Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has described the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) as a dying political party which needs to be taken to an intensive care unit.
He said this on Saturday at his Abeokuta Presidential Hilltop residence in an interview with journalists, after emerging from a closed-door meeting with a factional national chairman of the PDP, Senator Ali-Modu Sheriff.
Obasanjo said Sheriff called him on Friday that he was coming to visit him, and he had to oblige him.
The former president explained that the factional chairman briefed him about the crisis rocking the party.
Obasanjo, who was a former chairman of the party’s Board of Trustees, said the PDP had lost its soul, and said he wished Sheriff would not be an undertaker that would bury it.
“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 unperturbed about the fate of the party and indeed the fate of the country.
“I have said to my brother (Sheriff) that I wish him well in the dying baby they have put on his laps; because PDP is in a comatose state and he was not in PDP, he has never been in PDP until now.
“When I was in PDP, I encouraged him to join the party, but he did not. The PDP they have given him now is a dying PDP; a dying baby. It needs to be in intensive care unit, otherwise, he (Sheriff) will be an undertaker,” Obasanjo stated.
The former president pointed out that the country needed a strong ruling party and a vibrant opposition party for democracy to thrive in Nigeria.
He said, “Today, PDP cannot claim to be a strong party in opposition; I don’t know if the All Progressives Congress can claim, at the national level, to be a strong party in government. Now that is part of the misfortune of this country today.”
Addressing journalists, Sheriff said it was important for him to visit Obasanjo whom he described as an elder statesman.
The factional PDP chairman said, “If we have a problem, we must come to him for solution. He has said he’s not playing partisan politics anymore. We agree, 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 it.”
__________
Follow us on Twitter at @thesignalng
Copyright 2015 SIGNAL. Permission to use portions of this article is granted provided appropriate credits are given to www.signalng.com and other relevant sources.
