Former First Lady, Dame Patience Jonathan, has accused the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) of “relentlessly plotting to destroy her family” and urged President Muhammadu Buhari to call the Acting Chairman of the anti-graft agency, Ibrahim Magu, to order.
Mrs. Jonathan alleged that Magu’s “vindictive disposition towards her family portrays the organisation as an agency for revenge” and called on Buhari to bring him back to the path of sanity and reason to salvage the image of the Presidency, which she said the EFCC boss has “ceaselessly desecrated through his malicious actions.”
In the statement signed by her media aide, Belema Meshack-Hart, the former first lady also accused Magu of bias and intimidation. She said the EFCC boss had been “spreading barefaced falsehood and propaganda” against her in the name of investigations. Mrs Jonathan further claimed that Magu’s actions were tantamount to “unjustified witch-hunt”, stressing that no other first lady had faced such fate of brazen intimidation in the history of the country.
The statement said: “We wish to bring to the attention of Nigerians, the unjustified witch-hunt and media propaganda against the former First Lady, Dame Patience Jonathan and her family, by the agents of the acting chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Ibrahim Magu, and his media hirelings.
“For almost three years, this agency of government has beamed its searchlight on her and her family members, including siblings and parents, as well as her Foundation and Non-Governmental Organisation; A. Aruera Reach Out Foundation, and Women for Change and Development Initiative, in the name of investigating their activities. However, we have since discovered that the real intention is to disgrace, intimidate, dehumanise and ridicule her and her family, through sheer cheap propaganda, sensational investigation and media trial that have been going on for too long.
“We wish to place it on record that in the history of this country, no wife of any president had been so far investigated in such flagrant vindictive and disgraceful manner, as has been the fate of Mrs. Jonathan.
“As a tradition, every first lady in this country has had one pet project or the other, with which they sought to intervene in the lives of less privileged. Mrs. Jonathan started her NGO in Bayelsa State 11 years ago, when her husband was the governor of the state. With it, she has, over the years, touched the lives of many Nigerians. It is then surprising that while other first ladies and their pet projects were left alone, it is only her activities and that of her NGOs that are being subjected to indefinite probe by the Buhari administration.”
The former first lady accused the anti-graft agency of adopting the method of giving a dog a bad name in order to hang it by “maliciously linking her to all kinds of fake possessions and properties around the country, including the Local Content Office in Yenagoa, which she said is an arm of NNPC, Shoprite Complex, Nigerian Customs Guest House and Park View Hotel, both in Port Harcourt, as well as the residence of her neighbor who is a serving Senator.
“It has now come to a point where all the magnificent edifices in Abuja, Yenagoa or Port Harcourt are presented to the media as belonging to Mrs. Patience Jonathan. Not done, they also accuse her of owning several plots of land in many cities across the country, including places she had never visited. The most astonishing of all is that her close relatives are viciously being victimised, as their personal properties are also being investigated.
“It is either the EFCC is now led by people who cannot conduct proper investigations, or they are deliberately feeding the public with false information, in line with their sinister script to embarrass and brow beat the former first family.
“We wish to remind President Muhammadu Buhari that what Magu and other agents of his government are doing is tantamount to desecrating the hallowed and dignified office of the president, and exposing it to public ridicule before the rest of the world.”