Former President Jonathan Says ''Amaechi Had Problem With Patience Not Me''

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 a book titled, ‘ Against the Run of Play , ’ written by the Chairman , Editorial Board of ThisDay , Olusegun Adeniyi.

“ 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, ” the book stated .

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 .

“ If in one year , you took about N300 bn from the federation account to pay for subsidy and the next year , you are taking almost N 2 tn 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 —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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