BREAKING NEWS: Obasanjo, Jonathan in secret meeting at Kenya

 

President Goodluck Jonathan and former ruler Olusegun Obasanjo were locked in a secret meeting late yesterday in faraway Nairobi, Kenya, apparently to discuss Obasanjo’s scathing criticism of Jonathan in a letter leaked to the media, a source privy to the talks told Abusidiqu.

Talks between the current and former presidents were held at the luxurious Intercontinental Hotel in Nairobi where Jonathan is lodged to attend Kenya’s 50th independence celebrations. Jonathan and Obasanjo had on Tuesday attended the memorial held to honor the life of Nelson “Madiba” Madela, South Africa’s great man of history and world’s single most significant statesman of the last 100 years.

Jonathan and Obasanjo were said to have had a “fruitful discussion” after emerging from the meeting beaming with smiles and sharing a warm handshake in a move to paper over cracks in their continually strained relationship and sway watchers that there was no acrimony between the two, the source said.

The Nairobi talks follows Obasanjo’s sanctimonious attack on Jonathan in an 18 page December 2 note to the President titled “Before It Is Too Late”. Obasanjo accused Jonathan of everything from corruption to divisive politics to dangerous ambition. “Nigeria is bleeding and the hemorrhage must be stopped,” Obasanjo said. “As Head of Government, the buck of the performance and non-performance stops on your table.”

He said the president’s agenda serves a narrow ethnic interest of the Ijaw nation and fostered divisions between Christians and Muslims as Jonathan seeks to retain power in 2015.

Jonathan, 56, who took over since 2010 after the death of Umaru Yar’Adua, hasn’t openly declared his intention to seek re-election in 2015.

The former president dared Jonathan to share the contents of the letter with heads of former military juntas Generals Ibrahim Babangida, Abdulsalami Abubakar and Yakubu Danjuma, as well as former Vice President Alex Ekwueme “who on a number of occasions in recent times have shared with me their agonizing thoughts, concerns and expressions” about the future of the country.

Presidential spokesman Reuben Abati reacted angrily to Obasanjo’s letter describing it as “highly unbecoming, mischievous and provocative” while acknowledging receipt of the said correspondence. Obasanjo’s letter was “deliberately leaked to the mass media in a deplorable effort to impugn the integrity of the President and denigrate his commitment to giving Nigeria the best possible leadership,” Abati said.

Jonathan, who is expected back in Abuja from Nairobi today, will “at the appropriate time, offer a full personal response to the most reckless, baseless, unjustifiable and indecorous charges levied against him and his administration by the former Head of State,” Abati said.