The All Progressives Congress (APC) has accused President Goodluck Jonathan of offering protection to the embattled minister of Aviation, Stella Oduah stressing that the president could be accessory to the the alleged crime of corruption.

The party in a statement signed by its Interim National Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, said revelations on the alleged disregard for due process and over-invoicing on the purchase was enough for Jonathan to summarily deal with the issue rather than setting up a probe panel.

According to statement, “It has now emerged that the money spent to purchase the armoured cars was not appropriated, which is a violation of the Nigerian Constitution; that due process was not followed in buying the cars, as the Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP) has testified, and that the Minister, who was said to have approved the purchase, violated the law by approving an expenditure over the 100 million naira limit.

Adding, that “these revelations make the Oduahgate a straightforward case that should have been summarily dealt with by the President. Instead, he has engaged himself in a rigmarole by setting up a diversionary administrative panel in what is now looking like an orchestrated ploy to buy time, hoping this issue will die down and the Minister will escape being sanctioned,” it stated.

The party also accused the president of “thumbing his nose at Nigerians, who had expressed outrage at the action of the Minister, by approving for her to travel to Israel as part of his entourage.”

”No one believes the dummy that is being sold to the public, that the minister was denied access to the President in Israel. The egregious act of putting the Minister on his entourage, at a time she is at the centre of a terrible scandal, calls to question the president’s sense of propriety and his commitment to the war against corruption.

”This indecorous action of making a minister who is under investigation for monumental corruption and abuse of office one of the faces of Nigeria in a foreign land is an embarrassment to the country and its people, and a further dent on the poor image of the Jonathan administration. We condemn it most whole-heartedly.

APC said, however, that the party as well as other concerned groups and citizens were closely following the developments on Oduahgate, and would not allow it to be swept under the carpet, in the interest of the millions of Nigerians who had been consigned into the lowest rung of existence by a rapacious administration.