Vice President Yemi Osinbajo’s touted but surreptitiously pursued presidential ambition was dealt a fatal blow recently as former President Olusegun Obasanjo turned away the VP’s political emmisaries at his Presidential Library in Abeokuta, Ogun State.
The team, led by Osinbajo’s Special Adviser on Political Matters and chief canvasser, Senator Babafemi Ojudu, was also composed by Dr. Awosika, a Senior Special Assistant on Community Engagement.
They recently stormed Abeokuta along with some eminent persons apparently to drum support for the yet-to-be-announced presidential aspiration of their principal.
While the team visited the paramount ruler of Egba Kingdom, the Alake of Egbaland, Oba Aremu Gbadebo and had a chummy run, the reverse was the case at Obasanjo’s Hilltop residence within his Presidential Library.
Our correspondent who was at the scene, observed that the Osinbajo’s emmisaries were kept waiting for a considerable period before words came to them that they were not welcome visitors to the place.
Ojudu was particularly advised by one of Obasanjo’s staff to make haste to leave as the former President reportedly took exception to Ojudu’s “garrulous and unstable incursions into sensitive political matters”.
While Obasanjo refused the team , ostensibly sent by Osinbajo, to seek the former President’s blessing on his behalf, a source said Obasanjo was displeased that Osinbajo could be hiding behind a finger in pursuit of an ambition that is already known in the public domain; and also for diminishing his relevance by sending to him mere aides working for his office.
“Baba (Obasanjo) believes that if Osinbajo is truly interested in becoming President, he should be bold and also feel free to come and tell him, rather than send a proxy/errand boys,” a source close to the former President, who craved anonymity, hinted.
Another source within the former president’s household also disclosed that Obasanjo disbelieved the claim by the Ojudu-led team that they were sent to him by Osinbajo, as he patently disbelieves anything the VP’s aide says. He sees Ojudu more as a rabble rouser.
The Octogenarian former President was also said to have been irked when Ojudu recently announced on Facebook that his son, Olajuwon, who came on a casual visit to Ojudu in Abuja, was out to campaign for Osinbajo.
“One thing is certain: if VP Osinbajo actually sent Ojudu to lead a team to come and lobby for him before Baba Obasanjo, it was a clear misadventure, because Obasanjo would not sit down with a man like Ojudu, considered to be loquacious, unreliable, sly and a quisling.
“Again, Baba believes that a man who wants to be President should be bold enough to say it, and not to go about whispering through a third party,” a source close to the former President, who sought anonymity owing to the sensitivity of the issue, also quipped.
Nigeria Standard reliably revealed that Osinbajo’s fanatical ‘redeemersation’ of his office staff population might be a pointer to his narrow prisms of views about Nigeria and Nigerians.
And that, according to him, can not work. If current President Mohammadu Buhari is considered a core Muslim, choosing a leftist Christian like Osinbajo to succeed him will be a disaster for the nation, he enthused.
The disgrace faced by Ojudu led team at Obasanjo’s residence is a reminder to Osinbajo to stop hiding behind a finger and be bold enough to announce his long hidden presidential ambition considered to be duly a betrayal of his mentor, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
