The Coalition Against Corrupt Leaders (CACOL) has dared President Goodluck Jonathan to go to court over the recent publication of a foreign magazine, RichestLifestyle.com, that rated him as the 6th wealthiest African President.
The magazine claimed that Jonathan has a whooping 100 Million dollars estimated to his name.
In his response, the President, who claimed he has been in public service all his life, asked the magazine and all other media who re-broadcast the news to either retract it or be prepared to face him in court.
Reacting to the news, the Coalition, through its Executive Chairman, Mr. Debo Adeniran, noted that the President could only refute the claim with telling Nigerians the truth about how rich he is.
He said, “We challenge Mr. President to go to court on this matter. It must be sounded that he lent himself to that so-called speculation. This could only happen because he has failed to do the needful i.e. declare his asset. If Jonathan doesn’t have anything to hide, why delay his public declaration of assets? Now that the situation has presented itself, he should tell Nigerians how much he worths, instead of playing around the subject matter. If he could do that, it would even shame the people who might have been peddling lies about his wealth.”
The anti-corruption crusader however noted that the president may be richer than the magazine claimed going by the number of corruption allegations that broke out in his tenure.
“We must confess that everything happening portrays that the President could be richer than the RichestLifestyle.com claimed. The scandals which broke out in this government are enough pointers that President Jonathan may be corruptly enriching himself from some of these sordid transactions. He has failed to probe the missing $20billion in the tower of corruption, Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC; he has failed to probe the $10bn the Petroleum Minister, Mrs. Diezani Alison-Madueke was said to have used to maintain aircraft. That of the former Aviation Minister, Ms. Stella Oduah, who was just eased out of office despite the indictment is still there, and even the Malabu Oil Scandal; nothing has come out of it and several other scandals. Many of the corruption cases are being withdrawn from court every day, and even the $26billion bribe collected by the Attorney-General of the Federation and the Minister of Justice, Mr. Mohammed Bello Adoke could give the President as much as $100m, if not much more. He should not feed us all that he is talking about.
Basically, if President Jonathan is not a direct beneficiary of any of these scandals, he condones them which is an indictment on his person. So, if he wants to prove that he is not involved in those scandals, he should declare his assets. But he should informed that Nigerians are ready to verify his declaration, he should know that we will verify everything he declared as assets and the origin of those ones that are suspected will also traced”, Adeniran said.
