FG to take over alleged Patience Jonathan’s N10b hotel if …

Wife of former President Goodluck Jonathan, Patience has an option of explaining how $20m allegedly traced to her account came about, or forfeit the N10 billion hotel purportedly belonging to her.

Seems the anti-graft body suspects that the source of funding for the hotel, and the money in the bank may be proceeds of graft.

It was learnt that the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFFC), will table this option before her as the commission continues investigation into the $20million found in five accounts she has laid claim to.

The hotel located in Yenagoa, known as Aridolf Resort Wellness and Spa, said to have been inaugurated by Patience in April 2015, just a month before her husband lost his second tenure bid to incumbent President Muhammadu Buhari.

A UK business newspaper, The Financial Times, had reported that the hotel, which boasts of imported state-of-the-art furniture, could match other world class hotels in developed countries.

“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.

Read also: Patience Jonathan, Dudafa linked to account with $15m opened in house boy, driver’s names

“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,” The Financial Times report states in parts.

Patience had sued Skye Bank and the EFCC for freezing four company accounts which have a balance of $31.5 million.

The EFCC afterward disclosed that Patience still has another account with the title, ‘Patience Ibifaka Jonathan’ with balance of $5million

By Ebere Ndukwu …

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