”My Problem with Patience Jonathan” –Amaechi breaks silence

Embattled Governor of Rivers state, Rotimi
Amaechi narrates how his problem with the
President’s wife, Dame Patience Jonathan
started.

He made the statements below Last Friday
when clergymen of the Niger Delta Bishops’
Forum visited him in Government House, Port
Harcourt Friday as part of their efforts to
mediate the political crisis in the state.

Quoting what he said to the bishops,
“My lords, I don’t know what to say. Believe me,
the only thing I want to say to you is that, and I
want to be put on record, the wife of the
President said when my wife came to beg me, I
pushed her away.

“I have never quarrelled with my wife publicly,
and I will never quarrel with my wife publicly.
So, there is no time I pushed my wife away, and
there is no time I will push my wife away.

“I just want to correct that so that nobody goes
away with the impression that somebody told
my wife, ‘go and talk to your husband,’ and she
came and I pushed her away.“No, that day, I
simply walked away into a bus and I sat down
until they finished. So, all I did was go back to
the bus to enable my wife perform her official
function of someone who had received the
wife of the President and escort her to all the
places she wanted to go to.”

He continued: “I hope that it (this mediation)
will work. Niger Delta monarchs came and no
result came out of it and since you are men of
God, I hope that this one God will bless it.
“I hope so, because that is the same way I
spoke to them (the monarchs) and they said,
‘watch out, it will work,’ and they never
returned, because it never worked.

“There are so many persons who had come to
mediate, but nothing came out of it. If it is
peace that everybody wants, I am ready for
peace.

“When you say you are seeking for permission,
I am wondering why, because if you did not
have the permission, you would not have gone
to see the wife of the President.

“The mere fact that you have seen the wife of
the President means that you have initiated the
peace move, so you don’t require any further
approval than the approval of God that you
have started with.”

The governor also said: “When you spoke with
the wife of the President she spoke publicly,
and I concede to her, that she said she is my
mother.

“As wife of the President, who is the head of
government and head of the nation, she is my
mother, and you expect that as my mother, she
should be able to protect her son.

“No mother takes away a police commissioner
to the detriment of her son, so when next you
see my mother, please tell her that she should
try and protect her son.”

On the Okrika story, he explained: “As the
governor, by protocol, I will receive the
President and you know that the President is
not just our President, he is the head of the
nation.

“But when the wife of the President came, I
went to receive her at the airport and she slept
in Port Harcourt.

“The next day she came up with a programme
that was not part of the official programme,
which was for her people to receive her in
Okrika, there was no plan, no protocol
arrangement, nothing.

“We just had to quickly arrange protocol to take
her to the place. But to do that, we wanted to
also show her, as part of her own programme,
not our programme, the projects we had done
in Okrika.

“So, we took her to the Rufus Ada George Ring
Road in Okrika, which we started and
completed and then somewhere, we saw a
health centre and a primary school and I said
stop, let me show her this health centre.

“We looked at the health centre and we were
satisfied. At the primary school, there were
houses around the primary school too close
for comfort, no football field, no playground,
no space at all around the school and I turned
to the wife of the President and said, ‘Your
Excellency Ma, we have not finished with this
building, we would buy the houses
surrounding the primary school and demolish
them.’

“Once she heard the word ‘demolish,’ the wife
of the President flared up and took the
microphone from me and started all sorts of
diatribes that I won’t mention here for the
respect I have for the office of the wife of the
President.

“I felt it is wrong to confront the wife of the
President publicly. When she finished, I
withdrew and walked into the bus. When we
got to the ground of the reception, which was
not part of our programme, I came down from
the bus and went to sit in one of the primary
schools. That is where she said my wife met
me.”

He continued: “How did the wife of the
President know that my wife met me and I
pushed her away when she was supposed to
be in a public ceremony. Was she standing with
me and my wife in that primary school and saw
me push my wife away?

“So, it is important the public know that the
altercation between myself and the wife of the
President was as a result of providing services
to her place, the Okrika people.

“If you build a primary school and the place is
surrounded by people who are cooking and
selling and buying, that is not a conducive
atmosphere for learning, and we did not say
we would come there with caterpillars and
demolish; we said we would buy the houses
from the people and pay them off to be able to
get a football field and provide playground for
the children and fence off the school, so that
we can protect them from pedophiles.”