Adeola, popularly known as Yayi, made the claim on Saturday while addressing a meeting of the council of Iyalajes and Babaalajes from Remoland at his constituency office in Ilaro. He said the demand was made during consultations held after Obasanjo suspended her governorship ambition following the APC’s adoption of him as consensus candidate.
According to Adeola, Obasanjo accused him of reneging on promises and insisted he refund, in his words, “her dollars and naira.” He described the demand as insulting, and suggested her exit from the APC was driven by a financial inducement rather than principle.
“You are asking me to refund you what you have expended on this electioneering campaign. First and foremost, I find it insulting,” Adeola said. “Now you have left the party. You left the party not because the party wronged you. You left the party because you were offered money.”
He went further, alleging that Obasanjo and others like her were in politics purely for personal enrichment. “You are not a party person. You just want to cash in, and you are being paid. You don’t mean well for Ogun state. They are there in their numbers looking for the purse of Ogun state,” he said.
Obasanjo, who represented Ogun Central in the senate, resigned from the APC in June, citing persistent disrespect from the party leadership and an alleged breach of agreements by Adeola. She has since joined the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), on whose platform she secured the Ogun Central senatorial ticket.
Responding to the allegations in a Monday interview on AIT, Obasanjo gave a markedly different account, insisting she withdrew from the governorship race the moment Adeola was endorsed as the APC’s consensus candidate — and that she congratulated him on his emergence.
She argued that had money been her motive, she would have stayed in the race through to the primary election. “I’m not asking because I don’t need anything from him,” she said she told her supporters ahead of a follow-up meeting Adeola requested.
Obasanjo said it was her supporters, not her, who tabled three demands when Adeola came to meet them: that she be given the senate ticket, which she said she declined; that her campaign expenses be refunded; and that her camp be given formal recognition if they joined his campaign.
She said Adeola personally asked how much she wanted, and she told him “whatever the senator can afford.” He reportedly promised to revert within a week. More than six weeks on, she said, he had not done so — and that associates who reached out to him on her behalf were told he was busy.