Weekly Recap: Obasanjo’s New Year Revelation and Matters Arising

The new year started with a special revelation from Nigeria’s former President Olusegun Obasanjo.

In a letter, the former president endorsed the Labour Party’s Presidential Candidate, Peter Obi.

• Tinubu: Obasanjo’s endorsement of Obi poison for Nigeria
• Obasanjo’s Endorsement Of Peter Obi Speaks Volume — Wike

The endorsement attracted a lot of reactions from personalities, including the All Progressives Congress (APC) Presidential Candidate, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, who described it as a poison to Nigerians.

It also elicited comments from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) standard bearer, Atiku Abubakar, President Muhammadu Buhari’s spokesperson, Garba Shehu and some others.

However, the endorsement drew support from a few others too, like Governor Samuel Ortom of Benue State.

It also extracted a reaction from Governor Nyesom Wike of Rivers State, who threw a jibe at Atiku.

Recall that Atiku was Obasanjo’s vice when the latter was president between 1999 and 2007. The endorsement therefore gave room for Wike and some others to question Atiku’s capacity to rule.

After the endorsement came the next big news. The 2023 budget was signed this week.

President Buhari said the 2023 budget would provide aggregate expenditures of N21.83 trillion, an increase of N1.32 trillion over the initial executive proposal. We are still waiting for economists to break things down and tell us if the economy will get better.

Still on politicking, it appears we might have to beg Lagosians, and their rivals in Abuja to please collect their PVCs. An estimate of 2.1 million PVCs have remained uncollected in Abuja and Lagos.

In other tragic news, the convoy of a former governor of Imo State, Ikedi Ohakim, was attacked. It resulted in the killing of 4 police officers.

Ohakim was governor of Imo state between 2007 and 2011. Eyewitnesses said that the former governor was with two of his children when the gunmen struck.

Meanwhile, in far away Saudi Arabia, the much disputed GOAT of football, Cristiano Ronaldo was welcomed. He is to join the Al Nassr and is expected to live there for at least two years.

There are talks around Saudi Arabian marriage law that prohibits cohabitation of unmarried couples, but Ronaldo may choose to live together with his partner under the same roof.

But Nigerians don’t have much time to worry about Ronaldo, they are busy looking for the newly designed naira notes yet to be well circulated. Have you seen them?