Stella Oduah,
Nigeria’s Minister of Aviation faces a new integrity questions as her Masters’
degree has been challenged by the United States school which supposedly awarded
it. Her resume, which she presented to the Senate as a ministerial nominee
in 2011, indicated she obtained a Master's degree in Business Administration
(MBA) from St. Paul’s College Lawrenceville, Virginia, United States. The Provost Vice President of Academic Affairs, and the Vice President
of Institutional Development said in response to our inquiries, “We don’t offer
any graduate programs here.”
Similarly, the school’s website states: “Saint Paul's College is
accredited by the Commission of Colleges of the Southern Association of
Colleges and Schools to award baccalaureate [bachelor’s] degrees.” There
is no mention of graduate degrees.
The Minister’s documentation shows she received an undergraduate degree in
accounting from the college in 1982, but Dr. Claud Flythe, St. Paul’s current
president, could neither confirm nor deny this during a phone conversation with
SaharaReporters. Further verification with the Office of Alumni Affairs
is also currently impossible, the school said, because the college has been
closed since June 2013 to loss of its accreditation.
“[Oduah] realized very early in life the indispensability of a sound
education in her growth plans in life and therefore pursued her education with
all diligence and sense of purpose,” her documents claimed, adding that a
determination “to have the best education at the highest level” prompted her
stay at the Virginia college in 1983 for the MBA programme.
As her public relations machinery marched on, in December 2012 The Sun
newspaper published an article headlined “Stella Oduah: An Amazon of
transformation,” which lauded her “MBA from St Paul’s College, Lawrenceville
Virginia USA.” The story also praised her for being an official who
brought her “rich educational background to bear on the aviation sector by
automating revenue centers in all the agencies and parastatals to boost their
revenue profile and enhance transparency and accountability in the system.”
In October, SaharaReporters broke the story that Mrs. Oduah, a former
campaign manager for President Goodluck Jonathan, purchased two bulletproof BMW
cars worth $ 1.6 Million (N255m) through the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority,
for her own use.
Following an investigation, the House of Representatives Committee on
Aviation dismissed the Minister’s pleas of innocence and all her rebuttals
during her testimony. The committee’s report, which was subsequently
adopted by the House, declared that no budgetary appropriation had been made
for the purchase of the cars, and that the NCAA proposal for their purchase was
rejected.
President Jonathan also set up a three-member administrative panel to
investigate the matter, but he immediately travelled out of the country with
Mrs. Oduah and Colonel Dasuki, the National Security Adviser who was to serve
as a member of the panel. Not only did the panel submit its report much
later than the two weeks it was given for the assignment, Mr. Jonathan has
refused to release its report.
Mrs. Oduah’s new certificate questions are certain to feed into national
concern about her credibility as an elected official, but also about Mr.
Jonathan’s credibility, and about the nation’s security apparatus which
verifies official documents offered to the Senate for official nominations.
If Mrs. Oduah deliberately deceived the Senate, it remains to be seen if
the Upper House will be sufficiently motivated to take up the matter with the
Executive.
Meanwhile, Nigeria’s aviation industry continues to face a massive
challenge, with struggling airports and airlines, as well as financial and
administrative pitfalls that hinder expansion and development
SOURCE: Sahara Reporters
No comments:
Post a Comment