The Rivers State Governor and
Chairman of the Nigeria Governors’ Forum, Mr. Rotimi Amaechi, on Friday said
the wife of the President, Mrs. Patience Jonathan, lied against him in her
public account of the misunderstanding between him and the President’s wife a
few weeks ago.
The governor spoke in Port Harcourt
when clergymen of the Niger Delta Bishops Forum paid him a courtesy visit at
the Government House.
He said it was important for the
public to have a true picture of what transpired between him and the
President’s wife.
He said, “I want to be put on record
that the wife of the President said when my wife came to beg me, I pushed her
away. I have never quarrelled with my wife publicly and I will never quarrel
with my wife publicly.
“There was no time I pushed my wife
away and there is no time I will push my wife away. I just want to correct that
so that nobody goes away with the impression that somebody told my wife, ‘go
and talk to your husband, she came and I pushed her away’.
“No, that day, I simply walked away
into a bus and I sat down until they finished. So, all I did was to go back to
the bus to enable my wife to perform her official function of someone who had
received the wife of the President and escort her to all the places she wanted
to go to.”
Amaechi said his perceived
misunderstanding with the First Lady arose out of his desire to provide an
environment conducive for learning for the children of Okrika; the home town of
Mrs. Jonathan, adding that he had enormous respect for both President Goodluck
Jonathan and his wife.
The clerics were in the state capital
to mediate in the political crisis in the state.
The bishops had, some weeks ago,
visited the First Lady and the Minister of State for Education, Mr. Nyesom
Wike, in Abuja as part of their efforts to resolve the lingering
misunderstanding between the President’s wife and the governor.
Amaechi expressed the hope that the
mediation would work.
He said, “I hope that it (mediation)
will work. Niger Delta monarchs came and no result came out of it and since you
are men of God, I hope that this one God will bless it. I hope so because that
is the same way I spoke to them (the monarchs) and they said, ‘watch out, it
will work,’ and they never returned because it never worked.
“There are so many persons who had
come to mediate, but nothing came out of it. If it is peace that everybody
wants, I am ready for peace. When you say you are seeking for permission, I am
wondering why, because if you did not have the permission, you would not have
gone to see the wife of the President.
“The mere fact that you have seen the
wife of the President means that you have initiated the peace move. So, you
don’t require any further approval than the approval of God that you have
started with.”
Amaechi, who agreed that Mrs.
Jonathan was his mother, however, argued that no mother would take away a state
police commissioner to the detriment of her son.
He further said, “As the governor, by
protocol, I will receive the President and you know that the President is not
just our President, he is the head of the nation. But when the wife of the
President came, I went to receive her at the airport and she slept in Port
Harcourt.
“The next day, she came up with a
programme that was not part of the official programme and what was the
programme? She wanted her people to receive her in Okrika. There was no plan;
there was no protocol arrangement, nothing.
“We just had to quickly arrange
protocol to take her to the place. But to do that, we wanted to also show her,
as part of her own programme, not our programme, the projects we had done in
Okrika.
“So, we took her to the Rufus
Ada-George Ring Road in Okrika, which we started and completed and then
somewhere, we saw a health centre and a primary school and I said stop, let me
show her this health centre.
“We looked at the health centre and
we were satisfied. At the primary school, there were houses around, too close
for comfort; no football field, no playground, no space at all around the
school and I turned to the wife of the President and said, ‘Your Excellency ma,
we have not finished with this building, we would buy the houses that are
surrounding the primary school and demolish them’.
“Once she heard the word ‘demolish,’
the wife of the President flared up and took the microphone from me and started
all sorts of diatribes that I won’t mention here for the respect I have for the
office of the wife of the President.
“When she finished, I felt that it
was wrong to confront the wife of the President publicly. When she finished, I
withdrew and walked into the bus. When we got to the ground of the reception,
which was not part of our programme, which she just included by herself, I came
down from the bus and went to sit in one of the primary schools.
“If you build a primary school and the place is
surrounded by people who are cooking and selling and buying, that is not a
conducive atmosphere for learning and we did not say we would come there with
caterpillars and demolish; we said we would buy the houses from the people and
pay them off to be able to get a football field and provide playground for the
children and fence off the school so that we can protect them from paedophiles.
That was what happened
Tags
Politics
I can't see any resolution insight cos Amaechi is not done with the script handed down to him buy the northern governors and APC.until that script is acted to the later, he will not seek for peace!we the people of south south wish him luck for his selfish quest against our collective wish and interest
ReplyDeleteAmaechi. Your problem is that you lack wisdom because you feel you know how to speak english. Any way continue speaking your grammer because you are the only one who read english. Apply wisdom bro. Pikin no dey follow him papa fight even if him papa de wrong. Sorry sir, abeg sir no do cost too much. I no grey, I no grey na dog and monkey fight be dat oo. Use your teeth count your tongue.
ReplyDeleteThe wife of d president did not go to sch so hw do u expect her to know a conducive environment for learning Mr Governor carry on.
ReplyDelete