Dec. 18, 2013
Former Governor Segun Osoba of Ogun State who is also a chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC) has confirmed that he met Iyabo Obasanjo, the daughter of former President Olusegun Obasanjo, during his trip to the United States in September 2013. Recounting his chance meeting with Ms. Obasanjo to SaharaReporters, Chief Osoba said he was in the United States for the 73rd anniversary of the Nieman Foundation Fellowship when he ran into Iyabo, a former senator in Nigeria. The former governor told SaharaReporters he was staying at The Charles Hotel in Cambridge when he had a chance encounter with the daughter of the former president who told him her car was parked in the hotel’s basement parking lot.
Chief Osoba said that, after the meeting, Ms. Obasanjo went downstairs to get her car and then drove him to the offices of the Nieman Foundation Center where he had an event. He said commute took close to an hour, leaving plenty of time for a long conversation between him and former President Obasanjo’s daughter.
Speaking further, Chief Osoba disclosed that Iyabo expressed exactly the same sentiments about her father contained in her letter that was just published by SaharaReporters. According to the former governor, Ms. Obasanjo stated that her father would divide the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) more than it was then after his so-called intervention in the party. He said Ms. Obasanjo also stated that she had no plans to return anymore to Nigerian politics, a sentiment she expressed in the acerbic letter to her father.
Chief Osoba added that, after his return from the US, he met former President Obasanjo a month later at the 80th birthday party of Chief Adedoja Adewolu and told him of his encounter with Iyabo in Massachusetts, including her view of his intervention in the PDP. Former Governor Osoba said he strongly believed that his discussion with Mr. Obasanjo might have prompted the former President to tell his daughter to run on the platform of the APC, another revelation made in her letter.
Former Senator Iyabo Obasanjo wrote an 11-page letter to her father which she sent to Lagos-based Vanguard newspaper. In the letter, she described her father as a liar, manipulator and a hypocrite. She also characterized her father as a wife-beater and abominable father.
