Wife of President Goodluck Jonathan, Patience, on Monday denied media
report that she was paid N3bn by the Niger Delta Development Commission to
facilitate the agency’s 2015 budget.
The report had claimed that apart from the sum, Mrs. Jonathan
collaborated with a former Minister of State for Education, Chief Nyesom Wike,
in a number of schemes that enabled them to loot the resources of the NDDC.
But the President’s wife, in a statement by her media assistant, Ayo
Adewuyi, described the report as a hoax.
Adewuyi’s statement read, “Nigerians are very conversant with the workings
of the National Assembly regarding passage of budgets.
“Parliamentary process requires that the Appropriation Bill goes through
First Reading, Second Reading and Third Reading and subsequent harmonisation by
the two chambers.
“One then wonders at which level of this process the First Lady
influenced the passage of the NDDC budget that warranted her being paid N3bn
for the alleged ‘consultancy.’
“It will be impossible for one single person to influence its passage or
is the author trying to indict our lawmakers?
“The report is, therefore, to say the least, dubious, diversionary,
unfair, unkind, and therefore totally unacceptable. Patience Jonathan did no
such thing.”
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