PHOTO: Stella Oduah Finally Hands Over, Thanks GEJ in Her Farewell Speech

The former Minister of Aviation, Priness Stella Oduah, finally handed over at the Ministry of Aviation, Federal Secretariat Abuja, on February 18, 2014, Tuesday.

Present at the ceremony were the newly-appointed Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Aviation, Dr Mrs Jamilla Shu'ara, the Supervising Minister of Aviation, Dr Samuel Ortom and his aides.

The formalities took place at the Ministry of Aviation at about 11 a.m.

In her speech, she thanked President Jonathan for finding her worthy out of the 160 million Nigerians and also listed her achievements while she was Minister. Read the abstracts from her speech below:

“It was a great privilege to be chosen from amongst the 160million Nigerians to serve in the Federal cabinet. My profound gratitude goes to Mr President who gave me this rare privilege. I also want to thank for him all the support he accorded me to pursue his transformation agenda in the Aviation

sector. I equally wish to thank my aides, aviation sector workers and stake holders who partnered with me to realize our vision & mission in the sector. During my tenure, we gave our best to institute reforms in line with Mr President's Transformation Agenda. We produced the Aviation sector Master-plan and implementation Road map. Using the Masterplan and Roadmap, we were able to...

- Reconstruct and Remodel all 22 federally-owned airports across the country. We also commenced the construction of Five International terminals in Lagos, Abuja, Port Harcourt, Enugu and Kano.

- We also introduced the Perishable Cargo and Aerotrolis concepts to drive the growth and development of not only the aviation sector but also the country while modalities have been completed to kick-start the Aeropolis project.

- We also carried out institutional reforms, built the capacity of NCAT to produce enough professionals for both the local aviation market and for export.

- My greatest accomplishment comes from the safety and security of the Nigerian Airspace. We were able to procure, update and install safety-critical infrastructure that has repositioned the sector to achieve our objective of zero-accident rate in the Nigerian Airspace”.

It would be recalled that the hand over has been previously scheduled for February 14, 2014, Friday, then, for February 17, 2014, Monday. In both cases, however, Stella Oduah did not show up, without giving any official explanations.