$20m Accounts: Patience Jonathan May Forfeit N10bn Hotel to FG (Photo)

 

Dame Patience Jonathan, the wife of former President Goodluck Jonathan, may be forced to forfeit to the Federal Government, a N10bn hotel allegedly belonging to her if she fails to explain how she came about some funds allegedly traced to her accounts. 

 

It has been alleged that if she is taken to court and she cannot prove how she made her wealth, she will be forced to forfeit the hotel.

 

“This is one of the questions she may have to answer as the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission continues investigation into the $20m found in five accounts she has laid claim to,” a source told our correspondent on Monday.

 

The hotel, which is known as Aridolf Resort Wellness and Spa, Yenagoa, was inaugurated by Patience in April 2015, barely a month before the end of her husband’s tenure, Punch reports.

 

The hotel it is reported has imported state-of-the-art furniture, and can compete with other luxury hotels in developed countries.

 

The report dated April 21, 2015, states in part, “The Aridolf Hotel in Yenagoa is an unlikely monument to kitsch on a reclaimed swamp in Nigeria’s oil-producing Niger Delta. In the lobby, Louis XIV furniture is accompanied by bowls of plastic fruit, faux Dutch landscapes and a grotesquely gaudy chandelier. The hotel is redolent of the riches on display in a region that for half a century has generated the bulk of Nigeria’s wealth.

“The Aridolf, which is owned by Patience Jonathan, wife of the former President, is symptomatic of how superficial progress has been in addressing the festering sense of marginalisation in the region, which remains desperately impoverished despite benefiting from a tide of petrodollars in recent years.” UK business newspaper, The Financial Times reports.

 

While speaking on the matter, the Chairman, Presidential Advisory Committee Against Corruption, Prof. Itse Sagay, had said that the EFCC had the right to investigate anybody who was living above his or her means.

 

Sagay, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, wondered how Patience, who was a civil servant and never held any government position, could have billions in her bank accounts.

 

He said, “The EFCC and ICPC Acts have provisions under which they can ask the court to freeze the account of a person if a person’s capacity to earn is below the amount of money that the person appears to have.