Iyabo Obasanjo @ 53: Living Life On Her Terms

By Chuks Ekpeneru

Dr. Iyabo Obasanjo strayed into the Nigerian political space in 1999 when her father, now Dr. Oluseugn Obasanjo was inaugurated for the first time as president at the onset of the Fourth Republic.

Her real bump was, however, in 2003 when she was appointed as a commissioner in Ogun State. Her advent came after she relocated from the United States where she worked as a college professor to partake in the local politics. Her appointment into the cabinet arguably came on her merit.

By 2007 she was elected into the Senate to represent Ogun Central. With her father out of power his father’s political enemies in the corridor of power were alleged to have made her a pawn in the power game to rubbish her father.

As chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, Senator Iyabo had sanctioned a trip sponsored by the Federal Ministry of Health to Ghana for a retreat. Following the retreat the authorities in Nigeria announced that the funds for the retreat came from unspent funds of the budget of the ministry and asked that Iyabo return the money but she stuck to her guns that the money had been spent for what it had been earmarked for and could not be returned.

She was put on what her associates claimed as a media trial for supposed fraud but was eventually acquitted by the courts.

For her it was a bruising lesson especially after she lost her attempt at re-election. She subsequently put Nigeria off her agenda and relocated to the United States to resume her career in academics.

Since then not much has been heard of the former first daughter save for her famous letter to her father in which she vowed to cut away from him. She is believed to have, however, reconnected to her father.

Iyabo was born 27th April 1967 in Lagos to the former military and civilian ruler and his wife Oluremi Obasanjo.

She attended Corona School in Victoria Island, Lagos, Capital School in Kaduna, and Queen’s College in Lagos. She obtained a degree in Veterinary Medicine from the University of Ibadan in 1988, a master’s degree in Epidemiology from University of California, Davis in Davis, California, United States, in 1990, and a PhD in the same subject from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, in 1994.

Now fully entrenched in the United States, Dr. Iyabo Obasanjo may have seemingly turned herself away from the country which put her in the limelight and at the same time humiliated her.

She has decided to live her life according to her terms.

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