Former President Olusegun Obasanjo, has mocked the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) describing it a ‘dying baby’. He said this Saturday when he received visiting factional National Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party, Senator Ali Modu Sheriff, in his Hilltop residence in Abeokuta, Ogun State.
He said Sheriff might be the party’s undertaker and wondered how the former Borno State Governor would nurse to life the dying baby placed on his laps.
Obasanjo who held a closed-door meeting with Sheriff said the soul of the PDP had already gone. It was a jab at the party that made him President for eight years.
“I think it was yesterday (Friday), he ( referring to Sheriff) called me on telephone and said ‘where are you?’ And I said I am in the country. He said ‘may I come and see you?’ I said my house is open to all Nigerians of goodwill and even non-Nigerians of goodwill. And I said, ‘you can come’.
“Let me make it absolutely clear once and again: I’ve renounced partisan politics. I don’t belong to any political party, not to talk of his own faction of PDP or any other faction”.
The former President did not give details of the meeting but he let out a hint: “I am very, very happy to receive him. The soul of that party has been taken out of it. And those who allowed that to happen, unfortunately either in the country or out of the country, are unperturbed about the fate of that party and indeed the fate of the country.
“Because, for our democracy to thrive, we need a strong political party in government and strong political party in opposition. For democracy to be strong and dynamic, today’s 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”.
Sheriff said he came to Abeokuta in search of solution: “Baba, I don’t have any faction. I’m the Chairman of the PDP, Baba. Well, Baba has said everything. Baba said the PDP that they gave me is a dying PDP. He built the PDP that everybody cherished. Baba, whether he’s today in politics or outside politics, he has a role in Nigeria’s nation and every one of us that are (sic) looking upon to him?, if we have a problem, we must come to him for solution”.
