Oh dear! SaharaReporters are really out to run Princess Stella Oduah down. The Embattled Nigeria’s Minister of Aviation is yet in another scandal as her integrity is being questioned. 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.
But SaharaReporters has learned from the President of the college that it has never in its 125-year history had a graduate school or graduate program. Wow! Continue inside..
The Provost Vice President of Academic Affairs, and the Vice President of Institutional Development said in response to the 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.
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
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