President Goodluck Jonathan
The
All Progressives Congress has said that the Goodluck Jonathan
administration may end up as the most corrupt in Nigeria’s history.
The party, in its first official
reaction to the the N255m bulletproof car scandal involving the
Minister of Aviation, Ms. Stella Oduah, said it was appalled at the
manner Jonathan was handling the matter.
“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
in a statement by its Interim National Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Lai
Mohammed, on Sunday.
The statement was made available to
journalists just as the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority said it had
no documents relating to the purchase of the controversial cars.
The APC said it reached its
conclusion on the Jonathan Presidency after juxtaposing the evidence
that had so far come out of the car scandal with the actions so far
taken by the President.
It pointed out that the handling of the scandal was a test case for the Jonathan government’s anti-corruption war.
The statement warned that Jonathan
might be considered an accessory to the scandal if he continued to
shield Oduah from facing the consequences of her alleged indiscretion.
The statement reads in part,“It has now
emerged that the money spent on the 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 has
testified, and that the minister, who was said to have approved the
purchase , violated the law by approving an expenditure over the N100m
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 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 Jonathan of “thumbing
his nose at Nigerians,” who have expressed outrage at the action of the
minister, by approving her trip to travel to Israel as part of his
entourage.
According to the party, no one believes
the ‘dummy’ being sold to the public, that Oduah was denied access to
the President in Israel.
It added that “the egregious act of
putting the minister on his(Jonathan) 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.”
The opposition party further observed
that the body language of the President over the matter was sending a
signal to ministers that it was alright to be corrupt.
It also wondered whether the President
was aware of the joke going the rounds that five “super ministers
that he can neither sanction nor remove, irrespective of their
actions,” were ferreting out fundsfor his 2015 war chest.
But the Peoples Democratic Party,
said the opposition, especially the APC, was in not in a position to
accuse the Jonathan administration of corruption.
It described the APC as a party peopled by those whose main business is corruption
“The APC lacks the moral right to
accuse our dear President and our great party of corruption. Most of the
opposition leaders ought to be behind bars.
“We are happy the President has set
up a committee and has ordered for an investigation into the issue.
This shows that he has respect for the law, “the PDP through its
Deputy National Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Abubakr Jalo, told one of
our correspondents.
It therefore advised the APC “ to remove the log in its eyes before removing the speck from the eyes of others.
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