Former president, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo has finally opened up on why June 12, 1993, presidential election was annulled by the former military president, Gen. Ibrahim Babangida.
It is widely believed that the election was won by the standard bearer of the defunct Social Democratic Party (SDP) candidate, the late Chief MKO Abiola.
However, speaking at the centenary celebration of Baptist Boys High School (BBHS), Abeokuta, Ogun State, Obasanjo said ‘bad belle’ a local metaphor for envy, had prevented the school from producing another president. Abiola is an old boy of the school.
‘If not for Nigerian bad belle, MKO Abiola would have been president and with me as president, we would have needed one more old student of BBHS to be president for us to permanently locate it in BBHS after three times. And that is a challenge for up-and-coming generations of old boys.’
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The former president said without moral virtues and sound education impacted on him by BBHS, he would not have achieved his goals in life.
Obasanjo, while delivering a lecture entitled ‘Eyin Ni Iwe Wa: You Are Our Epistle’ noted that the school moulded the late sage, Obafemi Awolowo, MKO Abiola, former judge of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), Prince Bola Ajibola, among others, into what they all became in life.
Africa Today News, New York reports that the event was organised by the Old Boys Association of the BBHS. Awolowo was at BBHS in 1928; Ajibola graduated in 1955; Abiola was among the 1956 set, while Obasanjo left the school in 1957.
Obasanjo pointed out that aside education, the 100-year-old school had at different times inculcated godly virtue on all its products.
He urged the new generation to preserve the moral virtues and discipline impacted on them by the school, and pass it on in perpetuity.