First Lady, Dame Patience Jonathan, on Monday denied speculations that she collected N3 billion from the Niger Delta Development Commission, NDDC, to facilitate the agency’s 2015 Budget.
The reports alleged that aside being paid the said amount, the President’s wife connived with a former Minister of State for Education, Nyesom Wike, in a number of schemes through which they looted the resources of the NDDC.
However, in a statement issued by her media assistant, Ayo Adewuyi, Jonathan described the report as hoax, claiming it was aimed at misleading unsuspecting members of the public and recruiting them into an ochestrated hate campaign against her person.
Adewuyi also claimed that the report was intended to portray his principal as an overbearing and intrusive woman contrary to her well known passion for peace and advancement of the cause of women and children in Nigeria.
“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 NDDC Budget that warranted her being paid N3 billion for the alleged ‘Consultancy.’
“Therefore, 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 totally unacceptable. Dame Patience Jonathan did no such thing,” it asserted.
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