Aviation Minister, Stella Oduah Accused of Involvement in Multi-Billion Contract

Nigeria’s Minister of Aviation, Stella Adaeze Oduah, has been accused of allocating funds for multiple sham contracts ostensibly for the rehabilitation and upgrade of eleven airports across the country.

A petition by members of the National Union of Air Transport accuses Mrs. Oduah of touting the rehab projects as “quick-win” strategies to burnish President Goodluck Jonathan’s “transformation agenda.”

In a letter to the leadership of the Nigerian Senate in July, the petitioners detailed a series of scams at various levels in the allocation process of the contracts.

Incidentally, the minister has drawn praise from the Nigerian media for the ongoing airport remodeling projects. But the petitioners portray the exercise as an elaborate scam and daylight robbery of public funds. In the words of the petition, the projects are “calculated to dupe the unsuspecting Nigerian public.”

The petition discloses that the two-phase projects have become a four-level scam.

The first part was the ministry’s allocation of funds for “consultancy” service, which called for select firms to draw up designs and plans for the upgrade and rehabilitation of the airports. The second part was the allocation of the actual contracts to predetermined companies through a rigged tenders’ process that ignored advertising the jobs to attract qualified companies. The third and fourth segments of the alleged scam involved the repetition of the first two steps under a spurious tag called “Phase II.”

The petitioners alleged that, prior to the award of the main contracts to “upgrade and rehabilitate” the airports, Mrs. Oduah had handed out consultancy jobs estimated at N255 million. The contracts reportedly went to three crony firms without being advertised in order to attract bids from qualified companies.

The petition also alleged that the consultancy jobs were awarded without first obtaining certificates of “No Objection” from the Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP), thereby breaching the due process set out to guide the award of contracts.

According to the petitioners, Mrs. Oduah “contracted three consultant firms to carry out consultancy services for ‘urgent upgrade’ and rehabilitation of terminal buildings in the eleven airports in the country. This, she labeled Phase 1 of the airport remodeling exercise.” The unionists added that, before informing the Tenders Board about the allocation of contracts, the minister had predetermined and given out consultancy jobs to the three firms in a selective tender mode.

“Messrs Ngonyama Okpanum and Associates; Messrs Design Union Consulting Ltd and Messrs Triad Associates Ltd were awarded contracts for consultancy works on the upgrade of the airports at the sums of N99, 179,507.17;60, 986,730.46 and N95, 520,011.93 respectively without advertisement, certificate of No Objection from the BPP or approval by the tender’s board,” the union stated.
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