Obasanjo in Libya for Eid-el-Fitri

Shola Adekola, Lagos - 30.09.2008

Former President Olusegun Obasanjo on Monday jetted out of the country to Tripoli, Libya, aboard a Libyan registered aircraft on the invitation of the Libyan leader, Muammar Ghaddafi.

One of the aides of Obasanjo confided in aviation correspondents at the presidential wing of the Murtala Muhammed Airport, Lagos, that the former president was on his way to Tripoli to celebrate the Eid-el-Fitri with the Libyan leader.

Obasanjo was said to have been personally invited by Gaddafi to come and celebrate the festival with him. He was accompanied on the trip by one of his daughters, Ronke; his former Senior Special Assistant on Media, Dr. Doyin Okupe and his childhood friend, Chief Femi Olopade.

Before he travelled on board the Libyan Boeing 707 plane marked: TZ TAC, Obasanjo, who was asked by journalists to state his mission to Libya comically replied: “Opelope pe mo sosia, pipa ni iba pami,” which literarlly means “If not because I am sociable, he would have killed me.”

In his usual humorous manner, the former president, when asked the reason for his trip, responded by simply saying in Ibadan accent: “it is social.”