N225M CAR SCANDAL: Ngozi Okonjo Iweala Questioned.
The scandal rocking the aviation ministry over the purchase of N255m armoured cars for the minister, Ms. Stella Oduah, by the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority, NCAA, got messier yesterday.
At the ongoing public hearing of the House of Representatives’ Committee on Aviation investigating the scandal, it was revealed that the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister for the Economy, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, granted import waiver for the armoured cars.
It was also revealed that the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria, FAAN, bought two armoured Lexus cars that cost N120m (N60m per one) for Oduah. This is aside two other Toyota Prado cars whose costs were yet to be known.
There were also revelations that Coscharis Motors lied to the Minister of Finance, the Office of the National Security Adviser, NSA, and the Nigerian Customs Service about the real owners of the cars, ostensibly to evade paying customs duty.
Documents revealed that the armoured cars were meant for Lagos State government whereas they were the property of Oduah/ NCAA.
The Committee, which began sitting yesterday, was told that Okonjo-Iweala approved a customs duty waiver of over N10m for the importation of the two armoured cars in the process of importing 300 cars for Lagos State Government for the National Sports Festival (Eko 2012).
Oduah shunned the House Committee yesterday.
The Committee, however, warned that the Ministers of Finance and Aviation may attract sanctions from the Committee if they failed to appear today to respond to the allegations of contract inflation, wrongful approvals and waiver for the said cars.
The Comptroller of Customs, Mr. Abdullahi Dikko represented by a Deputy Comptroller General, Mr. Manasseh Daniel Jatau testified that about 300 vehicles, including the two armoured cars imported by Coscharis for Lagos State Government’s use for Eko 2012 enjoyed waiver from the finance ministry, before the two armoured cars were eventually sold off to NCAA.
“The vehicles you (the committee) mentioned were imported and consigned to Coscharis through the Tincan 2.
“A duty fee of N10, 133, 174, 00 should have been collected as duty if the Federal Ministry of Finance did not grant waiver to Coscharis,” he said.
The waiver letter in response to Coscharis application reads: “To your letter dated 23rd June 2012 in the above subject matter and to convey the approval of Mr. President and Commander in Chief to the Lagos State Government for the waiver of Import Duty, Value Added Tax, VAT, ETLS, CISS and other port charges in respect of the importation of 300 units of BMW, Ford, Land Rover, Range Rover, Lexus, Mercedes, Escalade, Jaguar and buses (Petrol/ Diesel) for use during the 18th National Sports Festival (EKO 2012) to be imported through Messrs Coscharis Motors Nigeria Limited, as indicated in the duly attached list.”
The Chairman/Chief Executive Officer of Coscharis Motors, Mr. Cosmas Maduka, who caused a stir at the hearing by describing it as political witch-hunt, insisted that the price of the vehicles was not inflated.
He said the Committee was free to double-check the prices with the company abroad.
But a preamble of his submission before the Committee was combative. Maduka said he had been in the business for over 20 years.
He said: “It takes 20 years to build a reputation, but it takes one day to ruin it. I am of the old school, and I would like to continue doing my business the way I have been doing it. We (Coscharis) don’t inflate contracts.”
He said the high cost of the cars which were sold at about N127m per unit, were factory-built and beefed up to level B7 to merit the high cost.
Maduka stuck to his guns, despite contrary views from the lawmakers, especially Hon. Nasir Ali Ahmed (APC-Kano), that from the Committee’s findings, the vehicles couldn’t have been more than N36m apiece.
He told the Committee that his company (Cosharis) was grilled by the State Security Services, SSS, and the Office of the National Security Adviser, NSA, before approvals were given to supply the cars.
But the Committee after a thorough scrutiny of the documents signed by Coscharis and the NSA’s office found that the NSA did not approve the waiver, as the car company did not provide details on the country from where the bullet-proof cars were made.
The Committee in its findings also claimed that the Chassis numbers for the two cars inspected at the Ministry of Aviation were different from the chassis numbers availed the office of the NSA.
In its testimony, First Bank of Nigeria, FBN, represented by its Head of Retail Services in Lagos, Mr. Seyi Oyefeso, told the Committee that the bank received an earlier loan application of N564m, but later approved N643m for NCAA and duly paid Coscharis N255m and the rest to Cosmopolitan Motors for the delivery of the 298 other cars.
In response to queries raised by members of the Committee earlier, Oyefeso said the bank was not in a position to know the prices of bullet-proof, factory-built cars, because the bank was not using any.
“We don’t use bulletproof vehicles, so we don’t know the price of bullet-proof cars,” he responded.
Members of the Committee who were miffed by FBN’s account, said in the face of revelations that the cars’ prices were inflated, the bank shouldn’t have approved that much for NCAA.
The Committee members also allowed the Director General of NCAA, Mr. Fola Akinkuotu, to brief them, but later said they were unsatisfied with his submission, thereby ordering the Ministers of Aviation and Finance to appear today at 10a.m., failure of which they would be sanctioned.
Section 89 of the 1999 Constitution allows parliament to exercise such powers.
Earlier, the Chairman of the Committee, Hon. Nkeiruka Onyejeocha (Abia- PDP), in a commencement speech at the hearing, said the ministry’s transaction with Coscharis and other partners was a serious dent on whatever efforts the government was putting in place to reform the system.
“It’s a sour point against the transformation agenda of Mr. President, and this Committee is determined to get to the bottom of this matter and unravel who did what and why,” he said.
Meanwhile, the Senate Committee on Aviation has assured Nigerians that it will ensure a thorough investigation of the alleged purchase of two armoured vehicles for the Minister of Aviation without due process.
The outcome of the probe will also lead to the punishment of anybody indicted in the deal.
Chairman of the committee, Senator Hope Uzondinma, disclosed this yesterday at the resumed preliminary hearing on the crashed Associated Airline’s plane last month at the National Assembly.
He also said that FAAN told the committee that it bought 202 vehicles and another two armoured Lexus cars as well as two armoured Prado jeeps for the aviation minister and the managing director of the authority.
The lawmaker added that the FAAN management told the committee that each of the two armoured Lexus cars cost N60million while that of the two Toyota Prado cars was yet to be known.
He, however, assured that his committee would get to the root of the purchase, stressing that investigation was ongoing on the matter.
Uzodinma said: “Investigation is still ongoing and it will not be fair for me to preempt it. FAAN did confirm that among the operational vehicles they purchased, four of them are armoured vehicles, two for the managing director and two for the minister.
“We told them to go back and put everything in writing and make a comprehensive statement on all vehicles purchased, that they bought 202 vehicles for different operations. So, until they come back on Monday, we cannot rush into conclusion. The MD of FAAN said they did a funding arrangement with a commercial bank.
“This investigation will be a very deep one so that at the end of the day, we do a holistic approach and look at how the sector will be repositioned so that all anomalies will be corrected.”
This was just as the two agencies in the aviation sector pledged that they were not involved in the scandalous purchase of any vehicle.
Appearing before the committee yesterday, the Director-General, Nigeria Metereological Agency, Mr. Anthony Anuforom, and his counterpart in the Accident and Investigations Bureau, AIB, Capt. Mukhtar Usman, denied before the probe committee any involvement in the scandal.
They made the denial separately under oath while responding to questions on how many armoured vehicles they bought.
