By: Sunday Oyewole It emerged on Monday that the embattled Minister of Aviation, Stella Oduah, ignored the invitation of the House of Representatives Committee on Public Procurement, 12 times before the current scandal over the purchase of two armoured cars broke out.
The chairman, House Committee on BPP, Jumoke Okoya-Thomas who disclosed this to newsmen at the National Assembly said if she had honoured one of the invitations, the committee would have been able to detect non-compliance with the BPP Act.
The House Committee on Aviation is currently investigating the purchase of two BMW Li Series armoured cars at n inflated cost of N255 million allegedly for the Minister of Aviation, Stella Oduah. The cars were bought by the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA).
The chairman of Committee on Public Procurement, Okoya-Thomas, insisted that the procurement law which stipulates five-year jail term without option of fine must be allowed to take its full course.
She told reporters, “Section 58 (5) of the Public Procurement Act states that ‘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 offense 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.
“I did not put this law there, but the will to implement it is key to sanity in this country and check excesses. Argument of lease purchase does not hold as long as they are going to pay with public funds and to say that NCAA is within the threshold makes it look like splitting the budget, which is another case on its own under the Procurement law”.
Okoya-Thomas spoke further on how the minister ignored the committee’s invitation severally, saying “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 sometimes now.
“It might 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 realize is that when we send out letters like that, it wasn’t to intimidate or witch-hunt them but to rub minds and enlighten them on the nitty-gritty of the provisions of the Procurement laws.
“If she has been honoring our invitations, by now a lot of things would have been known to her and she would not be finding herself in this situation. When we invite these Ministers, my advice is that they should not see it as a personal thing but a way of forging a working relationship.
“There is no doubt that she has a case to answer with the BPP Committee,” the chairman insisted.
The chairman lamented that the Presidency is deliberately weakening the BPP as well as refusing to comply with the Procurement law on the issue of the Bureau’s Board, adding that “The issue of the constitution of the Board of BPP is embarrassing as it has not been constituted till date. Sometimes we need the cooperation of the Executive. When we go out there, we want people to adhere to the provisions of the law.
“The impropriety that we are witnessing in this country is embarrassing to the nation and if you don’t take care of a particular aspect of the law but go ahead and implement another aspect means you do not wish the law to succeed or be effective.
“The law must be implemented holistically for sanity to prevail in a nation. We have pushed for the implementation of that particular clause along the other parts they are implementing but they are not willing to apply that particular clause.
“We are pushing for the implementation of the Council of Board as contained in the Act but if they are not doing it, then they have their reasons, not that we are not doing anything about it.
“The job of the Board is to formulate policies for the agency and the DG is the Secretary of the Board but the idea is that more people will be able to contribute better than just one or two people especially when we are talking about trillions of Naira of appropriated funds”.
The Presidency, she said is not serious about fighting corruption, saying there must be will to put in place those things that are necessary to facilitate investigation, which I believe we are lacking”.
However, she gave kudos to the Ministry of Finance, noting that “it is able to do its work excellently just because they have the capacity and the facilities that simplify their job.
“I believe BPP needs assistance in that direction, but the point is, if the BPP is not aware of procurement going on in such places, and being the agency feeding us with information, then there is no way we as a Committee can”.
