An apparently troubled Minister Oduah has however not
remembered to revise her official Facebook page. It still has St. Paul’s as the
college she attended.
It appears her handler only remembered to edit her profile page only removing all traces of St.
Paul’s College from the account. See below screenshots of her
unedited Facebook page and her Facebook profile (after the revision).
Minister Oduah has intensified her
cover-up schemes. After our initial report at 2:09 p.m. Nigerian time, the
minister has returned to revise her Wikipedia page multiple times. The latest
revision was done at 4:21 p.m. Nigerian time. A link to an interview she
granted Encomium Magazine now leads to a 404 error on that website.
Embattled
Minister of Aviation, Stella Oduah, and her associates have spent the last
several hours scrambling to clean up the minister’s biographies on the
Internet, following allegations that she lied about her academic
qualifications, PREMIUM TIMES can report today.
News website, SaharaReporters, had Monday quoted authorities
at St. Paul’s College, where Mrs. Oduah claimed she studied for Bachelor and
Masters degrees, as saying they did not award her an MBA at anytime as the
university does not even have a graduate school or graduate programme.
The minister is yet to respond to the allegations.
Efforts by PREMIUM TIMES to get her to comment for this story were
unsuccessful. Joe Obi, her special assistant on media, did not answer
or return calls.
Yakubu Datti, the spokesperson of the aviation agencies,
who usually speak for her, said he was not aware of the allegation against the
minister, and that he would revert after consulting the minister. He is yet to
do so as at the time of publishing this.
However, this newspaper has observed an attempt by
the minister and her aides to revise her profiles on the web with a view to
cleaning up any reference to St. Paul’s College in her history.
Already, Mrs. Oduah’s biography on
the website of the Ministry
of Aviation has been revised, with references to St. Paul’s
College now wiped out.
“Oduah-Ogiemwonyi received her Bachelors and Masters
Degree (in Accounting and Business Administration respectively) in the United
States,” the new profile said of Mrs. Oduah’s education, without any reference
to the university she attended.
The Wikipedia page of the minister was also edited
and it now has no reference to the university Mrs. Oduah attended. The last
edit on the Wikipedia page was done at 14:41 p.m. Nigerian time.
All links and reference materials on the Wikipedia page
capable of linking the minister to the university that has disowned her have
also been deleted.
Even the minister’s personal website has been reviewed
to remove any reference to St. Paul’s College.
While the links leading to Mrs. Oduah’s foundation and
photographs remain active, the other principal link, which should lead to her
history page, has been deactivated.
It’s unclear whether it was being edited at the backend
when PREMIUM
TIMES visited the site.
Mrs. Oduah had in a resume she
presented to the Senate as a ministerial nominee in 2011 indicated that she
obtained a Master’s degree in Business Administration (MBA) from St. Paul’s
College Lawrenceville, Virginia, United States.
But SaharaReporters quoted the President of the college
as saying his university had never in its 125-year history had a graduate
school or graduate program.
The Provost Vice President of Academic Affairs, and the
Vice President of Institutional Development said in response to the website’s
inquiries, “We don’t offer any graduate programs here.”
The school’s website also indicates clearly that Saint
Paul’s College awards only baccalaureate [bachelor’s] degrees.
It is not clear yet whether the minister received an
undergraduate degree from the college as she claimed. SaharaReporters
said Dr. Claud Flythe, the college’s current president was unable to confirm
that claim because the college had been closed since June 2013 after it lost
accreditation.
Mrs. Oduah had since October being enmeshed in a a
N255million armoured cars scandal in which she was accused of compelling an
agency under her supervision, the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority, NCAA, to
buy her two exotic bullet cars at clearly inflated prices.
The purchase of the cars generated outrage for weeks
because its cost was inflated, and it was neither listed in the
government-approved budget nor did it comply with the Nigeria’s public
procurement law.
The House of Representatives has
since asked President Goodluck Jonathan to sack the minister but the president
has failed to act.
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