Stella Oduah
UPDATE 2: 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).
Stella Oduah’s Facebook Page. Yet to be revised
Stella Oduah’s Facebook profile page after the revision
UPDATE 1: 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.
Read our earlier report below
————————————-
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.
Latest revision of Stella Oduah’s Wikipedia Page (Revised January 7, 2014 at 4:21 Nigerian time)
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.
Stella Oduah’s new bio without a university
“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.
Stella Oduah’s new Wikipedia page without a university
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.
Can you imagine the kind of leaders Nigeria is having, yet we talk of a corruption free nation in a couple of years to come? We talk about vision 20... How?? What vision??
ReplyDelete