By Damola Emmanuel
Barely 48 hours after the ‘unity’ national convention of the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, the Vice President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo met with former President Olusegun Obasanjo, Monday, at the penthouse of his Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library, OOPL, in Abeokuta the Ogun State capital.
The visit came among vigorous campaigns by diverse interest groups urging the Vice President to run for President in the 2023 general elections on the platform of APC.
The State Governor, Mr. Dapo Abiodun, who was among dignitaries that welcomed Osinbajo when his chopper landed at the Presidential Library, also joined the meeting held behind closed door.
However, feelers from the OOPL hinted that the Vice President was in the complex at the invitation of ex-President Obasanjo, ostensibly to declare open a programme with the theme: West Africa: Rising to the challenge of Consolidating Democratic Governance.
The programme was said to have been organised by the Coalition for Dialogue on Africa (CoDA).
In recent weeks, speculations have been rife that Prof. Osinbajo would seek the ticket of the All Progressives Congress to contest the 2023 presidential election.
Although he has not personally declared his intention, his loyalists, led by his political adviser, Babafemi Ojudu, a former Senator, have been crisscrossing the country, selling his candidature.
There were speculations, Monday, that the Vice President may use the occasion to inform ex-President Obasanjo of his intention to seek the nation’s topmost position. Several presidential hopefuls in the country’s two major parties, the APC and the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, have visited the former president in the last couple of months.
Though ex-President Obasanjo had called it quits with partisan politics after falling out with the Peoples Democratic Party in 2013, he capitulated in 2014 to support the candidature of Muhammadu Buhari as President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan’s successor. Buhari won the vote.
And despite Obasanjo’s vitriolic criticisms of his administration in the first term, Buhari still won re-election in 2019 with a landslide. Obasanjo’s former deputy, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, was Buhari’s opponent in that election.
The former Vice President has yet again thrown his cap into the ring for the 2023 presidential election on PDP’s platform even as the brouhaha that has engulfed the party over the zoning of political and elective offices rages on.
Despite the pilgrimages to his Abeokuta abode by presidential aspirants, Obasanjo has not categorically supported any of the hopefuls.