Again, Oduah absent from Senate hearing

• As service chiefs’ absence stall meeting with senators

The Minister of Aviation, Ms Stella Oduah again failed to appear before the Senate yesterday.

The minister was scheduled to appear before the Senate Committee on Aviation and yesterday’s aborted meeting was the third.

Ms Oduah was first summoned to appear before the senate plenary with all the chief executive officers of the agencies under her ministry to throw light on the frequent plane mishaps in the country.

On two occasions, she could not honour the invitation until the senate rescinded its summons and asked her to instead appear before the committee.

However, Chairman of the Committee, Senator Hope Uzodinma, while fielding questions from reporters after yesterday’s plenary, explained that the absence of the minister was because of Wednesday night’s landing mishap involving a Saudi Arabian B747 cargo aircraft at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja.

Uzodinma said that Oduah will now appear before the committee next Tuesday.

Also, the absence of the Chief of Army Staff, Lt. Gen. Azubuike Ihejirika, Chief of Naval Staff, Vice Admiral Dele Ezeoba and the Inspector General of Police, Mohammed Abubakar, as well as the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Prof. Viola Onwuliri, yesterday stalled the planned Senate’s meeting with the Service Chiefs.

The Senate had summoned the Service Chiefs and the Foreign Affairs Minister to brief lawmakers on the impact of the State of Emergency recently extended in Adamawa, Borno and Yobe states.

Rising from an executive closed door session, which lasted less than 10 minutes, the Senate President, David Mark said that the meeting with the service chiefs will be deferred to another legislative day following their absence.

However, briefing Senate correspondents later, Chairman, Senate Committee on Media, Information and Public Affairs, Senator Enyinaya Abaribe explained that the meeting could not hold because it (security briefing) was a delicate issue and needed to have all the service chiefs in attendance.

“We decided to meet another day since they were all not around, they were to come on Tuesday but because of what happened on Monday (Borno airbase attack) we shifted it to Thursday, the Senate is worried about the security situation in the country.

“They are not here due to some logistic reasons, we are going to communicate with them and meet them as soon as possible,” Abaribe said.

On the fate of the yet-to-be-presented 2014 budget, Abaribe said: “The harmonisation committee has not met because some members of the committee of the House of Representaives are not in the country and the House said they will nominate some other people and as soon as that is done we will meet, we are also worried about the budget delay.”