Former President
Goodluck Jonathan has said there is no bone of contention between him and the
Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Amaehi.
Rather,
Jonathan stated that Amaechi had a problem with his wife, Patience, which he
(Jonathan) tried in vain to resolve.
Jonathan’s
disclosed this in the book - ‘Against the Run of Play’ - written by Segun
Adeniyi.
The book
stated, “Jonathan told me that Amaechi’s problem was not with him but rather
with his wife and that, at a point, he tried to reconcile them.”
While Amaechi
admitted that he was at loggerheads with Patience, he said Jonathan was not
saying the whole truth, noting that there were also disagreements between him
and Jonathan, during the latter’s era as the President.
The ex-Rivers
State governor attributed the cause of his grudge with Jonathan to illegal and
excess deduction from the federation account by the former president.
He said, “I
could not surrender my mandate to a woman (Patience) in Abuja, even if such a
person was the wife of the President…that basically was my sin with Dame
Patience Jonathan."
Amaech added;
“If in one year, you took about N300bn from the federation account to pay for
subsidy and the next year, you are taking almost N2tn for the same thing when
fundamentals had not changed, then serious questions should be asked.
“And as NGF
(Nigerian Governors Forum) chairman, it was my responsibility to ask those
questions and Jonathan took them personal.”
Jonathan only
called me once for a meeting over Boko Haram — Gov. Shettima
In the book,
the Borno State Governor, Kashim Shettima, lamented that Jonathan was not
committed to the efforts to fight Boko Haram insurgency in the North-East.
Shettima said
out of the 13 meetings he had with Jonathan on the Boko Haram terrorism, only
one was initiated by the latter.
“All the
others were at my seeking appointments to see him and on some occasions, it
took several weeks for such requests to be granted. There was a belief around
President Jonathan that the whole Boko Haram crisis was orchestrated to
undermine him and his administration and because of that, there was no interest
in resolving the problem,” he added.
The governor
alleged that Jonathan ‘marked’ him for pushing for the meetings and allegedly
planned to remove him and the two other governors in the North-East.
Shettima said,
“He particularly wanted to remove me….I heard that his Attorney-General and
Justice Minister, Mr. Mohammed Adoke, said there was nowhere in the
constitution where the President had the power to remove a governor. In fact, I
was told that President Jonathan reportedly interjected by asking, ‘How come
President Obasanjo removed Governor Joshua Dariye?’ to which he was reminded
that the Dariye aberration had been declared illegal by the Supreme Court.”
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