A certain Saint Mienpamo obviously a fictitious name writing under the auspices of another non-existent Bayelsa New Media Team and their cohorts have continued to wage an online media war on the Ministry of Aviation,
the person of the Minister Princess Stella Adaeze Oduah and some head of parastatals at the Ministry of Aviation.
Their chief spurious allegation has been the continued falsification of facts as regards the Basa fund –the Bilateral Air Services Agreement BASA. The petition claims The petition states interalia ”This amount which is in excess of N11billion has been spent over different contracts awarded by the Minister of Aviation Mrs. Stella Oduah and the Managing Director of FAAN Mr. George Uriesi without following due process, no approval of the Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP), no due process certificate issued, and no federal Executive Council approval. These spending were neither budgeted nor appropriated in the 2012 Budget passed by the National Assembly (copy attached), had no Federal Executive Council Approval and did not comply with the spending limits allowed by the delegated financial authority of the Government”.
It is shocking the unrestrained campaign of calumny and dissemination of outright falsehood with regards to the utilization of the Bilateral Air Services Agreement (BASA) fund by the Federal Ministry of Aviation. Some versions of the mischievous publications quote non-existent figures of the BASA fund in the region of hundreds of millions in US Dollars allegedly missing or utilized without approval and due process certification from the relevant authorities.
However the facts of the matter point to the fact that, the entire sum in the BASA fund stands at $74million dollars. Out of this, former Aviation Minister, Mrs Fedelia Akuabuta Njeze sought and obtained approval from the Presidency and the National Assembly for the utilization of $60million (about N7.5 billion) from the fund for the rehabilitation of infrastructure at the nation’s airports in line with the Civil Aviation Act 2006. It must however be noted that this sum could not be accessed before the end of her stewardship.
Worried by the scale of infrastructure deficit at the nation’s airports, the current Aviation Minister initiated fresh processes to access the already approved $60 miilion from the BASA fund to form part of the resources required to execute the Remodelling of 11 airports across the country in the first phase.
Like her predecessor, all relevant approval from the Presidency and the National Assembly were obtained to access and utilize the fund to address the huge infrastructure challenge in the sector. So nothing could be farther from the truth; and it indeed smacks of sheer mischief to insinuate that the fund had been accessed and utilized without following due process. Reconstruction work at the 11 airports is over 90 per cent completed and will be due for commissioning soon.
It bears mentioning at this point that stashing BASA fund in the banks when critical infrastructure challenges require immediate and urgent redress serves no one any useful purpose, not the nation’s aviation sector; to be sure! It will even amount to official irresponsibility and abdication of leadership when considered against the backdrop that BASA fund, according to the 2006 Civil Aviation Act is intended to be deployed for the development of infrastructure and civil aviation in the country.
It is important to note that some it a career to write frivolous petitions against the present minister of aviation in the hope of distracting her from vigorously pursuing the wholesale transformation of the sector to give up this trade as the minister remains focused in re-writing the history of the aviation sector in Nigeria.
It is equally trite to caution journalists to take extra care in entertaining all manner of petitions from this clan of professional petition writers thereby according them underserved and undue publicity; and in the process unwittingly tarnish their hard-won professional integrity.
