Presidency Clarifies First Lady’s Visit to Rivers

First Lady, Mrs. Patience Jonathan

Says it’s not connected with Amaechi’s travails

By Muhammad Bello

The presidency has dissociated the First Lady, Mrs. Patience Jonathan, from insinuations in the media Sunday, that her visit to Rivers State was in connection with the alleged ongoing plot to unseat the state Governor, Hon. Rotimi Amaechi.

A Special Assistant to the President on Media, Mr Ayo Osinlu, who is attached to the First Lady, said in a statement that the reports were ‘misinformation’.

He said the purposes of Mrs Jonathan’s visit to Port Harcourt, the Rivers State capital, were many as none had anything to do with politics.

According to him, the First Lady was a special guest of honour at the inauguration of the Yitzhak Rabin International School, on Saturday, where she received an award from the Yitzhak Rabin Centre for African Development for her successful advocacy for women empowerment and the achievement of enduring peace in Nigeria and around the continent.

“She also featured eminently as Mother of the Day at the wedding of her brother and member of the Rivers State House of Assembly, Hon. Evans Bipi, on Saturday.

“Later in the new week, the First Lady will formally open the South-south Zonal Office of one of her NGOs, the Women for Change and Development Initiative, in Port Harcourt. This event is to dovetail into the distribution of socio-economic empowerment items to less-privileged persons.

“The First Lady will finally receive well wishers at the burial of her grandfather on Sunday, June 23,” he said.

Osinlu said all of these engagements are not in sync with “the political circumstances of anyone.”

He explained that: “Perhaps we need to remind those who are crying wolf and are being harassed by their own ghost, that Rivers is the home state of the First Lady, which makes her a principal stakeholder with all the rights and privileges to visit the state as she considers needful.

“This is besides the fact that the entire country is her constituency as mother of the nation, a situation that comes with the liberty to visit any part thereof at will.”