OpinionOPINION: $20M LOOT: BETWEEN BEING PATIENCE AND BECOMING A PATIENT

OPINION: $20M LOOT: BETWEEN BEING PATIENCE AND BECOMING A PATIENT

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Nigerian historians will definitely scribble the activities of Dame, Patience Jonathan as the most controversial First Lady in the history of the country. When you analyse her according to the support she has given to her husband in the area of mobilization, you might want to ascribe to her the last vestige of Eva Peron of Argentina. But the flipside of her badly perfumed mimicry of Mrs. Peron is the avalanche of hate, disgust and loss of goodwill she made her husband to suffer at the polls in 2015.

It however appears she is not done with her strings of controversies, as her audacity to muscle in on a huge stash of cash to brazenly claim belongs to her has left many wondering if we should continue to be patient with her or dismiss her as a patient suffering from intense visitation from the gods.

If the news making its round in several national dailies including credible social media networks are worth the substance of facts therein, then the ex-First Lady may have opened the gallows for a massive head crop for her husband, Goodluck Ebele Jonathan and other eligible criminals who looted Nigeria fiber by fiber to the bones.
It may be recalled that the former First Lady, Dame Patience Jonathan, has reacted swiftly against Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) Order to restrict $20m traced to her and associates. Speaking through one Mr. Gboyega Oduwole, she informed the Federal High Court in Lagos that Mrs. Jonathan had filed a fundamental application against the EFCC, claiming ownership of the money.

The Chairman, Presidential Advisory Committee Against Corruption, Prof. Itse Sagay (SAN), has insisted the fresh admission by Patience Jonathan claiming ownership of the monies, means the anti-graft agency has the right to probe her. According to him, if the former first lady is claiming that she owns the money then she must explain how she earned it. The former first Lady is however maintaining that she earned the money! If the monies traced must be subjected to forensics based on pedestal calculation of what a former permanent secretary which was the position Mrs. Jonathan was occupying at a time when she was the First Lady, and possible income from her businesses including sales return from her ice-cream business, then it can be imagined the quantum of corruption that characterized the immediate past administration.

We have not allowed the memory of the build up to the last presidential election to slide past us. The picture of the dramatis personae is still very fresh. Those who said or did something are not going to be forgotten. Dame Patience was leading the pack in infamy. She made many utterances that contributed measurably to the ouster of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). She was unbridled, unguarded and untamed. At the height of her diatribe, vituperations, I began to wonder if Jonathan was really at any time ideal to rule Nigeria on account of how untamed the wife was let unleashed against the system she knew nothing about. Nobody could stop her, but the burden of the PDP was indeed the asset for the All Progressive Congress (APC) needed for victory. It may be true that she is the most educated wife of president in Nigeria, with a Master Degree, it is also heartwrenching that she is the only unenlightened. She bandied her trade of ignorance at every facet of the society, reducing the presidency to kitchen and bedroom talk of a husband and wife. Her perception could be felt in her utterances, which ordinarily would have been half ideal for a tête-à-tête with her husband in the confines of their bedroom.

The devil that has managed to marionette her has indeed tickled the beast of anti corruption against the past administration to roar the more. Just the way she fired up hate against her husbands administration, she has managed to put more wood in the flame to smoke out more corrupt Nigerians.

Her audacity may have been premised on some of these permutations; first her unbridled approach to issues which makes her assume the status of the lord of the fife. Secondly, her misconnected perception over the south-south assumed victimization meted on Jonathan. Then the third assumption that interest of Nigerians is beginning to wane in matters that concern corruption, recovery of looted funds since many opine it has not translated to immediate economic fortunes.

She may have tinkered all the above but managed to forget that the era of impunity is over and reality beckons as Nigerians are seeking vengeance against people like her. Interestingly, no sane person will permit her effrontery against sensibility of Nigerians to slide without condemnation.

It is however very possible that in the script of her comedy of errors, she hope to get a public support when she finally makes it to the duck or dragged along to detention by the EFCC operatives. She may never get the sympathy she is angling for. It might just be another suffocating blonder that will take her further down the lane of infamy. She once mentioned that “this Buhari will jail me and my husband”. The prediction might just be about to become a reality on account of her impudence. Sane minded corrupt Nigerians will bow their heads in shame upon revelation of such financial rascality. Her audacity of greed is certainly the most unfortunate, provocative and indeed cantankerous, which wouldn’t have fit in Nollywood catalogue of badly written scripts.

Written by Israel A. Ebije.
ebijeo5@gmail.com
ebijeisrael@yahoo.com

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