Former President Goodluck Jonathan has warned the media to properly investigate their stories especially as it relates to the decays of the government of the day before attributing such to him.
Reacting to the decision of the House of Representatives to probe allocations to the clinic from 2015-2017 and the subsequent mention of his name as a possible culprit, Jonathan said he had nothing to do with the implementation of the budget since May 29, 2015 when he handed over power to President Muhammadu Buhari.
The ex-president’s reaction was contained in a statement signed by his Media Adviser, Ikechukwu Eze.
The statement reads in full:
“The House of representatives resolved Thursday 12 October, 2015, to probe 2015-2017 allocations to Aso Rock Clinic and some media reports are needlessly dragging the name of former President Goodluck Jonathan into it. We had thought that the media should be the first to remind Nigerians that since Dr. Jonathan left office on May 29, 2015, he had absolutely nothing to do with the implementation of the budget for that year.
For emphasis, the 2015 Appropriation Bill which was passed by the parliament in April was signed into law in May, 2015. And since the procurement process, based on the new procurement law, takes atleast three months to complete, there was no way Jonathan would have had anything to do with the budget implementation for 2015, before vacating Aso Rock Villa on May 29, 2015.
Going by the way some people make insinuations on issues that border on the development of our country, it would appear as if Ex-President Jonathan had been in office since independence in 1960, and probably still be in charge today. We expect media houses to always do proper investigations to avoid the convenient choice of always using Jonathan as the scapegoat for the misdeeds of others,” the statement said.
TheNewsGuru.com reports that wife of the President, Aisha Buhari had on Monday said the Aso Rock Clinic does not have syringes and x-ray machine to treat patients despite the billions of naira allocated to the clinic yearly.
In her words: “I called the Aso Clinic to find out if they have an X-Ray machine, they said it’s not working.
“In the end I had to go to a hospital owned and operated by foreigners 100 percent.
“There is a budget for the Hospital and if you go there now, you will see a number of constructions going on but they don’t have a single syringe there. What is the purpose of the buildings if there are no equipment there to work with?”
“You can imagine what happens across the states to governors wives if this will happen to me in Abuja,” she said.