In an interview with Vanguard, she talks about the money received by her husband allegedly from the presidency to campaign for Jonathan’s re-election.
She said this in response to the allegation that her husband received funds from President Goodluck Jonathan to campaign for him.
Excerpts:
There is this controversy that CAN, led by your husband, received, first, N6 billion and later, N7 billion, from the Presidency to campaign for GEJ’s re-election. What was your initial reaction?
It’s quite laughable. The challenge we have in this country is that we are not people of thinkers, and it’s quite unfortunate. And that’s the reason some of these people keep playing on our intelligence. If we are people of thinkers, it would be very difficult for them to do so. A thing like that never happened to start with. It’s what propelled it that I think I will like to address.
The whole essence was to create division amongst Christians. Strike the shepherd and the sheep will scatter. Suddenly, Christians are now the ones that everyone believes that in order for them to win an election, they must have our support, for the first time in the history of our nation; instead of people to play it right and bring down their manifesto.
When they are unable to do that, what they now chose to do is to discredit the leadership hoping to be able to leverage through that by securing a portion of our Christians to be in support of what they are trying to do, which is extremely sad because what that tells me is that they must be the ones doing it and they also think that others will have to do same as well.
And since they could not get the leadership of Christians, the question will be who tried to bribe the leadership of CAN to sway their votes two years ago and how much was it they offered the leadership of CAN? And at the end of the day, the leadership of CAN stood up and walked away from such the meeting because the question then was all we just needed you to do is to de-marry this man and we will give you this and this man walked out of the meeting.
And that’s why since then they have been going after him because they believe he is a man that cannot be bribed. He is a man that is very passionate about everything he is doing. And because they know that, they are doing their very best to see how they can malign him and give him a bad name. They’ve done everything to set him up.
I thank God no one has been able to come out and say that he was caught in the house of XYZ. Everything you see is to come up with different stories to give him a bad name. But it’s too late now. The reason I say it’s too late now is because we have Nigerians who are smart enough to read between the lines knowing fully well that something is evidently wrong here.
The question is, are you going to vote someone to power who has done everything to rubbish your faith and to rubbish what you believe by going under the leadership to cast aspersion on it, or are you going to support someone who is upholding your tenets? It’s an easy question.
It’s just like someone telling you that your parents are bad but the children are good. The same yardstick used in caning your parents will be used in caning you too. If you are a true child of those parents, you will know that whosever can wag his hands on your parents can also do same to you and you will never pay attention.
David said to Goliath, how dare you defy the king of the Jews?’ I want Christians to know that their destiny; let us not sell our birthright because of whatever reason. Let us follow our spirit. It is my prayer that we will allow reasoning to come to bear in this matter.
Can you tell us who attempted to bribe some people two years ago?
I’m not going to talk about the governor who unfortunately is very desperate right now. He’s desperate because a man who thought he was going to end up being a vice president is no way in the same politics where he started off as a governor. The initial offer dangled at him that made him to betray and leave a party for another was because he was to become the vice president should this party win.
Unfortunately, he’s no longer in the race and he has spent all of his life in it, so obviously he has to continue to gain relevance in that position. The pastor collaborating with him; I feel for him because he is a pastor that my husband has helped so much. There is nothing my husband has not done for him. But we had a big challenge with him for which we had to keep our distance.
It was at that point in time that my husband felt he was no longer going to have anything to do with him. I just see a man who feels that this is a time I can get back at this man. He’s been coming to beg. I’m quite aware that he has been looking for different ways to come and apologise for what he did.
From what I heard again, I hear he’s putting it on somebody else which I’m not going to mention the name. But the fact remains, Jonathan does not need to bribe Christians to vote for him. He’s a part of us. What we are talking about here has to do with Christians in Nigeria. I’ve not heard anyone trying to give us that assurance that we are safe in this country. What I have seen is someone trying as much as possible to label us by creating division, not giving us assurance that we are safe. No one has been able to say it with his mouth.
What the leadership of Christians is saying is; are we safe? Will Nigeria become an Islamic country if we bring you in? Because I keep seeing adverts from a part of the West saying when you become the President of Nigeria, we believe you will introduce Sharia. They claim we have one million Muslims in the West and yet they don’t allow them to practice their religion.
Now we are saying it’s not about money here; we are not going to sell our birthrights. I want to secure a nation for myself, my generation and generations to come. And we are asking, are you going to give us that leverage to continue to practice our religion or are you going to force another religion on us? And no one has been able to address that. Instead of addressing the real thing, they are casting aspersion because it’s more or less like divide and rule.
I still have a fresh memory of what happened many years ago when these same people were in power and I couldn’t wear trousers, I couldn’t wear my scarf, I couldn’t leave my hair uncovered. Nigerians forget easily. When these people were in power, I can never forget, my stepmother was to go to the market to buy something, she didn’t have her head covered, they had to smuggle her inside a store and look for a scarf for her because she was almost going to be arrested for not covering her head. A son or a daughter who decides to align with the enemies of his parents is a bastard, and I’m not one.
The CAN under the regime of Ayo Oritsejafor has been accused of being used by Jonathan for his campaigns.
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