By OKEY NDIRIBE
ABUJA—The Senate, yesterday, demanded explanations from the supervising Minister of Aviation, Dr. Samuel Ortom, on the N174 billion debt incurred by the ministry since 2011.

Chairman of the Senate Committee on Aviation, Senator Hope Uzodinma, who issued the query during the committee’s oversight visit to the ministry’s headquarters at the Federal Secretariat, Abuja, argued that the committee was not carried along during the various transactions.

SAMUEL ORTOM

According to Uzodinma, “I have looked at the documents and seen the level of the ministry’s indebtedness and I wondered how these excessive debts would be offloaded by the ministry.”

Commenting on the Bilateral Air Services Agreement, BASA, contracts he said: “You can see that in BASA, we have only N10.6 billion in our purse and expenses of N36 billion.

“I know that this account is being handled by the National Assembly and the Presidency, and we couldn’t have given approval to any commitment more than how much we have in that account.”

DMO’s debt

He also questioned the reason for the borrowing of $100 million by the Debt Management Office, DMO, and for the procurement of the Chinese loan to the tune of $500 million without approval by the National Assembly.

According to him, the ministry needs approval from the Assembly and the President before embarking on such loan drive, adding that “we did not see where $100 million was allocated to be borrowed by DMO.

“On the terminals’ $500 million loan, we need to see the design; we do not know the size of the airport, we do not know where work has started on them.

“For the first time we are just hearing of Phase 3. So much amount of money is being allocated to it; where are we going to get the money from? We must make provision from the N63 billion appropriation.

“This has to be stopped because there is no money for it. You do not just commit government if you are not sure of where the money is going to come from.

“My advice to this ministry, so that they will not embarrass government, is to do your best to ensure that you do not unnecessarily and without approval commit government.

“We will not support you on that, because we will not be part of an arrangement that will put us into disrepute.”

Minister’s response

Ortom explained that loans for the upgrading of the four airports in Lagos, Abuja, Port Harcourt and Kano need not go through appropriation because they are part of counterpart funding arrangements.

While acknowledging that he was not part of the ministry when the contracts were awarded, Ortom stated, however, that all the contracts went through due process.

The Minister admitted the high level of indebtedness and solicited for the understanding of the Senate so as not to stall some of the projects that are near completion.

He said: “We hope that the synergy between the executive and the Senate will give us the desired result to take the industry to the next level.

“On the issue of BASA, we have put our papers together and accordingly forwarded them to the Senate Committee.”

He explained that the $100 million DMO loan and the $500 million Chinese loan were based on counterpart funding agreement being handled by the Minister of Finance, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala. He insisted that the Minister of Finance was aware of the approvals.

On Phase 3 projects, he said: “The Permanent Secretary and I came into the ministry not long ago and we have not awarded any contracts. We intend not to do so because of the huge debts we have to pay.

“What we have done is to reach out to the Ministry of Finance and the Budget Office, and we have set up an inter-ministerial committee that will look at all the issues based on the interim report which we have.”