Levi Obijiofor: The NCAA’s handling of the car purchase scandal was a complete PR disaster

Jonathan has the constitutional and moral duty to investigate this issue and to stop the officials involved in the scandal. If he is unwilling to deal decisively with the officials involved, he must discard forthwith all his claims to zero tolerance for corruption.

Never in the history of this country have Nigerian citizens taken so much interest in the activities of the Aviation Ministry and the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA). The public is outraged that the stupendous amount of $1.6 million (approximately N255 million) was spent by the NCAA to acquire two bulletproof cars for use by the Aviation Minister in a country with a high level of poverty. How could the NCAA justify the incredible amount of money it squandered in the purchase of the cars meant for the protection of a minister?
To be clear, public anger is not necessarily about the need for the cars but about the excessively large amount of money involved. No one is saying the minister should not be protected. Every minister of government deserves protection. The protection should not be for the ministers only but should also be extended to their
family members, in light of the culture of indiscriminate kidnapping across the country. However, I am not persuaded that such an astounding sum of money should be spent on bulletproof cars for the protection of the minister.
The public has the right to be offended by the ostentatious expenditure by the NCAA, an aviation regulator that has demonstrably failed many times to undertake creditably the tasks assigned to it by legislation. This is the same agency of government that has maintained a disgraceful safety record in the industry. Given the diverse and serious problems that have plagued the NCAA over the past decades, you would expect this prodigal regulator to understand that it could use half the money to acquire much needed equipment to improve the safety of air travellers.
This particular case should not be dismissed as an attempt by an aggrieved whistleblower to settle scores. The scandal has added to the damage already done to Nigeria’s name in the international community, as a country in which corruption by government officials is rife and regrettably permitted. This is perhaps why officials of anti-corruption agencies in overseas countries burst in raucous laughter when they hear that Nigeria is waging a war against corruption. They don’t believe us. They have valid reasons for their scepticism. How do we expect to achieve socioeconomic development when the flames of official and unofficial corruption have been lit and kept alight by government officials?
This case is particularly shocking because the revelations emerged soon after the crash of an Associated Airline plane in Lagos, and two successive emergency incidents involving an IRS plane and a Kabo Air Boeing 747 aircraft. Many people have wondered why, in light of frequent air accidents and safety issues that have dogged the nation’s aviation industry, the NCAA and the Aviation Ministry found it tolerable to commit such a large amount of money to buy two cars for the minister’s security. Frequent air crashes have spawned so much anger and raised troubling questions about the effectiveness of the NCAA and the Aviation Ministry as overseers of the aviation industry, the supervisors of air travellers’ safety and the administrators of airworthiness of aircraft that fly in our airspace.
Against this background, it was bizarre to hear NCAA boss Fola Akinkuotu say the other day that his organisation was trying to detect the whistleblower who leaked to the media the information about the purchase of the bulletproof cars. Akinkuotu does not seem to appreciate the enormity of the financial irresponsibility committed by his organisation and the intensity of public anger. As far as he is concerned, it will be more rewarding to smoke out the person who exposed the outrageous business deal than to provide reasonable and convincing explanation why the NCAA spent an outrageous amount of money to enhance the Aviation Minister’s security.
The attempt by Akinkuotu to identify the whistleblower who exposed the inappropriate expenditure by the NCAA shows how deep corruption has been etched in the minds of senior government officials. Should the focus be on the source of the revelations or should the NCAA aim to provide unambiguous and believable reasons why it spent so much money on the two cars? Sound explanation, rather than witch-hunting, is what the public wants from the NCAA and the Aviation Ministry.
Akinkuotu said he was concerned that the person who leaked the information to the press committed a crime because the information ought to remain hidden from public knowledge. Again, this is an awful case of shadow-chasing. I have a piece of advice for the embattled director-general of the NCAA. He should avoid public statements that expose his inability to engage in informed arguments. He should hire a very good public relations officer who will interact more effectively with the media and explain to the public mind-boggling decisions taken by the NCAA.
There is no question that Akinkuotu the NCAA boss has handled this scandal badly. He has not achieved his key objective which was to muzzle the press and therefore gag public discussion of the scandal. The more the man speaks, the more he muddles the facts and the more the public wants to know. Akinkuotu should understand that no matter how much he values secrecy in the way the NCAA operates, he has limited rights to secrecy in his capacity as a public official. As a public officer, he has limited privacy too. His fondness for secrecy in the management of the NCAA has now damaged rather than enhanced his image.
Let us be clear here. Inappropriate expenditure by senior government officers says a lot about the existing poor culture of accountability and transparency in our society. Senior public officers who engage in improper financial conduct or who compromise their office should be disciplined.
There are two distinct contradictions in the explanations provided by the Aviation Minister’s special assistant on media and the justification provided by the NCAA boss. While the Aviation Minister’s spokesperson admitted that “some security vehicles were procured for the use of the office of the honourable minister in response to the clear and imminent threat to her personal security and life…”, the NCAA’s Akinkuotu said the bulletproof cars were not only for the Aviation Minister but would also serve other official purposes, such as the safe transportation of foreign VIPs who visit Nigeria.
This scandal poses new challenges to President Goodluck Jonathan and his government. How he handles this national disgrace that has so far shredded the image of the NCAA and the Aviation Ministry will define for us how far Jonathan is prepared to go to confront and discipline corrupt officials in his government. Will he blink and take the attitude that it is nothing new, that other ministers have also spent money for their personal security, welfare and wellbeing? Will Jonathan order swift investigations into this matter to enable him to get a true and complete idea of how $1.6 million was spent on two cars for use by one minister?
In the past, Jonathan had tended to ignore public outcries over clear evidence of corruption by senior government officials. Now that a major scandal has broken in the Aviation Ministry, everyone is watching to see how the president and his handlers would put a spin on the dishonourable practice or dismiss it as exaggerated reporting by journalists.
Jonathan has the constitutional and moral duty to investigate this issue and to stop the officials involved in the scandal. If he is unwilling to deal decisively with the officials involved, he must discard forthwith all his claims to zero tolerance for corruption. As I mentioned in a previous essay, a corrupt public servant is an embarrassment to the nation and a threat to the ability of other senior public officials to perform their tasks truthfully and objectively.
Corrupt practices by senior public officers tend to rub off negatively on the image of Nigeria, as well as the way the nation perceives public servants. Let us spit this fact out before it goes sour in our mouths: There is something objectionable about a country such as Nigeria in which senior public officers who should serve their country altruistically appear regularly in corruption scandals.
Different people hold different views on what, if any, action should be taken against the Aviation Minister and/or the NCAA boss. The most dominant view is that they should resign. In true democracies in which public officers are accountable to the people, the minister and the NCAA chief would have since stepped down to pave way for official inquiry into the scandal. But these two officials won’t resign because it is not the way we do things here. In our society, public officers don’t resign when they are facing corruption allegations. They wait till they are pushed out of their jobs in a dishonourable manner.
Many questions have been asked about this scandal. And many answers are still awaited. Who authorised payment for the acquisition of the bulletproof cars? Should such a large sum of money have been spent to buy two cars for the protection of a minister in a country in which millions of people are walloped by hunger, malnutrition, disease, and illness? Did any official of government receive illegal payments in the purchase of the cars? This is one case that deserves to be scrutinised by Jonathan. Whether he would do so is another matter.

Source: Sun Newspapers