*Says former president’s support for Obi, Kwankwaso is only a smokescreen

The Yoruba Ronu Leadership Forum has accused former President Olusegun Obasanjo of undermining the opposition and working for President Bola Tinubu.

The allegations were made on Sunday in a press statement signed by the President of the Yoruba Ronu Leadership Forum, Chief Akin Malaolu.

“On Thursday, former President Olusegun Obasanjo penned a controversial letter to former Governor of Ogun State, Chief Segun Osoba in which he made widespread allegations including that the former Vice President and Presidential candidate of the African Democratic Congress, Atiku Abubakar mobilised late former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Ghali Umar Na’Abba to impeach him,” the statement read.

“Atiku has since responded to Obasanjo, accusing the former President of still bellyaching over his (Atiku’s) role in working with other well-meaning leaders in shutting down his ignoble Third Term agenda.

“By dragging the name of Na’Abba into his allegation, Obasanjo knows too well that the former late Speaker is incapable of a right of reply. To respond to Obasanjo, he has to be resurrected from the dead, which the former President knows is impossible.

“Many think that the attack by Chief Obasanjo is against Atiku. Far from it. What Obasanjo did was a deliberate attack against the opposition parties in Nigeria.”

By this letter, Chief Malaolu said “Obasanjo has only confirmed speculations that he is working for his kinsman, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to actualise his second term ambition.

“The so-called Obasanjo’s support for Obi and Kwankwaso is a mere smokescreen aimed at masking his covert support for the Tinubu-led APC administration.

“Before the ADC was adopted as the Coalition party, the stakeholders of the party reached out to leaders including Obasanjo. But what was paramount to Obasanjo was his support for Obi.

“Indeed, in his quest to advance the Obi bid, Obasanjo told a Southwest leaders that he was prepared to publicly disown the 2023 presidential candidate of the Labour Party if he accepted the Vice Presidential ticket of the ADC. He assured that the withdrawal of his support to the former Governor of Anambra State will be done through a letter as usual.

“When it became obvious that Obasanjo was not going to have his way in imposing Obi as the presidential candidate of the ADC, he engineered the defections to the National Democratic Congress (NDC). Kwankwaso was the bait that Obasanjo used in extracting Obi from the ADC.”

To actualise the Tinubu 2027 agenda, Malaolu said Obasanjo is discreetly working with a member of the President’s family who has enabled the requisite infrastructure for this purpose.

“It is telling that the same man who encouraged the people of the Southwest to be engaged in a pan-Nigerian politics with the return to democratic rule in 1999, has today retreated into his tribal enclave to work for a politically drowning Tinubu,” he said.