Wife of President Goodluck Jonathan, Patience, on Monday denied media report (not The PUNCH) 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.”
