• Why no one trusts the former PDP chieftain
The Capital findings revealed that the dark-hued politician achieved his bid to join the ruling party after pleading and groveling at the feet of the party’s chieftains for months, to accept him and save him from going into extinction with his under-achieving PDP. Now, he is having a whirlwind soap opera romance with the APC, a party that he had riled and ridiculed its chieftains with too much bile and venom.
However, there is no art to detect cunning in a man’s heart. The cold breast and serpent smile often beguiles treachery hence Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, All Progressives Congress (APC) national leader should be wary of fresh defector from the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), Musiliu Obanikoro. Pundits aver that Tinubu, a two-time governor of Lagos has been set up for betrayal for the umpteenth time by the former PDP chieftain and former Minister of State for Defence.
At Obanikoro’s defection to the APC, prominent chieftains of the party and close associates of Tinubu are suspicious of his motives. None of them believes that Obanikoro has the interests of the APC at heart.
Sources within the party are worried that Tinubu’s vote of confidence in the ex-PDP stalwart has left him vulnerable to Obanikoro’s designs. Thus while Tinubu welcomes Obanikoro with open arms, his underlings and loyalists in the APC prepare for the worst.
Obanikoro’s antecedents incite worry from prominent APC chieftains who are of the belief that he is only planning to use Tinubu once again for political gain. They argued that once he gets a juicy offer from the PDP, he would quit the APC and declare another war against Tinubu, his past and present benefactor.
It would be recalled that Obanikoro became a vigorous member of the opposition when he left the more socialist bent party Alliance for Democracy (AD) to join the PDP. Immediately he joined PDP, he rubbished his former party and very hard to destroy its chances on every front.
And very few people would forget Obanikoro’s antagonism of the APC en route the 2015 presidential elections. So invested was he in the PDP’s offensive against the APC that he became a person of interest in a scandalous rigging debacle at the Ekiti governorship elections where PDP’s Ayo Fayose emerged victor.
The popular politician was at a time the Chairman of LILG (Lagos Island Local Government), he later became a Commissioner under the leadership of Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu in 1999 as the Commissioner for Home Affairs and Culture. From being a commissioner, he became a Senator in Lagos 2003 to 2007 when he contested on the platform of the AD from where he defected to the then ruling PDP.
Obanikoro vied for governorship of Lagos as a PDP candidate, jostling with Babatunde Raji Fashola of the APC and he lost. He was later appointed as the Nigerian High Commissioner to Ghana by late President Musa Yar’ Adua. Former President Goodluck Jonathan subsequently appointed him as the Minister of State for Defence in 2014, a position he held and deployed to assist his crony, Ayo Fayose, to return as Governor of Ekiti State against Kayode Fayemi.
Obanikoro has been in the news for the wrong reasons in recent times. He fled the country in the wake of inquisition into his past financial dealings as a member of the immediate past administration of the PDP.
Facing imminent prosecution, Obanikoro fled the country with his sons, Jide and Gbolahan. They stole away to the United States to escape President Muhammadu Buhari’s anti-corruption campaign.
You couldn’t have forgotten so soon when Head of Treasury Operations at Diamond Bank, Olaitan Fajuyitan, told officials of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) that he transferred N1.2bn from the bank account of a company belonging to Gbolahan, son of Obanikoro. Fajuyitan said this in his statement of oath at the EFCC when he was quizzed by the anti-graft agency. This prompted the Obanikoro’s sudden departure for the US.
However, the former defence minister was forced to return to the country when it became clear to him that he could be deported from the US.
