Women protesting for Ex-First Lady embarrassed their families

“The hard earned money” in question here is the $15M the wife of Nigeria’s former President--Goodluck Jonathan--is being investigated for by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).

On September 22, 2016, the EFCC ordered that some bank accounts belonging to Mrs. Jonathan be frozen.

According to the anti-graft agency, Mrs. Jonathan opened the accounts in the names of front companies and individuals.

The frozen Skye Bank accounts had a combined balance of $15, 591,700 (about N5B) at the time there were frozen.

The four companies in whose names the accounts were open are Pluto Property and Investment Company Ltd (represented by Friday Davis), Seagate Property Development and Investment Company Ltd (represented by Agbor Baro), Trans Ocean Property and Investment Company Ltd (represented by Dioghowori Frederick) and Avalon Global Property Development Ltd (represented by Taiwo Ebenezer).

A former Special Adviser on Domestic Affairs to erstwhile President Jonathan, Waripamo Dudafa, helped Mrs. Jonathan open these bank accounts in the names of front individuals.

Mrs. Jonathan had access to all the accounts and in confessional statements, the companies have said they were only surrogates of the former First Lady.

It is not likely that these women from Bayelsa State who stormed the court arrayed in “Buba and Wrapper” with head gear to match, were availed of the facts before they were corralled into a bus headed for Lagos.

Because if they were, they wouldn’t constitute the kind of nuisance that was the lot of a normally chaotic Lagos on Wednesday.

According to The Nation, the women bore placards with the inscriptions: “Ijaw people are in solidarity with Jonathan”; “Unfreeze ex-president Jonathan’s wife’s account”; “We urge EFCC to abide by the rule of law” and “Women must be heard”.

ALSO READ: 100 women besiege court over ex-first lady

According to the women, “Mama Peace” (Mrs. Jonathan’s nickname) is a hard working woman

Mrs. Jonathan’s $15M bank balance came through dint of hard work, they told the world.

Well, apparently no one told these women that Mrs. Jonathan said she didn’t acquire these obscene amounts of money from “hard work”.

Mama Peace has since told the world that the money came from the pockets of her friends. There were gifts, she explained.

As they sang and danced around the court premises, the women said the former first lady was being victimised by the federal government.

This has become a bare-bone, well-worn line thrown around by anyone who has a corruption case to answer to in Nigeria.

It is important to state at this point that no one has found Mrs. Jonathan guilty of stealing $15M from the Nigerian State.

But if all you were was a Permanent Secretary in Bayelsa in the last decade or so, and you were still able to accumulate $15M, it’s important that the nation in which your husband served as number one citizen, demands answers.

Mrs. Jonathan is also asking for $200M from the EFCC in damages. She insists that the anti-graft agency has infringed on her fundamental rights.

That’s rather ridiculous.

The only persons infringing on rights here were the garishly attired women who were mobilized to storm a court and halt legal proceedings.

Last we checked, the courts are duty bound to hear cases and pass judgments. They don’t exist to do the bidding of women from Bayelsa, Okirika or Otuoke.

In any case, hiring persons to protest for you is no longer novel in these parts. Diezani Alison-Madueke’s hired crowd couldn’t even spell properly and Bukola Saraki’s held their placards upside down.

It’s a Nigerian thing to hire people to obstruct justice. But that doesn’t make it right.

These misguided 100 women from Bayelsa or wherever else they were plucked from, should be paid their fares back to their families who need them more than Mrs. Jonathan does.

Yesterday, they dragged the names of their families in the mud.