Those who rejoiced over last night’s footage by the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) showing President Goodluck Jonathan and his children on a visit to a healthy-looking Dame Patience Jonathan may have done so too soon.

This is because the latest information from authoritative sources about the First Lady’s German odyssey paints a totally different picture.

“The First Lady has been in and out of coma since she was flown to Germany,” one of the sources told News Express.

After last night’s broadcast that saw a beaming Dame Jonathan posing for photographs with the husband, Presidential Spokesman Reuben Abati had suddenly found his voice, repeating his original lie to newsmen that the First Lady is hale and hearty.

But last night’s NTA broadcast and Abati’s insistence that she is fine backfired as it only led to more questions about the true state of Dame Jonathan’s health. If, for instance, she is fine, what is she doing in Germany for the past six weeks? And if she has been discharged and is preparing to return home, why the need for Mr. President to suddenly visit her last Saturday as claimed by the NTA report and Abati?

It appears that the media have all along been fooled on what really is wrong with Mrs. Jonathan.

The truth, according to News Express sources, is that she was talked into doing tummy tuck by close friends and apparently went for it without the consent of her husband.

“After the surgery, which was successful, the doctors advised her to stay back in the hospital so that they can monitor what she eats and drinks till she was fully healed. But she went against advice, came back to Nigeria and began to eat diet not within prescribed limits. The operation therefore went awry and she was flown out at night in an air ambulance. She has been in and out of coma ever since and, according to those who know, the chances of her surviving and getting back to Nigeria as a normal person is becoming slimmer,” one of our sources said.

This, according to the sources, explains Mr. President’s failure to hasten to visit the wife weeks after her admission at the Horst Schmidt Klinik, Wiesbaden, Germany where late Nigerian President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua once received treatment.

Dame Jonathan has not been seen in public since late July. Her spokespersons and those of her husband claimed that she was resting abroad, but this has since been exposed as an unintelligent lie. She has been speculated to be suffering from food poisoning, fibroid and uterine cancer but the tummy tuck theory appears to be the most plausible since she looked healthy before her suddenly disappearance from public view. Fashionable but of plus size, the First Lady is known for her desire to look trendy, which may have informed her decision to go for tummy tuck, a procedure which cost Stella Obasanjo her life during her days as First Lady.