By Musa Abdul,Minna
Former President Olusegun Obasanjo on Sunday arrived in a chattered flight in Minna, the Niger State capital for a meeting with former military dictator, Gen. Ibrahim Babangida.
The meeting was scheduled to discuss the political and economic situation in Nigeria, informed sources told Irohinoodua on Sunday.
The source said former National Security Adviser, Mohammed Aliyu Gusau and former Head of State Abdusallami Abubakar were also at the meeting
Obasanjo,Babangida and Abdulsalami are part of key figures in the martial cartel that had ruled Nigeria since independence exchanging batons direcly by themselves or through proxies.
The source said the former political figures discussed extensively the state of the nation and the diminishing fortunes of the country chatscterised by corruption, skyrocketting inflation and lingering insecurity.
Irohinoodua was informed that the four met at Minna at the hilltop residence of Babangida. One source said Babangida raised the meeting with President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to avoid any suspicion regarding the motive, though this has not been officially confirmed.
“The meeting was earlier scheduled for Ota, Ogun State but shifted later to Minna for two reasons. Two members of the team, IBB and Abdusalami live in Minna while the health of Babangida was something for consideration having suffered stroke a few years back. It was then better to have the meeting in his house” the source privy to the meeting told Irohinoodua.
Obasanjo came to the meeting in a chartered plane owned by Igbinedon and arrived Minna at exactly 4.15 pm after which he left for the hilltop residence of former Military President Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida.
Earlier, Obasanjo was in Benin City where he had met with the Esama of Benin Kingdom, Chief Gabriel Osawaru Igbinedion who was marking his 90th birthday
The meeting ended around 8pm on Sunday. Details were not officially made available to Irohinoodua but our source said the issues discussed by the four included the economic situation in the country, insecurity and the current agitation by a section of the country for a break-up.
Obasanjo, Babangida and Gusau,representing the Nigerian reactionary military wing are largely responsible for the ills of Nigeria having laid the foundation for human rights abuses, corruption, nepotism and the return to military rule in Nigeria without a peoples’ constitution.
Though they lay claim to statesmanship, but their records show that they were partly responsible for laying the foundations for the current political and economic instability in Nigeria.
IBB introduced the Structural Adjustment Programme, (SAP) which destroyed the country’s industrial base while the first leadership of Obasanjo in 1976 began with pretences to radicalism given the legacy of Murtala Mohammed but sooner began to implement anti-people policies that saw the forceful seizure of first generation Universities that belonged to regional governments, mission schools,Daily Times and other enterprises that belonged to private individuals and the complete militarisation of the political economy under the dubious cover of nationalisation.
His second coming in 1999 appears to have been another plot to keep the hegemony in power by other means.