Ex-president Obasanjo marries ex-wife

The anxiety which ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo's daughters may have felt about the vacuum in their father's life has expired with a confirmed replacement.

Mama Funsho now takes the place of late Stella Obasanjo, who died in Spain, in an unsuccessful cosmetic surgery on October 23, 2005.

The doctor who performed the operation is, meanwhile, undergoing trial for possible negligence though the former president has long surrendered everything to God.

Obasanjo lived his last months in Aso Rock like a bachelor, but his current closest companion comes from among his circle of women who have given him children while living separately.

Mama Funso, whose daughter is already above 20 was the choice of his daughters, according to sources, and came in tow when Baba Iyabo almost fell for the wiles of a Lagos Princess, whose too-frequent visits to Hilltop Mansion in Abeokuta rankled the Obasanjo's family.

"At his age he needs a stabilising force, for that is what a wife is to a man," said Fred Ojie, a public analyst resident in Lagos.

"You cannot wish away the role which the late Stella played in the man's life, and though he is no longer occupying any public office, he deserves a regular companion like everyone else," Ojie said, adding "in fact, the older a man is, the more he needs a female companion."

Reports indicate that no other woman can completely fill the vacuum, which Stella left behind.

"He would continue to live with the memory of Stella," a source who claimed to know the family said, explaining that the late wife was the woman who stood by the former president in his darkest times in Abacha's gulag.

Obasanjo's new wife is believed to be good at culinary duties, but it is not certain whether she can exercise as much public poise as the late wife; fortunately, the man may not need an active official wife at the moment as the only assignments which he would take on now, such as being international envoy would not require the office of Mama Funso.