BY ONU OKORIE, ABUJA
Aviation minister, Princess Stella Oduah has disclosed why
her critics remain unrelenting in their criticism against her and the nation’s
aviation industry under her supervision, noting that she is 'an agent of change'.
Speaking in Abuja yesterday in an interview, she said beyond the political side
to her travails, ‘entrenched interest in the aviation sector who. For
over 38years have held the sector by the jugular and refused to allow any meaningful
development and change take place, ‘are bent on rubbishing her for very selfish
interest.Oduah who said she would not allow such interest to derail her from
her goal of transforming the country’s aviation sector noted that our airports
were a damning commentary on our status as part of the airspace existed without
the requisite navigational equipments and facilities to make the airspace safe;
these category of persons saw no evil and heard no evil while they happily
clapped their ways to the banks! This group has carried on with bitter venom,
throwing decency and honour overboard, lying and misleading the Nigerian
populace even when they knew the truth because my team and i changed the game
in the favour of Nigeria attaining her pride of place in the comity of nations.
She said of this category, ‘that is the entrenched, corrupt
, profligate individuals and entities who have caused the serious rot in the
aviation sector ,i owe no apologies; all i owe them is to further inform that
the current generation has seen through them and are no longer willing to
tolerate their antics.’
Preferring not to comment on the notorious bullet proof cars
saga, the minister said the transformation agenda of the president Goodluck
Jonathan has changed the ways of doing things significantly in the country, as
the president recognised the infrastructural deficit and has taken very bold
steps to addressing them in order to bequeath to the next generation a nation that can compete favourably in the comity of nations
and imbue our next generation with pride and patriotism.
‘The massive investment and the aggressive prosecution of
this agenda in this regard have seen the aviation sector being
transformed.Today,22 Airports owned by federal Government are at various stages
of becoming decent and world class terminals. Nigeria’s airspace has become one
of the safest in the deployment of
modern navigational equipments and infrastructures.The oversight capacity of
the whole sector has been strengthened with the relevant regulations in place
and the training and retraining of personnel.
Our National Aviation Policy has been reviewed to chart the
path to safer and secure aviation sector. The plan to make Nigeria have a
national carrier is at an advanced stage of implementation. The pursuit of an
aviation sector that is self-sustaining is being pursued with all aggression
and vigour.
Regretting that all the efforts to bring change to aviation
sector have been resisted with vigour by the entrenched interests,’ that have
been ripping off the nation’,Oduah added that her resolve to put her foot down
in the national interest and stop the rape of the country’s patrimony has
become her undoing.
‘We have had to confront frontally very powerful forces that
have held the sector hostage. My team and i are not people who will see things
going very wrong fold our arms and complain and not lift a finger to do
anyting.We dared to act, convinced that it was in the national interest to do
so.
She said though her administration in the ministry has not
arrived its destination yet, Nigerians who are witnesses to the rot of
yester-years are now proud of their nation, seeing what is going on in the
aviation sector.
‘What we are doing in the sector, together with the effort
in other equally important sectors, have given hope to the mass of our people that we can do something, apart from complaining, about the decay in our
national life. In doing what we have done, the purveyors of the rot and
corruption that have characterized the sector have at no time folded their arms.
They have fought back every inch of the way. The latest false and wicked
allegation of purchase of bulletproof cars for me by the NCAA was another of
the fabrications in their arsenals of lies to discredit my team and make our
reformation of the sector lack credibility in the hope that will clear the coast
for them to return to their wicked old ways. But we have only one message for
this group: The Nigerian people now know better and will no longer tolerate them,
‘the minister said.
For Details Read:The Nigerian Pilot 22 January 2014.
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