PREMIUM TIMES ''Twenty-four hours after her
claim to have acquired a Masters degree
from the St. Paul’s University in the United
States was punctured, PREMIUM TIMES has
uncovered another false claim by our
embattled Minister of Aviation, Stella Oduah.
This time, the minister lied on oath to the
Nigerian Senate, claiming another American
‘university’, Pacific Christian University
awarded her an honorary doctorate degree
in 1998.
Mrs. Oduah made the claim in a 7-page
resume she distributed to Nigeria’s 109
senators during her confirmation hearing on
July 2, 2011. On page four of the document,
the minister claimed the university, which
she said was based in Glendale, awarded her
an honorary doctorate in Business
Administration. Download the resume
Minister Stella Oduah submitted to the senate
here. It was based on this document that she
was grilled and eventually confirmed by the
lawmakers. But investigations by PREMIUM
TIMES suggest that no university called Pacific
Christian University exists in the United
States.
The U.S. Department of Education, through its
National Centre for Education Statistics, keeps
an up-to-date database of all public libraries
and educational institutions in the country –
public, private and colleges.
PREMIUM TIMES reporters spent hours on
Wednesday searching this database. Our
reporters searched by state (California), city
(Glendale) and name of institution (Pacific
Christian University). Yet, nothing came up in
the name of the university Mrs. Oduah
claimed gave her an honorary doctorate.
According to the database, there are six
colleges (universities) in Glendale, a city of
191,719 inhabitants in Los Angeles County,
in the state of California. The colleges are
American Medical Sciences Centre, Brand
College, Glendale Career College, Glendale
Community and North-West College. There is
no such university known as Christian Pacific
College as claimed by the minister. The
spokesperson for the National Centre for
Educational Statistics, Susan Ad, could
however not be reached for comments. She
is yet to return calls and reply an email sent
to her by this newspaper. The
spokespersons for the minister appear
unwilling to comment for this story.
Efforts by PREMIUM TIMES to get them to
react to this new revelation 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,
answered our call but immediately said he
would call back. He is yet to do so as at the
time of publishing this.
Meanwhile, in the same resume she
submitted to the Senate, Mrs. Oduah did not
indicate that she got a Masters from St. Paul,
raising questions on why she made that
claim in her official citations and profiles
posted on the Ministry of Aviation website,
her personal website and her Wikipedia
page. She only claimed in the document to
the Senate that she obtained a Bachelor of
Science degree from St. Paul’s College in
1982, a claim that PREMIUM TIMES is
investigating.
The spokesperson for the Nigerian senate,
Enyinnaya Abaribe, tried Tuesday to extricate
the senate from blame as Nigerians criticize
the lawmakers for conducting a sham
screening exercise that allowed Mrs. Oduah
to get away with lies and deceits. Mr. Abaribe
said the lawmakers depend largely on the
nation’s security agencies to help them
investigate claims by appointees of the
president. He said in conducting screening
exercises, the senate relies largely on reports
forwarded to it by the security agencies. Mrs.
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.
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. 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 Tuesday. 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. Mrs. Oduah had since October
been 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-appr oved 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''.
Premium Times

Hahaha From fry pan to fire. And some ignorant fooolsss will come along and claim this is another lie. Well, a follower is a true reflection of what the leader is. GEJ should also be investigated for his Ph.D He doesn't act like someone who earned such on merit.

ok