The Ministry of Tourism has refuted media reports that Lola Ade-John, the Minister of Tourism, was poisoned and brought to the hospital.
According to newsmen who called Emem Mariam Ofiong, the Assistant Director Press at the Ministry, denied that the minister had been poisoned but verified that she had malaria, was being treated, and had been stabilized.
Her words,
“It is not true that the Minister was poisoned, she only had malaria and had been treated and is now stable.”
It will be recalled that an online media report had it that the Minister of Tourism, Lola Ade-John, has been reportedly hospitalised in the nation’s capital, Abuja, over alleged poisoning and was undergoing treatment at the Federal Medical Centre in Jabi, Abuja.
It reads:
“Lola Ade-John, 60, was rushed to the Federal Medical Centre, Jabi, shortly after she started manifesting symptoms of her poisoning. She has spent four days at the facility as of Friday morning,” family sources familiar with Ade-John’s ordeal told Peoples Gazette.
“Ade-John, a banker and tech investor, has been on a machine to aid her breathing, adding that the specifics as to what substance she ingested and how could not be immediately ascertained,” said the report.
The report further said that,
“Her worsening situation has further set the family against the government, with the permanent secretary of her ministry said to be in disagreement as to whether she should continue receiving treatment at a public hospital or be moved to a better-equipped private facility downtown.
The permanent secretary, Ngozi Onwudike, was said to have insisted that the minister should not be transferred because the FMC is a public hospital and its services wouldn’t attract substantial charges to the government, a position her family rebuffed.
But they remained with her as they could not raise funds to move her to a private hospital, our sources said. A phone number for the permanent secretary did not connect on Friday morning.
“A spokesperson for the FMC did not immediately return a request seeking comments about Ms Ade-John’s condition.”
The minister was recently appointed as the first indigenous minister of tourism following President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s division of the former Ministry of Information and Culture into three: The Ministry of Information and National Orientation, the Ministry of Arts, Culture, and Creative Economy, and the Ministry of Tourism are all government ministries.
In her welcome address, she committed to turn the Ministry into a global brand and a key economic contributor to the Nigerian economy.
She is also one of the President’s 48 ministers chosen in August.