Former President Goodluck Jonathan has said there is no bone of contention between him and the Minister of Transportation , Rotimi Amaehi.
Rather , Jonathan stated that Amaechi had a problem with his wife , Patience , which he ( Jonathan ) tried in vain to resolve.
Jonathan ’ s disclosed this in a book titled, ‘ Against the Run of Play , ’ written by the Chairman , Editorial Board of ThisDay , Olusegun Adeniyi.
“ Jonathan told me that Amaechi’ s problem was not with him but rather with his wife and that, at a point, he tried to reconcile them , ” the book stated .
While Amaechi admitted that he was at loggerheads with Patience , he said Jonathan was not saying the whole truth , noting that there were also disagreements between him and Jonathan , during the latter’ s era as the President .
The ex -Rivers State governor attributed the cause of his grudge with Jonathan to illegal and excess deduction from the federation account by the former president .
He said , “ I could not surrender my mandate to a woman ( Patience ) in Abuja , even if such a person was the wife of the President …that basically was my sin with Dame Patience Jonathan .
“ If in one year , you took about N 300bn from the federation account to pay for subsidy and the next year , you are taking almost N 2tn for the same thing when fundamentals had not changed, then serious questions should be asked .
“ And as NGF ( Nigerian Governors Forum ) chairman , it was my responsibility to ask those questions and Jonathan took them personal . ”
Jonathan only called me once for a meeting over Boko Haram —Shettima
In the book , the Borno State Governor , Kashim Shettima , lamented that Jonathan was not committed to the efforts to fight Boko Haram insurgency in the North- East.
Shettima said out of the 13 meetings he had with Jonathan on the Boko Haram terrorism, only one was initiated by the latter.
“ All the others were at my seeking appointments to see him and on some occasions , it took several weeks for such requests to be granted. There was a belief around President Jonathan that the whole Boko Haram crisis was orchestrated to undermine him and his administration and because of that, there was no interest in resolving the problem , ” he added .
The governor alleged that Jonathan ‘ marked ’ him for pushing for the meetings and allegedly planned to remove him and the two other governors in the North- East.
Shettima said , “ He particularly wanted to remove me …. I heard that his Attorney- General and Justice Minister, Mr . Mohammed Adoke, said there was nowhere in the constitution where the President had the power to remove a governor . In fact , I was told that President Jonathan reportedly interjected by asking , ‘ How come President Obasanjo removed Governor Joshua Dariye?’ to which he was reminded that the Dariye aberration had been declared illegal by the Supreme Court
