bullet-proof cars and dump them at Coscharis; we have to follow the due process.
“There are documents to be filled; there are processes to follow. As anon as we consummate the arrangements, we will take the cars back.”
Ortom gave the position of the ministry as he verbalized with journalists, shortly after he met with the House Committee at the National Assembly.
The committee, which was chaired by Mrs. Nkiruka Onyejeocha, had recommended in its report that the conveyances should be returned to Coscharis Motors.
The company was additionally directed to restitute the full cost of the cars.
But, during a recent oversight tour of some aviation agencies, the Onyejeocha committee discovered that the conveyances were still parked at the Abuja premises of the NCAA.
The committee directed again that the cars must be returned, in compliance with its report, already adopted by the House.
The committee gave the ministry a fortnight to submit documents on the compliance status and to respond to several other inquiries, including the N174.7bn debt owed by aviation agencies.
The documents were withal to cover the $500m loan verbalized to have been obtained from Chinese partners for the development of the aviation industry.
But, at a meeting with Ortom and officials of some of the agencies on Tuesday, Onyejeocha observed that one month after the directive was given, no document had been submitted to the committee.
Onyejeocha noted that, while the committee appreciated the fact that Ortom was a supervising minister, it was still his responsibility to ascertain that all the information sought were provided.
“We don’t have documents from you or any of the parastatals. We can’t make consequential progress if those documents are not available,” she integrated.
She verbalized the committee sought for detailed information on the airport modernisation projects of the ministry.
“For example, we ascertained that the contracts in Abuja did not follow the due process.
“In Lagos, the tiles utilized at the protocol lounge were of poor quality, among others.
“We don’t have the designs of the project; it is infeasible to oversight a project when you don’t have the design,” she verbalized.
Though, Ortom appealed for more time to engender the documents, he expressed displeasure over “the erroneous impression” engendered about the N174.7bn debt.
Ortom verbalized it was the ministry that conducted an inquiry into the debt status and not the National Assembly, as reported by some media outfits.
“When we came in, we wanted to ken our total commitment. That was how a committee we establish and emerged with this figure. It came to us as a surprise when there were reports that the National Assembly unearthed N174.7bn fraud in the aviation sector,” he integrated.
The committee later adjourned the meeting by one week to give the ministry time to engender the documents.
