The practice of hiring jets for billions of naira by top executives of Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) for routine trips is still continuing, Daily Trust can report.
The matter caused a national uproar when on March 21 a member revealed during a House of Representatives session that the Minister of Petroleum Resources Mrs. Diezani Alison-Madueke, had spent N10bn to charter and maintain a jet for her personal use within two years.
The House ordered an investigation, but the minister failed to attend committee hearing on the matter and filed a court action to stop it.
However, six months later the NNPC signed another contract for €6,800,000 (N1,679,000,000) for executive jet hire for its top management staff and other VIPs, according to documents seen by Daily Trust.
The contract was approved by the Group Executive Committee on October 15, 2014. The GEC also approved the establishment of a fully funded escrow account to provide payment security to the contractor.
The document showed that Salma-Forte Limited, a Nigerian registered aviation company and an affiliate of VistaJet Group of Austria, has been engaged to provide executive jet charter services with a challenger 850 aircraft.
Six companies, Al-Dawood Air Limited, Sky Jet Aviation Services Limited, Salma-Forte Limited, Dana Air, Dornier Aviation Nigeria AIEP Limited and West Link Airlines returned bids out of 21 invited to participate.
Documents showed that Aero Contractors, had prior to the deal with Salma-Forte, managed the corporation’s owned jets and helicopters. NNPC had six helicopters and two executive jets, “including the Hawker 4000 which had an accident.”
In July last year, the NNPC directed that all its aircraft and helicopters be sold off.
The corporation said it was “changing the philosophy regarding its aviation services from ownership and maintenance to spot charter in order to save cost and secure operational excellence.”
One of the documents prepared between September 2014 and January 2015 showed a table authorising payment of EUR500,000 monthly to Salma-Forte from December 1, 2014 to October 1, 2015 with the exception of the month of April 2015 where it received €100,000.
A letter written by the corporation’s coordinator, legal services/secretary Ikechukwu Oguine to the deputy group managing director/group executive director finance and accounts Bernard Otti on January 13, 2015 called for payment of the outstanding instalments of December, 2014 and January, 2015, representing the 2nd and 3rd instalments.
Mr. Samuel Adejare Agege Federal Constituency Lagos State who raised the allegation against Diezani in March said it was a waste of public funds.
He said at the time “…In the last two years, the minister has committed at least N3.120 billion to maintaining the private jet, which is used solely for her personal needs and those of her immediate family, which is an appalling act.”
He alleged that other “wasteful” costs associated with the minister’s frequent trips included payment of allowances to the crew for trips, hanger parking and rent based on the lease agreement. He argued that, at a time of dwindling resources, it was a “breach of public trust” and “impudence” for a government official to fly “all over the world, obviously for leisure.”
However, in a recent interview with a national daily the former minister reacted to the allegation in the House of Representatives.
She said: “Well, I don’t know whether that issue is still in court. But the reason that I went to court was simple. First of all, nobody can lease a jet for N10 billion over a period. You can buy three jets for N10 billion. So that was obviously a nonsensical argument and I did not lease any jet.
“The NNPC leases jets and NNPC leased those jets to the best of my knowledge because at that point in time, they had no official planes.
“As an oil and gas ministry, we have purview over everything and it was actually very wrong that we had to borrow planes from these multinationals whom we were supposed to oversight.
“So over the years, I am talking about over the last 15 or 20 years, NNPC had either owned, leased or borrowed, both jets and helicopters. That was the case when I came in.
“Yes, we had a very old jet which nobody was going to touch and another jet had just been bought by late Alhaji Lukman just before he left, a Hawker. “Unfortunately, the moment it came, because it had been sitting unused for over a year it became a problem. In fact, NNPC was advised to sell it because it was a problematic model and had sat unused for a long period. They were advised to sell it, but they didn’t sell it. Then after a year of its purchase, it crash-landed in Nsubi and we had to actually give it out for spare parts to the National Security Adviser’s office at the end of the day.
“It was during this period that they leased the private jets for executive movement and operations in general, which we also used, as had always been the case. In that respect, the reason for the leasing and the amount involved are all available and I am sure the NNPC would be willing to give that information to whoever wants to look at them for public records. So again, it was a fabrication that came out from nowhere and was thrown at us as if suddenly out of the blues and for the first time in history, the NNPC was leasing jets or helicopters.
She added: “No, it was not for my personal use, it was for executive movement, which has always been the case. I am saying just like the $20 billion, you find something, you throw it on the person to feel smart or to make it look as if the person is junketing all over the place or as if nobody had done that before in the annals of the NNPC.”.
