It was like a scene in a movie on Wednesday, December 13, 2011 when top senior staff of Institute for Peace and Conflict Resolution, Abuja, a parastatal established by a government Gazette in 2007 resumed for work only to be told to pack their files because the First Lady, Dame Patience Jonathan needs their offices.
It was gathered that three-quarters of the office complex has been re-allocated to the African First Lady Peace Initiative, a non Governmental Organization of the First Lady.
It was authoritatively gathered that the Director-General of the Institute, Dr Joseph H.P Golwa was summoned to the Presidential Villa, Aso Rocks, Abuja and given matching others to evacuate two-third of the Institute’s staff from its operational base located at Cental Area, Abuja.
Shortly after the Aso Rock’s meeting, we learnt that some officials of the office of the First Lady visited the office of the Institute in company of a white man suspected to be the contractor contracted to rehabilitate the Institute’s building.
Dame Patience and President Jonathan
The contractor, it was gathered, was told to create a separate gate, reception and other conveniences for the First Lady for a contract sum of N5 billion . Presidential sources, however, claim that the renovation of the building was awarded for N500million.
The contract, NEWSMEN learnt, was not captured in this year’s budget. Besides, the office of the First Lady is not known to the First and Second Amended 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
NWSMEN reliably informed that the ejection order served staffers of the Institute dislocated four Directors, the whole of the accounts department and more than half of the Institute’s researchers.
The affected directors include the Director of Research and Policy Analysis, Director of Democracy, Director of Defence and Security and the Chief Accountant of the Institute.
“Right now, one wing of the Institute has been taken over. They took over the main gate, the parking spaces and the reception area. You will be sorry for our staff as the white man came and gave us 24 hours to pack our office equipments.
The Directors were so helpless but they could not say a word for fear of being victimized”, the source stressed.
Attempts to speak with the Chief Press Secretary to the First Lady, Mr Ayo Oshinlu on his Glo mobile number that ends with 806 were unsuccessful.
He refused to pick his calls since last week but a Presidential source informed us that the issue was a closed one, adding that the attention of the First Lady is being channeled towards an International engagement in the first quarter of next year.
Some civil servants in Abuja wondered why the First Lady did not consider buying a property with the money budgeted for the renovation.
They argued that Late Mrs Maryam Babangida used the money she realised from her NGO to build the Women Development Centre located adjacent the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN.
Wife of the late maximum dictator, General Sani Abacha, Mariam, through her NGO build the now popular National Hospital, Abuja, it is located near the bombed United Nations House, Abuja. Late wife of Former President, Stella Obasanjo built a structure and began operation at Bwari, Abuja for her NGO, Child Care.
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