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By Our Reporter
The House of Representatives on Tuesday ordered the immediate arrest of an alleged unlicensed auctioneer and Nigeria College of Aviation Technology NCAT’s Director of Quality Control by the Police in the National Assembly for allegedly providing false information on oath, and the sale of two helicopters for 1.2 million dollars.
This is also as the Committee on Public Assets called on the Inspector General of Police, Kayode Egbetokun, to take over the investigation of the alleged indiscriminate sale of two helicopters by NCAT.
The resolution of the Committee on Public Assets came after about five hours of interaction with the management of the College and other relevant bodies.
Recall that in December 2023, the House launched an investigation into the state of public assets in the country.
The committee’s mandate is to recover assets valued at trillions of naira and moribund public assets within and outside Nigeria and to unravel the reasons behind the hurried sale of two helicopters without the approval of the Federal Executive Council days before the end of the Buhari administration in 2023
Present at the Commitee were the management team of NCAT, representatives of the Nigerian Army and others crucial to the sales of the Helicopters.
The chairman of the Committee, Ademorin Kuye expressed worries that the two choppers bought at $2.4 billion were sold at $1.2 billion without due process.
“We requested documents of any kind of joint venture, there is no response to that whether you have one or you do not.
“We requested for a list of assets including a comprehensive description and specifications of all your list assets, rented apartments including acquisition dates and methods and the current status and conditions of such Assets. We can not say specifically that you have satisfied all of these requests. Though you tried to answer some of them, your response is not adequate” Hon Kuye said.
The lawmakers also queried the use of an unlicensed auctioneer who failed to provide needed response to enquiries
In his reaction, Musa Alkali, Coordinator of Nigerian Army Aviation said that the request by the Army to make use of the helicopters in the fight against terrorism was turned down, he however demanded that the two helicopters should be recovered.
A member of the committee, Midala Balami, said that the documents presented to the committee were false documents.
It would be recalled that the Rector of the Nigeria College of Aviation Technology (NCAT), Zaria, Kaduna State, Captain Akali Modibo while speaking with Aviation Correspondent in September 2023 said the helicopters in were sold as they were becoming a drain on the resources of the college, revealing that the college spent N5bn maintaining them for about 10 years while lying idle in the hangar.
The choppers, Bell 206, were bought during the administration of former President Goodluck Jonathan for the purpose of training pilots, but the equipment were not the type used for training by the college.
As a result, the planes were redundant for 10 years until a decision was made to sell them
The rector said each of the choppers was sold at $600,000 (over N470bn).
He said, “The helicopters have jet engines, and with jet engines, it is so expensive that an hour training would take you your entire Private Pilot Licensing (PPL) on the piston engine airplanes.
“We have never trained anybody on helicopters at the college. Probably, the past government didn’t seek advice from NCAT, and when the government wanted to purchase helicopters for its agencies, it decided to include NCAT.
“If the government had involved NCAT, we would have told them the type of aircraft we can use for training, which is piston engine helicopters. Nowhere in the world is this helicopter type used for training. It’s like you using a Boeing 737 aircraft to teach someone how to become a pilot; you don’t do that.”
