One of the subtexts of what happened on Saturday, 4 April 2026, at the commissioning of the Gateway Cargo Airport in Ogun State was the rapprochement between President Bola Tinubu and a former Nigerian leader, Olusegun Obasanjo (the two wore the same aso ebi with Asiwaju’s symbol of broken chains).
In the past, the two men behaved like two recalcitrant cocks thrown into a pit. Put differently, what went on between them in the past was the love existing between the mongoose and the cobra!
It is on record that Obasanjo hoodwinked five state governors in the South West to support him when he contested for the Presidency on the platform of the People’s Democratic Party with a promise that he would support their governorship. It was too late for the other Governors that OBJ had sold them down the river. Tinubu saw through the subterfuge and refused to support OBJ.
That episode drew a line in the sand between the two of them. Thus, OBJ seized the allocation meant for Lagos when Tinubu was the Governor. He found a way around that by some financial re-engineering that increased the Internally Generated Revenue of the state. Tinubu’s sin was that he created more local government councils.
Successive administrations tasted the bitter pills of Obasanjo’s epistolary style of taking digs at them. And when Tinubu came into power as President, he was not spared the OBJ Exocet.
All that has evaporated in a puff! Thanks for the Ogun Airport.
Is this a sign of good things to come? A great rapprochement?