Former First Lady, Dame Patience Jonathan, has written a letter to the Acting Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) explicating that the $31.4 million connected to the financial fraud levelled against Mr. Waripamo Dudafa by EFCC was for the payment of the medical bills she incurred in London in 2013.
The monies in a local bank and claimed by Mrs. Jonathan were placed on a No Debit Order in the course of investigations into the financial affairs of Mr. Waripamo Dudafa, who served as Special Adviser on Domestic Affairs to former President Goodluck Jonathan.
Patience Jonathan claimed ownership of the $31.4 million in the affidavit before a Federal High Court in Lagos.
In the affidavit by Sammie Somiari a legal practitioner on behalf of Patience Jonathan claims that it was Dudafa who helped Mrs Patience Jonathan to open the four bank accounts which the EFCC froze.
This made the EFCC to file an amended 17-count against Dudafa and seven others, including the four companies, with the defendants being accused of conspiring to conceal the monies which the EFCC claimed they ought to have known formed parts of the proceeds of an unlawful act.
The former first lady in her letter to the Acting Chairman of the EFCC, Mr. Ibrahim Magu by her lawyers, Granville Abibo (SAN) and Co enjoined the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and Skye Bank to lift the restriction placed on the accounts.
In the letter Patience Jonathan admitted that the she is the sole signatory to the accounts and the accounts were card-base.
She further went to say that she has been using the account to pay for her medical bill and other personal purposes and that she is a law-abiding citizen.
“It is noteworthy to emphasise that the said accounts, which were in US dollar denomination, were card-based accounts and our client is the sole signatory to these accounts.
“Our client has been operating the said accounts using the cards for her medical bill payments and purchases for her private purposes without any let or hindrance.
“Our client was therefore surprised when the said cards stop functioning on July 7, 2016, or thereabout. Our client immediately, thereupon, contacted Skye Bank Plc through our solicitors.
‘‘It was only then that the bank officials informed our client that the said accounts were placed on a ‘No Debit Order’ following investigations and instruction from your commission and this is without notice to our client by either the bank or the commission.
“It is in the light of the foregoing that we urge you to use your good offices to vacate the ‘No Debit/Freezing Order’ placed on the said accounts.”
“Despite the foregoing, our client, who is a law-abiding citizen, has watched with surprise how efforts are being made surreptitiously to indirectly harass or harangue her and short-change her of her personal funds in breach of her fundamental human rights.
“We urge you sir, to kindly intervene to stop the untoward and wrongful actions of your officials to embarrass, inconvenience and short-change our client.”
Madam Patience Jonathan, on the 17 of February in 2013, had said she died and woke up after seven days during her illness for almost three months. Patience Jonathan testimony.
According to her testimony in 2013 she said she underwent seven surgery operations within one month and the doctors had given up hope on her survival.
“I remember when Chief Obasanjo was the President of the country, I was close to his late wife, Stella. We worshiped together in this chapel. It was a painful moment for me that time when she (Stella) died and her corpse was brought here. “That was how my corpse would have been brought here.
It was not an easy experience for me. I actually died, I passed out for more than a week. My intestine and tummy were opened.
“I am not Lazarus but my experience was similar to his. My doctors said all hope was lost.
“A black doctor in London who was with us in this service was flown in when the situation became critical. It was God himself in His infinite mercy that said I will return to Nigeria. God woke me up after seven days.
“I know that some people somehow leaked the information that I was dead. They are people that I trust and rely on; to them, I was dead and I would never return to the country alive. Some of them even sold my things off.
“I won’t say everything here. It is the Lord’s doing that I returned alive. When God says yes, nobody can say no.
“People are always afraid of operation (surgery) but in my own case, while my travail lasted, I was begging for it (surgery) after the third operation because I was going to the theatre everyday.
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