PDP in a coma –Obasanjo

Tells Sheriff he won’t return to partisan politics
From Yusuf Abiola, Abeokuta
Former president Olusegun Obasanjo yesterday told the factional National Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Senator Ali Modu Sheriff, that he won’t return to partisan politics.

He made the statement at his Hilltop residence in Abeokuta, Ogun State capital, when Sheriff came to consult with him on how to find a lasting solution to the crisis rocking the party. Sheriff who arrived Obasanjo’s residence at 11:04am in a convoy of four vehicles went straight to Obasanjo’s inner room for a closed-door meeting, which lasted an hour.
But the former president told the visiting factional Chairman that he had not rescinded his decision to renounce partisan politics. “Let me make it absolutely clear once and again, I have renounced partisan politics. I don’t belong to any political party, not to talk of his own faction of PDP or any other faction of PDP.‎ But he came and I am very happy to receive him and I said: ‘Look, for my own education, for my own knowledge, tell me what exactly is happening. And he briefed me,” he said.
Obasanjo went on, “And as they all want to say now, ‘well, you were once the father of PDP. I was once the leader for eight years, I was the leader of PDP, but the PDP that I was the leader of is not the PDP of today.”
“The PDP of today, if you can talk of a party again as PDP, its soul has been taken out of it and those who allowed that to happen are unfortunately either in the country or out of the country unperturbed about the fate of the party and indeed the fate of the country.”
The ex-president told Modu Sheriff that the party was “dying” and that he would be responsible for its final rites. “He called me yesterday and said ‘where are you’ and I said, ‘I am in the country’. And he said, ‘May I come and see you? And I said ‘my house is open to all Nigerians of goodwill and even non-Nigerians of goodwill. I said he can come’,” Obasanjo narrated.
“I have said to my brother that I wish him well with the dying baby they have put on his laps because PDP is comatose and he was of course not in PDP, he has never been in PDP until now. When I was in PDP, I tried and encouraged him to come and join PDP, he did not come. But the PDP they have given him now is a dying PDP, a dying baby. It needs to be in intensive care; otherwise, he will just be an undertaker,” Obasanjo said.
The former president said for democracy to thrive in the country, there must be strong political party as opposition. “For our democracy to thrive, we need strong political party in government and strong political party in opposition. Today, PDP cannot claim to be a strong party in opposition. I don’t know if APC can claim at the national level to be a strong party in government either. Now, that is part of the misfortune of this country today,” he lamented.
“That being the case, it must be the concern of all Nigerians that the present democratic dispensation must not be allowed to be derailed and for it not to be derailed, we must have a strong political party in government and a strong political party in opposition”.
“When they talk about institution, a political party is an institution. And in a democracy, it is a very important institution that we must all nourish and we must all cherish.”
“But like I said, it is the responsibility of all Nigerians of goodwill and all friends of Nigeria that wish this country well that we should ensure that the institutions that will underpin a virile, dynamic, thriving democracy are put in place,” Obasanjo said.
However, Sherif, on his part, said he had come to consult with Obasanjo on how to solve the problem within the party. His words: “Baba has told me that the PDP given to me is a dying PDP. He built the PDP that everybody cherished. Whether today in politics or outside politics, Baba has a role in Nigeria and every one of us is looking up to him,”
“If we have a problem, we must come to him for solution. Therefore, since we are looking for solution whether he is inside or not, he has said he’s not going to play any partisan politics we will meet him. We agreed, but he is our father, father of the Nigerian nation and the grandfather of PDP. Therefore, the soul that has gone, he has to bring it back to us. And through his advice, we will get through.”
“You know, Baba is very correct. So many things have gone wrong and it will be alright Insha Allah. Making it right is a matter of concentration and talking to the right people. Baba told you already, Nigeria needs a strong party in government and outside government, and he also told you that both are needed for democracy to survive. He keeps saying this as a practical experience; as a two-term president of Nigeria. The wisdom we want to lead our party, he has it, and that is why we have come to consult with him,” Sheriff told journalists.
Meanwhile, Ekiti State governor, Ayodele Fayose, in a quick reaction to the development dismissed Sheriff’s visit to Obasanjo as “coming together of PDP’s enemies” He said it was on record that both Obasanjo and Sheriff collaborated to destroy the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) and that their present meeting was to further collaborate to destroy the PDP.
Governor Fayose, who reacted to the visit through his Special Assistant on Public Communications and New Media, Lere Olayinka, said: “Sheriff can as well begin to sleep in Obasanjo’s house, it is good riddance to bad rubbish.”
“Since Obasanjo is no longer a member of the PDP and he has consistently maintained that he can never return to the
PDP, only those in the same league with him can go about visiting him,” he added.
He said it was hypocritical and deceitful for Sheriff to have said he went to see Obasanjo to seek advice on the way forward for the PDP since he (Obasanjo) was among those who made the PDP to lose the presidency, despite that no one benefited from the party more than him.
According to Fayose, Sheriff’s visit to Obasanjo was part of his alleged collaboration with the All Progressives Congress (APC) to destroy the PDP, adding that; “no genuine lover of the PDP will go to the house of a man who openly destroyed his PDP membership card and worked assiduously to ensure the party’s failure in the 2015 presidential election to seek advice on the way forward for the PDP.”
He reiterated his call to Nigerians to beware of Obasanjo, saying: “The result of Obasanjo’s imposition of President Mohammadu Buhari on the country is the hunger and sufferings that Nigerians are facing now.”

Sun News