Teddy Oscar, Abuja
A member of the House of Representatives, Hon. Jumoke Okoya-Thomas, has declared that the minister of aviation, Princess Stella Oduah, still has case to answer with the House Committee on Public Procurement regarding the purchase of two bulletproof BMW cars at the cost of N225.
Okoya-Thomas, who may have pre-empted the ongoing hearing on the procurement by the House Committee on Public Procurement, also added that anyone, who is found culpable in the controversial deal, would risk a five-year jail term without an option of fines.
Okoya-Thomas, whose position was based on the provisions of the Public Procurement Act, however, noted that no agency of government would claim ignorant of the of the law.
She also blamed the Federal Government that claimed to be fighting corruption for not empowering the Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP) enough in the execution of its duties.
“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,” she said.
She said that Oduah has issues bordering on procurement with the her committee, which minister has ignored more than twelve times.
“Our committee has the responsibility to oversight BPP and since the core objective of 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 honouring 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 advise 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,” she added.
