A former vice-president and a presidential aspirant on the platform of All Progressives Congress, Atiku Abubakar and a national leader of APC and former governor of Lagos State, Bola Tinubu, held separate meetings with the former president, Olusegun Obasanjo, on Friday.
The meetings were held at Obasanjo’s Hilltop presidential residence in Abeokuta.
With each spending not less than one hour with the former president, it was obvious their visits were not unconnected with the 2015 elections.
Tinubu had paid such a visit earlier in October to Obasanjo, where he said he had come to discuss the state of the nation and his advice on the choice of presidential candidate for the party.
However, on this visit, Tinubu did not grant any press interviews as his convoy drove out of the Obasanjo’s residence around 12.30pm.
Two hours after his departure, Atiku, who had earlier paid a visit to the governor, Senator Ibikunle Amosun, arrived in a convoy, and drove into the former president’s compound.
Briskly, he moved into the inner chamber of the building and after a closed-door meeting which lasted for about 45 minutes, he emerged from the chamber with his host, and went to another wing of the building where they had lunch.
He later emerged after 20 minutes and told journalists that he had come to pay respect to his former boss and also discuss the developments in the country with him.
Abubakar was accompanied by a former Minister of Education, Babalola Aborishade, who is also the director general of the Atiku Campaign Organisation, and Oyewole Fasawe, an associate of Obasanjo.
Others at the meeting were Maxwell Gidado, the Director, Legal of the Atiku Campaign, Mohammed Ohiare and Adeolu Akande.
He expressed regret at the defection of a former Ogun State Governor, Olusegun Osoba, from the APC to the Social Democratic Party, SDP.
He said Osoba’s exit was unfortunate, but expressed hope that the situation was redeemable.
“Yes, I’m the chairman of the South-West reconciliatory committee but we have also decided to set up an elders sub-committee of that committee to try and see if there would be what I call ‘internal reconciliation’ before the bigger committee looks at the reconciliation process,” he said. “This is a situation that has been going on for quite some time and we’ve not given up.”
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