patience-jonathan
Patience Jonathan

Nigeria’s former First Lady, Dame Patience Jonathan has accused the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission of manipulating events in the court sitting for the $15 million fraud allegation made against her.

Four companies including Pluto Properties and Investment Company, Seagate Property Development Company, Trans Ocean Property and Investment Company Ltd, and Avalon Global Property Ltd, all associated with the former First Lady, pleaded guilty while three others maintained innocence to the fraud charges made against them in a Federal High Court hearing in Lagos.

Mrs Jonathan has said that the EFCC brought four unrecognisable persons who were not authorized to represent those companies in court. She argued that the EFCC did not comply with Section 477 (2) of the Administration of Criminal Justice Act, 2015, by not presenting any letter to prove that the four representatives were authorized to appear in court for the companies they stood for.

From her perspective, the EFCC is trying to seize her hard-earned money and crucify her unjustly. In a statement released through her media aide, Chima Osuji, the wife of former president Goodluck Jonathan said:

“This is a clear evidence of the desperation of the prosecution to pull down the former First Lady and confiscate her hard-earned money.

“It is an irony that it was the former First Lady who went to court for the repatriation of her confiscated money when she realised that the EFCC and its co-travellers were playing politics with this issue after she had come out publicly to say that the said money belongs to her and that she has all evidence to prove the sources of her money. Up till this very moment, the EFCC has refused to interrogate or invite her for questioning.

“The biggest twist in court on Thursday was that the fourth to seventh defendants pleaded guilty to all the 15 counts. It is clear that these unknown faces were agents of the EFCC, who have been stage-managed and tutored to come to court to complicate the case as a strategy to confiscate her money.”