FIRST LADY: HURIWA WANTS PRESIDENCY TO APOLOGISE FOR MISLEADING NIGERIANS

With the authoritative and final confirmation by the Wife of the President Mrs. Patience Goodluck Jonathan that she indeed proceeded last year for three months to a hospital in Germany to undergo series of life threatening surgeries, a Democracy Friendly Non-Governmental Organization- HUMAN RIGHTS WRITERS' ASSOCIATION OF NIGERIA [HURIWA] has demanded unconditional and prompt profuse apologies to the people of Nigeria by President Goodluck Jonathan over the serial misleading and confusing of Nigerians with false and muddled -up information by the Presidential media team on the whereabouts and status of the wife of the President.

In a statement to the media jointly authorized by the National Coordinator Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko and the National Media Affairs Officer Miss. Zainab Yusuf, HUMAN RIGHTS WRITERS' ASSOCIATION OF NIGERIA [HURIWA] said the Presidency was in breach of section 22 of the 1999 constitution [as amended] and also relevant sections of the newly signed FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT of 2011 when the officials of the Media office of the President including the officials attached to the office of the Presidential Senior Special Assistant on Public Affairs went on a 'jamboree of gross misinformation', 'confusion and mere empty propaganda' when they publicly told Nigerians that the wife of President Goodluck Jonathan, Dame[Mrs.] Jonathan did not go to any foreign hospital but that she instead proceeded to Germany on holidays.

Specifically, on Sunday in Abuja, at the Church service in thanksgiving to God for her survival from the series of medical surgeries in the hospital in Germany, the Wife of the President Mrs. Patience Jonathan sensationally revealed that she almost died during her medical ordeal in Germany for three months last year. She told a jubilant but shocked audience at the Church service thus; "I actually died. I passed out for more than a week. My intestines and tummy were opened. I am not Lazarus but my experience was similar to his. My doctors said all hope was lost. It was God Himself, in His infinite mercy that said I will return to Nigeria. God woke me up after seven days."

HURIWA in the media release praised the wife of President Jonathan for her extreme show of honesty, humility and courage to have come clean to Nigerians by telling us the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth concerning the remote and immediate circumstances that led to her sudden disappearance from the public media rader last year for three months.

The Rights group however stated that in the spirit of accountability and transparency and the rule of law, the President must explain to Nigerians why his media team chose to engage Nigerians in a public show of shame and dished out generous dose of false, falsified, half-baked and substantial fake information concerning the precise health status of the wife of the President who apparently may have been flown to the German Hospital at serious financial cost to the tax payers who are the real owners of Nigeria's sovereignty and who are entitled under all extant statutes and the Nigerian constitution, to be properly and transparently informed on the circumstances that surrounded the sudden out -of -sight of one of Nigeria's most visible First Ladies in contemporary political history, for a period of three months.

HURIWA argued that the public display of false information on the whereabouts and health status of the wife of the President during her three months absence from the public scene amounted to a breach of section 22 of the constitution because the media officials attached to the office of the President obstructed the unimpeded flow of sound and honest information to the Nigerian People through the mass media even as they deliberately fed Nigerians with half-baked propaganda which according to the Rights Group may have infringed on section 4 of the Freedom of information Act of 2011 which obliges public institution to disclose information concerning any contractual obligation in which public fund would have been spent just as HURIWA stated that since the Wife of the President may have been treated with taxpayers fund, the Nigerian people under the law are entitled to the real information on the whereabouts of the wife of the President.

HURIWA therefore asked President Jonathan to apologise publicly to Nigerians for the deceit and public show of shame which the Presidential media team subjected Nigerians to for a whole period of three months.

"This Presidential apology will reassure Nigerians to believe that their Government are peopled with persons of sound ethical character who would not deliberately engage in spreading falsehood and substantially fraudulent information. Nigerians were subjected to horrendous psychological torture through a cocktail of fraudulent information by the Presidential media team on the whereabouts of Nigeria's first lady for three months", HURIWA stated.