By Obi Nwakanma

Anyone who accepts public office does so with the clear understanding that they no longer have a private life. Their lives belong thence to the public realm and come under consistent scrutiny. Stella Oduah, Minister for Aviation, surely must know this by now, and must therefore accept as a matter of course that whatever she places in the public domain must reflect the highest, unimpeachable, and verifiable truth about her life.

So, did Stella Oduah lie about her educational attainment? Sahara Reporters, the pesky on-line journal thinks so, and has taken up the crusade to hound her out of public office. Their campaign against Oduah is now a heckling – goaded on, some of its critics suggest, by very narrow, partisan, and tainted interests too. Time, of course will tell. I’d like in any case to say in defence of Sahara Reporters, that there is nothing wrong with their pursuit of Stella Oduah.

It is all politics, and politics is about the defence of given interests often played as high-minded moral crusades. And Sahara Reporters surely knows which side its bread is buttered. Over the last three months, a concerted campaign has been waged against the minister of Aviation, starting it seems with the story of the purchase of Armored BMW cars for an agency under Aviation allegedly authorized by Ms. Oduah.

The purchase of that car at such a steep price was very provocative and rightly incensed Nigerians. The House committee on Aviation set up an inquiry; and the president was compelled to set up an administrative inquiry also to examine the minister’s conduct in the procurement scandal. Stella Oduah was taken to task, and she also very robustly defended herself in the whole affair, and I will return to this shortly. Two weeks ago, a reporter confronted the minister with the question about her possible resignation from her job “in the national interest,” or failing which, the prospect of sack by the president following the inquiry by the House of Representatives, to which Ms. Oduah very wittily responded: “I think it means you don’t read or you probably don’t understand English, because I read it. What they said is that Mr. President can and should review; that is what they said there. Probably, you should go back to school.” Well of course, that must have cut right to the bone, because soon after, Sahara Reporters took it upon itself to make Stella Oduah’s schooling or education the subject of its own investigation. They reported that the minister had lied in her public profile about her educational attainment.

The minister, they claimed, had presented herself to have earned an MBA from St. John’s College in Lawrenceville, Virginia, and that it was all cockamamie. This of course will not be the first time a public official would have made such wild claims about intellectual attainments. We remember the Bola Tinubu saga about going to Government College Ibadan and the University of Chicago, which was all a lie, or the Sanusi Buari lie about attending the University of Toronto. In the age of the internet such lies are foolish. Sanusi Buari was hounded out of his job as the first Speaker of the House of Representatives in 1999, and went into political obscurity thereafter. Well, about Tinubu, he enjoyed the protection of the powerful Lagos Press as the “progressive” governor of Lagos. It was all about coming from the wrong side of the rail.

But of course, Stella Oduah must answer questions about her claims. Did she lie publicly about her educational qualifications? But thus far, what we know is that Stella Oduah did indeed earn a Bachelor’s degree in Accounting from this small College in Virginia, and that her degree is authentic. Sahara Reporters confirmed this. The grouse is that she claimed in her profile an MBA by the same university, and an “honorary” doctorate awarded by some degree mill called the Pacific Christian University in California. I’d like to make the point about Pacific, that this ought not take the skin off anyone’s nose in so far as Ms. Oduah did not claim that she earned a PhD as an academic qualification from a University of any singular repute.

She does not address herself as “Dr. Stella Oduah” nor ascribe a claim other than the “honorary” to it, and it was not the basis of her confirmation as Minister. I think these facts taken in full may suggest that Ms. Oduah is the victim of a concerted, scorched earth media crusade from quarters that want her out of her job by all means necessary.

So, who wants Stella Oduah out? Why? Stella Oduah must come out quickly to rest this growing controversy about her education qualification. Did she claim to have earned an MBA or not? Did she lie before the senate of the republic about her attainments? As I have consistently insisted, if Ms. Oduah is found to have contravened any rules, she must be held liable. I am unwavering in this call. But as in the Aviation story, it is equally important and fair to get to the true story. And so coming back to the purchase of the BMWs, fair conduct demands that Ms. Oduah be made guilty only if it is found that she influenced and benefited directly and materially in the award of the contract, and that she broke the standard procurement rules laid down for such contracts to benefit her interest.

In my view, the amount budgeted for those cars were criminal. But if any rules were broken at all, the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Aviation, in the role of Chief financial officer of the ministry and Chief Adviser to the Minister, under the public service rules is liable, not the minister; unless it is found that the minister specifically ignored advise in this matter and exerted undue influence to her own benefit.

This ought to be ascertained by government auditors who are statutorily empowered to make such verification. Nigerians must be properly informed: while we must continue unreservedly as citizens to hold the likes of Stella Oduah accountable for their actions in public office, we must also be wary of tainted interests who mobilize their enormous resources to harass public servants, otherwise we’ll become mobs and not citizens in the defence of our collective national interests.