Jonathan Visits Obasanjo In Ogun

Ex-President Goodluck Jonathan on Friday visited former President Olusegun Obasanjo at his Ibogun-Olaogun country home at Coker/Ibogun Local Council Development Area, Ogun State.

It was gathered that Jonathan arrived the village where Obasanjo was born around noon and both former presidents held a closed-door meeting which lasted for about one hour.

After the meeting, Obasanjo took him on a tour of the village before coming back to his compound.
When approached by journalists for information about the visit, Jonathan declined to comment.

Obasanjo on his part, however, called on Nigerians to always work in the interest of the country as God did not make a mistake by bringing all the tribes together in one country called Nigeria.

He said, “I want to say that we have it, Nigeria is a good country and we must never be tired of lifting the country up to the height that God has created it to be.

And God did not make a mistake when he put all of us together and if He doesn’t want us to be together no power in the world will have made us come together.”

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Wow! Olusegun Obasanjo Goes Local, Orders for Made-in-Aba Shoes

As the government urges Nigerians to 'buy naija to grow the naira', ex president Olusegun Obasanjo, has set the ball rolling with his patronage of local shoes.

Olusegun Obasanjo

 

Chief Olusegun Obasanjo has made an order for Made-in-Aba shoes.

 

Sun News reports that Obasanjo made the order through the Chief Marketing Officer of Made-in-Aba Product, Governor Okezie Ikpeazu of Abia State during the 2016 Tony Elumelu Entrepreneurship Forum in Lagos.

 

Speaking as one of the panelists at the forum, Obasanjo said to Ikpeazu: “Governor, I listened to you and I commend you for what you’re doing in Abia. Please keep doing what you’ve told us you’re doing. So, Governor Abia, you have to send a pair of the shoes to me. I use size 42.”

 

His remark prompted an outburst of laughter in the audience. The ex-president’s special request was a response to what Ikpeazu said in his address to the gathering.

 

Freedomonline, a newsblog, in a report stated that while making his speech at the event, the Abia State Governor said that Aba remains the Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) capital of Nigeria, where young Nigerians are engaged in the business of making of shoes, clothing and other products.

 

The governor added that a firm that has an order to supply up to 50,000 military boots is currently in Aba, where Aba shoemakers are making the production.

 

His words: “I am happy to announce here that Aba, which is the commercial nerve centre of the Abia State and Old Eastern Region of Nigeria, is also the SME capital of Nigeria, where young people are in the business of making shoes, bags and clothes, including the one I am wearing.

“Let me also announce here that a private firm, that has an order to supply 50,000 military boots is currently in Aba, where our shoemakers are in production for the firm.”

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I Made You A Billionaire, Obasanjo Replies Folorunsho Alakija

Former President Olusegun Obasanjo said on Saturday in Lagos that Mrs Folorunsho Alakija, Africa’s richest woman by Forbes reckoning, was among the 25 billionaires he made during his tenure as President.

Obasanjo stated this at the 2016 Tony Elumelu Foundation Entrepreneurship Forum.

The former president was reacting to an allegation by Alakija at the event, that the Obasanjo administration frustrated her effort when she ventured into oil business.

Alakija, who spoke before Obasanjo, alleged that his administration illegally took an oil block allocated to her company after her family had invested all its savings to strike oil in commercial quantity.

“This oil block is in 5000 feet depth of water and was extremely difficult to explore.

“It took 15 years from the time that we were awarded the licence in 1993 till 2008 when we struck the first oil

“When this event happened, 60 per cent out of our 60 per cent equity in the business, was forcefully taken from us by the government of the day without due process.

“We had to fight back by going to court to seek redress and it took another 12 years for justice to be served in our favour.

“In all those years it was my trust in God, my perseverance and the support of my family that got me going,” she said.
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She used her experiences to charge the 2000 budding entrepreneurs at the event to be dogged, determined and not to give up in the face of challenges.

When Obasanjo spoke, the former president seized the opportunity to reply to the allegation by Alakija.

“There is a saying in my part of the world that when a proverb touches you and you failed to reply, then you are a coward,” he said.

Obasanjo explained that the action of the government then was in line with the Mining Act, which regulates oil prospection and exploration.

“For you to come here and say that, for no cause whatsoever, you were denied what was rightfully yours, is not fair.

“I do not know you from Adam and there is no reason I would have denied you what rightfully belonged to you.

“So, you have struggled, and you have struck oil. God bless your heart.

“My delight is to be able to create Nigerian billionaire and I always say it that my aim, when I was in government was to create 50 Nigerian billionaires.

“Unfortunately I failed. I created only 25 and Madam, you are one of them,” he said.

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Buhari Already Seeking for a 2nd Term? Read What Obasanjo is Saying About it

Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has denied an online report quoting him as saying that he had warned President Muhammadu Buhari not to seek re-election in 2019.

President Buhari and Obasanjo

 

In an official statement issued by Kehinde Akinyemi, a former president's media aide, in Abeokuta on Sunday, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo has denied an online report quoting him as saying that he had warned President Muhammadu Buhari not to seek re-election in 2019.

 

According to a report by Punch Metro, a report which was credited to the former president through his former Chief Press Secretary, Alex Nwokedi, in an online publication dated September 3, 2016, claimed that Obasanjo had warned President Muhammadu Buhari against seeking re-election in 2019.

 

Former Obasanjo has now described the report as 'completely false and destructive by those behind it', adding that there has been no communication between him and Nwokedi in the last three years, and wondered why any news would be attributed to him, as published by the online publication.

“My belief is that democracy allows for anybody including President Buhari for that matter to contest any election and it is the prerogative rights of Nigerians to vote or not to vote for them.

“I have not communicated with Alex in the last three years, so how could a story be credited to me when I did not authorise such or communicated with him in the last three years?,”  the statement read in part.

 

He said he could not even stop any of his children not to seek elective post, because that was part of the freedom of democracy.

“I condemn in the highest manner the story and those behind it. And for those behind it, they are simply enemies of democracy and freedom of expression,”  the statement read further.

 

 Obasanjo said that he was still committed to the peace and progress of the country’s democratic development and assured Nigerians that with patience, the current democratic experience would bring relief to the masses.

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It's Good Night To PDP Forever- Obasanjo

Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has said that the recent crisis in the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) has shown that the party’s era had come to an end.

Mr. Obasanjo disclosed this while fielding questions from journalists in Jalingo, the Capital City of Taraba, during a tour of some projects in the state.

When asked to comment on the ongoing crisis in his former party, the PDP, Mr. Obasanjo simply said “in the part of the country where I come from, there is a saying that you cannot say ‘good night’ and come to say ‘good evening’ in the same place.

“So for me, it is good night for the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and that’s all,” he said.

Mr. Obasanjo. who was one time Chairman, Board of Trustees of the party, had torn his membership certificate before the 2015 election denouncing the party in its entirety.

Recently when a picture and story went out in the media that he was at a PDP event at the Shehu Musa Yar’Adua Centre, he also made it very clear that he was done with the party and with partisan politics.

Attending PDP Event

A wrongly captioned photograph by NAN had set tongues wagging and the rumour mills busy as to the mission of the former leader, who in 2015 tore his membership card of the PDP.

NAN can confirm that the former leader did not go near the ceremony inaugurating the National Convention Committee of the PDP faction led by Senator Ahmed Makarfi.
Rather, Mr. Obasanjo was at the centre to take part in an agricultural stakeholders meeting, Zero Hunger in Africa-Nigeria chapter

Some news reports had gone ahead with speculations that the former president was making political realignment for 2019 elections.

The PDP event was meant to inaugurate the party’s national convention and financial committees.The party convention, downgraded to be non-elective after a court ban, held on Aug. 17 in Port Harcourt.

According to a statement by Tunde Arosanyin of the Zero Hunger in Africa in Abuja on Saturday, it was just a coincidence that the two meetings were holding at the same venue.

”He came for zero hunger in Africa-Nigeria chapter meeting with commodity Association stakeholders.

”At closing, some PDP members came to greet him at the boardroom of the hunger meeting venue,” Mr. Arosanyin said.

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Lol! When Obasanjo Smiled With Rita Dominic (Photos)

Don’t even start. You know the ex-president was formally a military man and they don’t smile. But in these photos with Rita Dominic at the movie premiere of ’76, Tonto Dikeh’s father-in-law was seen smiling as he posed to take a photograph with her and others. We love baba!

Btw, if the Tonto Dikeh’s father-in-law sentence is confusing you. Tonto’s husband, Churchill is like a son to Obasanjo, and he had to take her to see him to approve their relationship before they got married. Churchill’s dad and General Obasanjo hail from the same family.

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