by Adeola Balogun

Despite rumours of denials from all angles, Senator Iyabo Obasanjo is yet to personally deny writing the highly publicized and controversial 11-page letter to her father, former President, Olusegun Obasanjo.

The letter released yesterday by Vanguard is highly critical of Chief Obasanjo and paints him in an unsavoury light.

Family members and friends have risen up to say that Senator Obasanjo could not have had anything to do with the letter but she is yet to say anything about it herself and she is also said to have been unavailable for comment despite several attempts made to reach her.

According to Sahara Reporters:

A source close to Mr. Obasanjo told our correspondent that Ms. Obasanjo had so far defied pressures from friends and family to state that she was not the writer of the letter or that she did not share the views expressed in it.

SaharaReporters also discovered that Ms. Obasanjo, who currently resides in the State of Massachusetts, has refused to take phone calls from the press. Instead, she has only accepted calls from a select few people whose caller IDs she knows, according to a friend knowledgeable about her movement today.

The friend also disclosed that Ms. Obasanjo had virtually stopped taking calls on her cell phone, except from members of a small inner circle. Part of her plan was to thwart relatives and friends of her father who had been sent on a mission to convince her to dissociate herself from the content of the explosive letter in order to save her father’s image.

Our source revealed that the former senator’s cell phone rang incessantly all day yesterday, but was hardly answered. Our correspondent ascertained that Ms. Obasanjo’s voice message box was full, making it impossible for callers to leave her any messages.

Since the letter was published yesterday, several blogs have claimed that Ms. Obasanjo had denied writing it, an assertion that SaharaReporters determined to be completely false.

Several sources at Vanguard newspaper told SaharaReporters that former President Obasanjo’s daughter spoke twice yesterday with editors of the paper and stood by her letter. One source added that the former senator also agreed to let the paper release a tape of her confirmation should the need arise.

Late yesterday, SaharaReporters contacted the Harvard University Advanced Leadership Initiative where Ms. Obasanjo is a fellow. Speaking to our reporter, John Kendzior, a director of the program, confirmed that Ms. Obasanjo was in Boston and enrolled in the program.

He asked our correspondent to send an email to be forwarded to her for response. However, Ms. Obasanjo did not respond to an email we sent via the director. Nor did she respond to several text messages to her mobile phone.