Mrs. Oluremi Obasanjo is the first love and wife of former President Olusegun Obasanjo and mother of his six children. She opened up about the bitter quarrel between their first child and daughter, Senator (Dr.) Iyabo Obasanjo and the father. Hear her… “Out of all my children, Iyabo loved Obasanjo the most. In her eyes, he could do no wrong. Sometimes I told her not to be blinded by her love for her father so that she would not be disappointed, but she would not listen to me. Despite her undying love for her father, he kept hurting her, but she would shake it off and put it behind her. But in life, when you keep disappointing your children over and over again, a time would come when they would lose respect for you. When Iyabo lost her election, she travelled abroad to stay, but she kept hearing about the unpalatable things her father was saying about her. She once invested some money in a bank, but because the managers didn’t manage her investment well, she lost it. She tried to recover it but she couldn’t and when she told her father about it, he didn’t show any form of concern at all. His non-challant attitude to her predicament hurt her a lot and she stopped speaking to him.

The last straw was that Iyabo was living in Obasanjo’s house, even though it is not actually his, but I won’t disclose the nitty-gritty of the ownership of the house. She was living there when she was in Abuja and because she had to go for a fellowship in Harvard, she decided to let the house out for some time, pending when she would return. She was in good terms with his Chief Security Officer (CSO) because they were peers. So on one occasion, when she was speaking with the CSO on phone, he told her that he would sell the house in Abuja. When she asked him what would happen to her belongings, he said he would put them anywhere and he sold the house and where he kept Iyabo’s property we do not know uptill now. Meanwhile, one of his children had taken over the house she was living in at Abeokuta after she had renovated it with about N14 million. Iyabo thought her father was joking when he said he would sell the house and keep her property anywhere. When she realized that he meant it, she told me that she vowed not to have anything to do with him again, and even promised herself that she would not be at his burial.

I also remember that under the late President Yar’Adua, when she was accused of embezzling N10 million, rather than show empathy, Obasanjo did not. Rather, he gave her a letter to go and represent him in Kenya. His plan was that when she got to the airport, it would be said that she was trying to flee Nigeria, and then she would be arrested.”

– Culled from Sunday SUN