Nigerian Aviation Minister in fresh fake Doctorate degree scandal

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Created on Friday, 10 January 2014 00:00

Nigerian Aviation Minister in fresh fake Doctorate degree scandal

10 January 2014

Twenty-four hours after her claim to have acquired a Masters degree from the St. Paul's College in the United States was punctured, Nigerian-based 'Premium Times' newspaper has uncovered another false claim by the embattled Minister of Aviation, Stella Oduah.

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This time, the minister lied on oath to the Nigerian Senate, claiming another American 'university', Pacific Christian University awarded her an honorary doctorate degree in 1998.

Mrs. Oduah made the claim in a 7-page resume she distributed to Nigeria's 109 senators during her confirmation hearing on July 2, 2011.

On page four of the document, the minister claimed the university, which she said was based in Glendale, awarded her an honorary doctorate in Business Administration.

It was based on this document that she was grilled and eventually confirmed by the lawmakers.

But investigations by PREMIUM TIMES suggest that no university called Pacific Christian University exists in the United States.

The U.S. Department of Education, through its National Centre for Education Statistics, keeps an up-to-date database of all public libraries and educational institutions in the country - public, private and colleges.

PREMIUM TIMES reporters spent hours on Wednesday searching this database.

Their reporters searched by state (California), city (Glendale) and name of institution (Pacific Christian University). Yet, nothing came up in the name of the university Mrs. Oduah claimed gave her an honorary doctorate.

According to the database, there are six colleges (universities) in Glendale, a city of 191,719 inhabitants in Los Angeles County, in the state of California.

The colleges are American Medical Sciences Centre, Brand College, Glendale Career College, Glendale Community and North-West College.

There is no such university known as Christian Pacific College as claimed by the minister.

The spokesperson for the National Centre for Educational Statistics, Susan Ad, could however not be reached for comments.

She is yet to return calls and reply an email sent to her by this newspaper.

The spokespersons for the minister appear unwilling to comment for this story.

Efforts by PREMIUM TIMES to get them to react to this new revelation were unsuccessful.

Joe Obi, her special assistant on media, did not answer or return calls.

Source: Allafrica.com