Aviation Minister’s $1.6 Million Car Scandal: No Proof The BMWs Were Delivered

Officials of the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) have told SaharaReporters that there was a possibility that Coscharis Motors Limited never delivered two bullet-proof BMW cars that the agency purchased at the cost of $1.6 million for the personal use of Aviation Minister Stella Oduah.

SaharaReporters was first to break news of the extravagant expenditure by the cash-strapped NCAA, the agency charged with ensuring that commercial planes flying within Nigeria’s airspace are airworthy. Several auto sale companies in the US and the UK told SaharaReporters that each of the two cars should cost no more than $200,000. The NCAA paid a colossal sum of $800,000 a piece to Coscharis Motors, owned by Cosmas Maduka, for the cars which were meant for Ms. Oduah’s private use.

Sources within the agency told SaharaReporters today that the officials who signed for the BMWs never saw the physically. “We have discovered that those who signed to ‘take delivery’ of the car were just ordered by the minister to sign papers. They did not see the cars before they appended their signatures,” said a source within the agency who is familiar with the scandal.

When SaharaReporters broke the story, the minister’s aides as well as officials of NCAA first tried to claim that the report was false. However, Ms. Oduah’s spokesman, Joe Obi, later admitted that the cars were bought. He claimed that the purchase of the armored cars was necessitated by unspecified threats to the minister’s life.

The fact that those who signed for the cars did not take physical delivery of them, or even see the cars beforehand, has raised speculations that the whole deal could have been a scam to siphon off public funds.

The suspicion is driven by reports by an online medium, Premiumtimes.com, that Ms. Oduah has not been in any armored BMWs. The medium stated that its investigations revealed that the minister was not associated with riding in the cars supposedly delivered by Coscharis Motors.

“She comes to the [Presidential] Villa quite frequently, but she never arrives in such black BMWs,” one source at the Presidency told SaharaReporters this evening.  

An official of the NCAA said the fact that Ms. Oduah has not been seen in the cars raises questions about the validity of her spokesman’s claim that the cars were bought to give her a sense of security from threats.

The source wondered whether the minister colluded with Coscharis to charge two cars to the account of the agency, with the money going to private pockets. The official also said he was worried that the whole transaction might have been arranged with a high interest rate loan from First Bank Nigeria. He said he would like to see all the documents scrutinized to determine the extent of abuses involved.

Source: SaharaReporters