AFTER weeks of media speculations about the former First Lady Patience Jonathan’s banking details, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has formally announced it is investigating her. The news didn’t come as a surprise. She had owned up to several accounts traced to her allegedly through her aides and companies, and is now asking that the embargo on her accounts be lifted. It is not clear how much is in the offending accounts. Estimates have ranged between $19m and $31m, and perhaps still counting. Dame Patience is unrepentant over the accounts, and has cited a number of reasons, some of them health related, to justify the ample funds in the accounts. Her husband, ex-president Goodluck Jonathan, recently met with a few past heads of state, in the opinion of some sources, to intervene in the situation. But the investigations are proceeding apace, while the former president himself has been left untouched by investigators and anti-graft agencies despite many unseemly trails leading in his direction.
Having begun the investigations, and having announced what the purpose of the investigations is, not to say the sums found in those frozen accounts, it is unlikely investigators will suddenly halt the probes. They will see it through. At least that consistency can be expected from them. If investigators can prove state funds were channelled into and through her account, they will act appropriately. Their resolve to probe and act will go on despite the many buffeting attacks from the people and regions sympathetic to Dame Patience. The government will have these distractions to contend with, many of which play the ethnic card regardless of the crimes alleged.
The Ijaw Youth Council (IYC) provides the most poignant ethnic alibi for financial crime in these parts. Alleging that the recent unrest in the Niger Delta was due mainly to the ‘media trial’ of Government Ekpemupolo, alias Tompolo, IYC spokesman, Udens Eradiri, insinuated that Dame Patience, their own daughter, was the first First Lady to be subjected to such indignity. Said he in his quaint and unfathomable logic: “First Ladies in Nigeria do not do any work. A woman naturally attracts a lot of gifts from men, let alone a First Lady who has the power to recommend you for something. They receive a lot of thank you and gratifications because in most cases, they recommend people who come back to thank them. Even when they do not recommend, people go and say good morning with a million dollar. It did not start with Patience Jonathan. We know how influential the former First Lady of this country and other First Ladies were. We know how powerful, rich and wealthy they are and the property they acquired as a result of gratification. If you say Patience should show how she made her money, you must start with all the First Ladies, otherwise, it is a witch-hunt. Patience Jonathan got her wealth from thank you and there is nowhere in the law that says we should not receive thank you. So, EFCC should stop this nonsense. If you have issues, go and follow the due process and don’t begin to use the media to tarnish the image of the former first family.”
The surprise is that it has taken this long for IYC to come out clearly with this accusation. It is a distinctly Nigerian logic and culture to hind behind tenuous facades. The counter-coup of 1966 was triggered after northern officers computed the number of northern military officers and politicians killed, and the alleged skewness of the treason plan. Every regime change, military or elected, has been accompanied by similar computations in deaths, appointments and job terminations. Until the national question can be resolved, and a national identity evolved to provide new symbols and paradigms around which Nigerians can unite, every aspect of national and even state governance will be subjected to different and puzzling interpretations. Dame Patience is the harbinger. Dr Jonathan himself will follow, for, already, many in his region of birth who knew how corrupt past presidents and heads of state were, have chafed at the manner the ex-president is being isolated and treated.
It is not certain how these ethnic considerations will be sorted out. Since 1960, no Nigerian government has been successful in handling this delicate matter. The IYC drew a parallel between Tompolo’s ordeal and the crass bombing of pipelines in recent months. If the Muhammadu Buhari government is to break the mould, he will have to design a way of swatting the fly perching on the crouch. These ethnic arguments would have been meaningless had President Buhari put his best foot forward when he assumed office. If his appointments had passed ethnic and religious tests, and he had mobilised the country behind himself and around great, patriotic and altruistic ideals, neither the IYC nor any other malcontent would have proffered a resonating illogic of crime and punishment. With the country nearly bisected in two, IYC’s curious logic of excusing and expiating crime on the altar of ethnicity may sadly find more disgruntled converts.
Ethnic expiation of Dame Patience’s ordeal
