A source privy to a recent meeting where Obasanjo openly expressed
his displeasure to some close allies on how President Jonathan has been
relating with him, said it all started when:
Obasanjo indicated
his intention to resign as the chairman of the Board of Trustees of PDP.
The situation was allegedly handled poorly by President Jonathan and
this angered Obasanjo.
According to the source, the former
president had expected the president to engage him in order to seek
clarification on why he was leaving the office beyond the excuses he had
advanced.
Commenting on the Obasanjo/Jonathan grudge, the source
said the former president was shocked when about a week after serving
the notice of his intention to resign, he received a letter from
Jonathan, accepting his resignation without either an attempt to
persuade him against it or give personal attention to the plan.
Obasanjo
was said to have described President Jonathan’s action as both
insensitive and a display of poor understanding of the nuances of power.
“Baba
had expected that given his place in the party and especially the role
he played in the emergence of Mr Goodluck Jonathan as President, he
would have prevailed on him not to go but stay back and help moderate
things at the highest level in the party,” the source said.
Another source told Thisday that Jonathan just “acted naively” without knowing the implications.
The
source, who gave a rundown of Jonathan’s alleged many infractions
against Obasanjo, confirmed that the former president is not happy with
the way the Jonathan groups were going about his re-election bid.
According
to him, Obasanjo had put a lot at stake by brokering a one-term deal
that is now being vehemently denied, adding that even if there was plan
to seek re-election, the brazen approach is certainly counter-productive
in the light of the prevailing political developments in the country.
The
source recalled that apart from easing out former governor Olagunsoye
Oyinlola of Osun State as national secretary, Bode Mustapha, as
auditor-general and former Ekiti State governor, Segun Oni, as
vice-chairman of the PDP, South-west zone, the PDP in Ogun State had
also been taken away from Obasanjo and handed over to someone regarded
as “unrepentantly anti-Obasanjo”, Mr. Buruji Kashamu.
Worthy of
note, the source mentioned, was that Obasanjo didn’t take kindly, the
way Jonathan took his position on the issue of insecurity, especially
when the President was reported as saying he would not handle the issue
of terrorism the military way, alluding to Obasanjo’s invasion of Odi
and Zaki Biam.
Another instance, according to the source, was that
Obasanjo sometime ago visited one of his farms in Cross River State and
observed that the road to the farm was in deplorable state.
“So,
Baba expressed his disappointment to the Cross River State governor on
the state of the road but the man replied and said it was the President
that had not approved of it being a federal road.
“Right there,
Baba called the president and narrated his encounter with the governor
and told the president that he had appealed to the governor to go ahead
with the road and that he’ll be reimbursed by the president, to which
Jonathan was said to have replied in the affirmative.
“But Baba
was later shocked to hear that the president had sent for the governor
and dressed him down for what he considered ‘reporting him to Baba’. So,
these are some of the things that people do not know that are annoying
Baba. If not for these infractions, the source said, “Baba was not and
never would have been against the president because of the role he
played in his emergence. It is depressing for Baba.”
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