America is not ready to joke with trouble makers in Nigeria. First, it
was the extradition of PDP Ogun central senator-elect Buruji Kashamu to
the United States but gradually the flood light of the US seems to beam
on wife of the President, Patience Jonathan and others who attempted to
disrupt the just concluded elections or instigated violence against
innocent Nigerians.
Along with Patience Jonathan, ex-Niger Delta minister, Godsday Orubebe and governor of Katsina state, Ibrahim Shema are going to be sanctioned by America.
The US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, said in a statement that the US will shut its doors on people involved in any form of violence during the polls.
“Anyone found to have incited violence or interfered with electoral processes will be unwelcome in the United States and subject to visa sanctions,” Ms. Thomas-Greenfield said.
Although Thomas-Greenfield did not give names of those considered for sanctions, Patience Jonathan, Orubebe, Shema and others who became an item on social media across the globe for inciting violence and trying to scuttle the elections seems to have positioned themselves for this sanction.
Thomas-Greenfield said, while the elections were generally without a significant scale of violence, and irregularities in some parts of Nigeria, some people were resolved to undermine the will of Nigerians and interfere with electoral processes, resorting to violence.
It would be recalled that Patience Jonathan incited violence during a PDP Women Campaign in Calabar, Cross River state, when she said that anyone chanting APC's ‘Change’ should be stoned.