My problem with Patience Jonathan – Amaechi

Amaechi said he has enormous respect for both President Goodluck Jonathan and his wife, Patience.He spoke when clergymen of the Niger Delta Bishops’ Forum visited him in Government House, Port Harcourt yesterday as part of their efforts mediate in the political crisis in the state. The bishops had some weeks back visited the First Lady and […]

Amaechi said he has enormous respect for both President Goodluck Jonathan and his wife, Patience.
He spoke when clergymen of the Niger Delta Bishops’ Forum visited him in Government House, Port Harcourt yesterday as part of their efforts mediate in the political crisis in the state.
 The bishops had some weeks back visited the First Lady and Minister of State for Education Nyesom Wike in Abuja as part of their efforts to resolve the issues.
Amaechi said: “My lords, I don’t know what to say, believe me, the only thing I want to say to you is that and I want to be put on record that the wife of the President said when my wife came to beg me, I pushed her away. I have never quarreled with my wife publicly, and I will never quarrel with my wife publicly. So there is no time I pushed my wife away, and there is no time I will push my wife away”.
“When you spoke with the wife of the President she spoke publicly. She said and I concede to her when she said she is my mother. As wife of the President who is the head of government and head of the nation, she is my mother and you expect that as my mother she should be able to protect her son. No mother takes away a Police Commissioner to the detriment of her son, so when next you see my mother, please tell her that she should try and protect her son.
“ We wanted to also show her, as part of her own programme, not our programme, was to show her the projects we had done in Okrika. So we took her to the Rufus Ada-George ring road in Okrika which we started and completed and then somewhere we saw a health centre and a primary school and I said stop, let me show her this health centre. We looked at the health centre and we were satisfied. At the primary school, there were houses around the primary school too close for comfort, no football field, no playground, no space at all around the school and I turned to the wife of the President and said ‘Your Excellency Ma, we have not finished with this building, we would buy the houses that are surrounding the primary school and demolish them’. Once she heard the word ‘demolish’, the wife of the President flared up and took the microphone from me and started all sorts of diatribes that I won’t mention here for the respect i have for the office of the wife of the President”.
Governor Amaechi also spoke on the issue of Nyesom Wike, the Minister of State for Education, saying he nominated him  for appointment as Minister and has practically made hiom what he is in politics today.
Earlier, the leader of the delegation, Rt. Rev. James Aye Oruwori said they came because they needed the governor’s permission to intervene in the prolonged crisis in the state and the dispute between the governor and the First Lady.