First lady, Patience Jonathan on Sunday gave an account of the health travails she overcame recently, saying she literally resurrected like the biblical Lazarus, after dying for a week.
Mrs. Jonathan, speaking at a thanksgiving service at the State House Chapel in Abuja, said she survived the ordeal because of the prayers of Nigerians who did not give up on her even though others were already selling her properties, thinking her death had become certain because she had to undergo seven surgical operations in the space of a month.
She recalled the death of Stella Obasanjo, wife of former President Olusegun Obasanjo, whose death occurred while her husband was still in office.
“We worshiped together in this chapel,” she recalled. It was a painful moment for me that time when she died and her corpse was brought here.
“That was how my corpse would have been brought here. It was not an easy experience for me. I actually died; I passed out for more than a week. My intestine and tummy were opened. I am not Lazarus but my experience was similar to his. My doctors said all hope was lost.”
She said a black doctor in London who was in attendance at the thanksgiving service was flown in to attend to her when her situation got desperate.
“It was God himself in His infinite mercy that said I will return to Nigeria. God woke me up after seven days. I know that some people somehow leaked the information that I was dead. They are people that I trust and rely on; to them, I was dead and I would never return to the country alive. Some of them even sold my things off.
“I won’t say everything here. It is the Lord’s doing that I returned alive. When God says yes, nobody can say no. It was God who saw me through. I did eight or nine operations within one month. It was not an easy one.”
