A statement issued by his spokesman, Ikechukwu Eze, in Abuja on Saturday said it was sheer mischief for a section of the media to rope Jonathan into the mess exposed by the wife of the President, Aisha Buhari. The First Lady recently at a public function in Abuja said that not even the only x-ray machine in the clinic was functional in spite of huge budgetary allocations. This year’s allocation was N3 billion.
The statement read inter alia:
“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 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 at least 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.”
“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,”
