Ex-Nigeria’s President Olusegun Obasanjo, Saturday, vowed not to return to partisan politics, but to remain neutral and fight for the course of nationhood.
This was after Uche Secondus, National Chairman of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), led leaders of the party on a visit to him at his home in Abeokuta, the Ogun State capital where they had tendered apology and begged Obasanjo for forgiveness.
Despite this, Obasanjo accepted the apology with a Yoruba proverb that one does not hand over his child’s waistband to an enemy just because the band did not fit the child’s waist.”
Prior to 2014, Obasanjo who had some altercations with the ex-president Goodluck Jonathan, dumped PDP in 2015, burnt his party’s membership card before the party went on to lose the 2015 presidential election to the All Progressives Congress (APC).
After quitting the PDP under which he became Nigeria’ President from 1999 to 2007, he declared that he was quitting partisan politics.
However, he subsequently supported the President Muhammadu Buhari’s candidacy.
Both men fell out and Obasanjo has criticised the Federal Government and the President several times since January 2018 after sending a damning letter to him.
While assuring that Nigeria’s glory would be restored, the ex-military Head of State pledged to continue to make himself available to guide any party that so desired.
He also promised to prioritise his service to the African Democratic Congress (ADC), which is one the over 30 political parties that formed a coalition with the PDP to defeat President Buhari and APC in 2019.
The PDP chiefs led by the party’s National Chairman Uche Secondus had held talks with the elder statesman behind closed doors for about two and half hours.
“Obasanjo is a national leader of this country. He is the father of the nation and so we came to consult with him,” Secondus told reporters after the meeting.
“So, I believe that regardless of political parties, his direction is highly needed now.”
A former deputy national chairman south of the party, Mr. Olabode George, also asked Nigerians to be wiser when they elect new leaders for the country in the forthcoming general elections.
“We must be fooling ourselves if we don’t tell ourselves the truth,” the PDP chieftain told reporters. “This is not about politics now. We need good managers for the management of our resources for the benefit of the people.”
All the 21 members of the PDP National Working Committee (NWC) and some party leaders attended the meeting, including a former Osun State Governor Olagunsoye Oynlola and a host of others.
Meanwhile, the office of the PDP National Publicity Secretary, in a statement, revealed that the leaders acknowledged that mistakes were made in the past for which they tendered apologies to the former president.
