The Nation Newspaper

Tag: Dame Patience Goodluck Jonathan

  • Companies linked with Jonathan’s wife plead guilty to laundering N5b

    Four companies linked to former President Goodluck Jonathan’s wife, Patience, Thursday  pleaded guilty to laundering $15,591,700 (about N5billion).

    They are: Pluto Property and Investment Company Ltd (represented by Friday Davis), Seagate Property Development and Investment Company Ltd (represented by Agbor Baro), Trans Ocean Property and Investment Company Ltd (represented by Dioghowori Frederick) and Avalon Global Property Development Ltd (represented by Taiwo Ebenezer).

    The companies, along with a former Special Adviser on Domestic Affairs to President Jonathan, Waripamo Dudafa, a lawyer Amajuoyi Briggs and a banker, Adedamola Bolodeoku, were arraigned at the Federal High Court in Lagos.

    Dudafa, Briggs and Bolodeoku, however, pleaded not guilty to a 17-count charge before Justice Babs Kuewumi.

    The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) said the accused persons conspired on November 13, 2013 in Lagos to launder $15,591,700.

    It said the defendants “reasonably ought to have known that the funds form part of the proceeds of an unlawful act”.

    The alleged offence is contrary to Section 18(a) of the Money Laundering (Prohibition) (Amendment) Act 2012 and punishable under Section 15 (3).

    Mrs Jonathan had sued EFCC and Skye Bank over the freezing of her bank accounts, demanding N200million in damages.

    She said the funds in the accounts of the companies, which pleaded guilty, were hers.

    An aide, Sammie Somiari, who deposed to an affidavit on behalf of the former first lady claimed she helped Mrs Jonathan open the accounts.

    He said Dudafa, on March 22, 2010 brought two Skye Bank officers, Bolodeoku and Dipo Oshodi, to meet Mrs Jonathan at home, following which she authorised the accounts’ opening and was the sole signatory.

    He, however, added that after the five accounts were opened, Mrs Jonathan discovered that Dudafa opened only one of the accounts in her name; the other four were opened in the names of Dudafa’s companies.

    According to Somiari, Mrs Jonathan had been operating the accounts after Oshodi promised to change the accounts’ names to hers.

    “Since 2010 up until 2014 and thereafter, the applicant (Mrs Jonathan) had been using the cards on the said accounts and operating the said accounts without let or hindrance.

    “Even in May, June and July 2016, the applicant traveled overseas for medical treatment and was using the said credit cards abroad up until July 7, 2016 or thereabouts when the cards stopped functioning,” he said.

    Mrs Jonathan is urging the court to compel the EFCC to immediately remove the “No Debit Order” placed on her accounts.

    Seagate Property, Dudafa, Bolodeoku and Sompre Omiebi (said to be at large) were accused of indirectly retaining $1,094,500 through a Skye Bank Plc account (2110002207) between November 14 and 19, 2013. EFCC said the money “forms part of an unlawful act to wit: stealing.”

    They were also accused of indirectly retaining $1,200,000 through the Skye Bank account between January 21 and December 19, 2014; as well as $1,349,700 through the same account between March 31 and May 20, 2015.

    Trans Ocean and others were said have “indirectly retained” $1,897,600 and $1,839,900, through Skye Bank account 2110002245 between February 2014 and last May.

    Pluto Property and others allegedly retained $1,895,400 and $1,200,000 through Skye Bank account 2110002238 between February 21, 2014 and last May.

    EFCC said Avalon Global and others, last May 28, indirectly retained $250,000 through a Wema Bank Plc account no 0122493290.

    The commission said Dudafa, Briggs, Bolodeoku and Omiebi, on November 26, 2013, conspired to forge a Skye Bank mandate card purportedly signed by Friday Davis as Signatory A, an offence punishable under Section 1 (19)(6) of the Miscellaneous Offences Act, 2004.

    It said the forged document was to the prejudice of Skye Bank which was induced to open an account no. 2110002238 in Pluto Property’s name.

    EFCC said they also forged mandate cards with which the accounts of Trans Ocean (no. 2110002245, with Kola Fredrick as Signatory B), Avalon Global (2110002252, with Taiwo Ebenezer and Chima John as Signatory A and B) and Seagate Property (2110002207, with Agbo Baro as Signatory A) were opened.

    Dudafa, Bolodeoku and Omiebi were also accused of forging a Wema Bank corporate account mandate card to the bank’s prejudice.

    EFCC said the mandate card, with which Avalon Global’s account was opened, was signed by Taiwo Ebenezer and Chima John.

    Before the arraignment, defence counsel had objected to the charge on the basis that the individuals who claimed to represent the companies did not exhibit any authorisation letters.

    “EFCC could have picked them on the street. There has to be a letter in writing from the companies in line with Section 477 of the Administration of Criminal Justice Act,” Dudafa’s lawyer Gbenga Oyewole said.

    Bolodeoku’s lawyer, Joseph Okobiemen said: “This is a joint trial. Whatever plea given by the companies will rob off on others.”

    Briggs’ lawyer, Tochukwu Onyiuke, added: “They merely claimed they’re representatives, but they have not exhibited any documents appointing them.”

    However, Justice Kuewumi discountenanced the objections and directed the court’s registrar to read the charges.

    After the representatives pleaded guilty on the companies’ behalf, prosecution counsel Rotimi Oyedepo asked the court to allow him review the facts of the case so the judge could sentence the companies, but the judge said that would be done on the next adjourned date.

    Justice Kuewumi granted Briggs and Bolodeoku bail for N250million with one surety, who must be a property owner in a “highbrow” area of Lagos.

    The surety must be deposit the Certificate of Occupancy and his International Passport at the court. The land registry is to verify the CofO, the judge ordered.

    Dudafa’s lawyer, Gboyega Oyewole, had urged the court to allow his client to continue on the bail terms earlier granted him by Justice Mohammed Idris of the same court.

    EFCC first arraigned Dudafa on June 16 on 23-counts of conspiracy and concealment of crime proceeds. He and Iwejuo Joseph Nna (alias Taiwo A. Ebenezer and Olugbenga Isaiah) were accused of conspiring to conceal proceeds of crime amounting to over N1.6billion on June 11, 2013. They pleaded not guilty to all the counts.

    Justice Kuewumi said since the charge was different, a fresh bail application ought to be filed.

    He adjourned until September 27 for trial.

     

  • HID’s death forced my wife and I out of hidding, says Jonathan

    HID’s death forced my wife and I out of hidding, says Jonathan

    Former President Goodluck Jonathan has disclosed that he opted to remain out of public glare since leaving office last May 29 but was forced along with the wife to come out due to death of Mama HID Awolowo.
    Jonathan made this known in Ikenne home of the Awolowos after he led a delegation to the family over the death of HID Awolowo.
    “Within this period, myself and my wife have been hiding; we don’t even go out. We thought we’ll be hiding for at least twelve months. But in this particular case, we cannot hide. So, we’ve come for the condolence and to encourage our brothers and sisters that we are together.”
    The ex – President was accompanied to Ikenne by his wife, Patience Jonathan, the former chairman of Federal Road Maintenance Agency, FERMA, Jide Adeniji, former Leader, House of Representatives, Hon. Mulikat Adeola, former governor of Ogun state, Gbenga Daniel and Mrs. Kuku from Bayelsa state.
    According to Jonathan, Mama’s death was so powerful that it shook both him and his wife out of hiding.

  • Buhari victory: Dame Patience will be sorely missed

    Buhari victory: Dame Patience will be sorely missed

    Absence, it is said, makes the heart grow fonder. Already, even before they pack their bags and head for Otuoke, President Goodluck Jonathan and his wife, Dame Patience, have altered the chemistry of our turbulent and irrepressible relationship with the First Couple. President Jonathan has just lost the presidential election to Muhammadu Buhari, a retired general and former military head of state, by a margin that put the election beyond dispute, notwithstanding the antics of Godsday Orubebe, a former minister of the republic.

    Of the two colourful personalities, the president and his wife, Dame Patience is the more irreverent, excitable, insouciant and domineering. Her qualities, if diplomatic scruples will not allow us call them vices, are so remarkable and unmistakable that she has achieved domestic and international renown. She is the queen of malapropism, and the poster child of verbal indiscretion, not to say executive interference. But her reputation was sealed not by any of her constant malapropian eruptions, as memorable as many of them are and have remained, but by her catastrophic meddling in the now famous case of the 219 Chibok secondary schoolgirls abducted by Boko Haram militants about a year ago.

    In that famous case, and about 10 days after the girls were abducted, she took on the responsibilities of the president and began summoning school and state officials to shed light on a crime she felt was either overstated or contrived to undermine her husband. Whatever she had a hand in, she boasted before doting officials and pressmen, she did fulsomely and efficiently. She would get to the bottom of the case, and she would do it briskly, she grimaced. Amidst great histrionics and tears cascading down her luxuriant face, she thundered one eruption after another of inimitable malapropisms. Unsure whether to stick to pidgin, with which she was perfectly at home, or something more First Lady-like, she would wander into proper English now and again, until the inconveniences of good grammar got in her way, and she would relapse into the more comfortable but inelegant style of her childhood.

    In the end, she of course failed, for the outcry that greeted her blunders, not to talk of the multiple fallacies she committed that made her seem insensitive, were enough to roast the best of statesmen. And she was not even a statesman. Her abrasive style, of which there are thousands of examples, would also be missed. Who could forget the sundering of relationships between her and the equally brusque Rivers State governor, Rotimi Amaechi? He had been conducting her on a tour of development projects in the state, and had got to somewhere near her hometown of Okrika. There he gloated about the demolition he was about to carry out to make way for more fitting and noble edifices. Not only did she perform the huge and open indiscretion of snatching the microphone from him, she proceeded to denigrate his efforts, caution his exuberance, and ticked him off so peremptorily that the tour ended abruptly. For a governor who himself did not take prisoners, it was humiliating that protocol did not allow him to respond.

    If Dame Patience’s reputation was sealed with the Chibok abductions, she entered into Valhalla and into immortality with her resonating performances in the closing weeks of her husband’s presidential campaign. It is not clear why President Jonathan permitted her error-prone wife to mount the soapbox, for as it was, even his own gaffes were unmanageable and destructive of his political goals. But there she was, prancing, dancing, coaxing and cajoling from one state to another, selling her husband’s puny talents, and exhibiting great impertinence and mouthing insufferable mendacities. To her, everything was permissible and expedient.

    Her husband’s opponent in the March 28 election, the All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate, Gen Buhari, was dead in the brain, not brain dead, as many thought she said, for the two obviously do not mean the same. It was not enough that she denigrated age, she also lampooned and scorned cultures. The North, she hissed, was irresponsible in family planning and training of children. It is not known why she had little or nothing against the Yoruba or the Igbo; but for the brethren across the Niger River, she was acerbic and unsparing. In return, the northern brethren promised to respond to her tirade on election date and doom her husband’s reelection chances.

    With the departure of the Jonathans, and the assumption of office of a new pair so stately but taciturn, the pleasures, excitement and verbal and policy flourish that we took for granted for so many years, unpaid for and unsolicited, would be lost, perhaps for all time. Sic transit gloria mundi, say the Latin. Thus passes the glory of the world.

  • First Lady congratulates NCC chief

    The First Lady, Dame Patience Goodluck Jonathan has congratulated the Executive Vice Chairman of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), Dr Eugene Juwah on his election as the Chairman of Commonwealth Telecommunication Organisation (CTO). Juwah was elected at the CTO Forum and 54th Council Meeting in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

    In a letter signed by Ike Neliakuchukwu, Senior Special Assistant (Administration), Office of the First Lady, Dame Jonathan observed that “the Commonwealth has, once more, through this election demonstrated its confidence and goodwill, not only in you but in the Nigerian nation under the capable leadership of His Excellency, DrGoodluckEbele Jonathan, President Federal Republic of Nigeria.

    While wishing him a successful tenure of office as the ITU Child Online Champion, the First Lady expressed the belief that DrJuwah will use the opportunity to curtail the threat and challenge of child online security, as well as deepen a secured penetration of telecommunication access within the less privileged communities in the commonwealth.