A few hours after former President Olusegun Obasanjo tore his membership
card of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) yesterday in Abeokuta
and dumped it for good, Chairman of the Board of Trustees (BoT) of the
Party, Chief Tony Anenih elsewhere in Abuja dismissed Obasanjo’s action as
inconsequential.
Anenih, who replaced Obasanjo as Chairman of the PDP BoT, said when
accosted by State House Correspondents after a meeting with President
Goodluck Jonathan, that the “leaders of the party will not miss him
(Obasanjo).”
In a brief interview that ensued, Anenih said it was within Obasanjo’s
right to leave the party and head for any other party that he wishes to
join.
According to him, “He (Obasanjo) has the right to leave any party; and, he
has the right to join any party; he is a Nigerian.”
Asked whether PDP would miss the former president and one-time chairman of
the BoT, Anenih replied, “Why should we miss him?”
He also disagreed with the assertion that the departure of Obasanjo is a
big loss to the party, saying, “To us, leaders, it is not a loss.”
Obasanjo has been mounting a rash of attacks against President Jonathan in
the build-up to the forthcoming presidential elections. He had last week
reportedly endorsed the candidature of the All Progressives Congress
(APC), General Muhammadu Buhari.
His action has drawn flaks from the Peoples Democratic Party Presidential
Campaign Organisation (PDPPCO) who described his allegations that
President Jonathan was planning to win by hook or by crook as reckless.
Director of Media and Publicity of the PDPPCO, Chief Femi Fani-Kayode said
that Obasanjo raised issues and made assertions that were capable of
derailing the nation’s democracy and creating chaos in the end.
He had faulted Obasanjo’s positions one after the other and declared that
Obasanjo is not “God who alone determines the fortunes of men and the
destiny of nations.”
Recall that former President Obasanjo, who was still in jail in 1998 for
alleged involvement in a 1995 trumped-up coup plot against General Sani
Abacha, was pardoned by General Abdulsalami Abubakar and drafted into the
PDP after the party had been formed by its founding leaders to enable him
fly its presidential flag.
He won the election despite losing his southwest zone to then Alliance for
Democracy (AD). His presidency spanned 1999 to 2007. He had even
attempted a third term, but the plot failed to crystallize despite huge
bribe to legislators running into billions of naira to push it through.
Obasanjo had after leaving office in 2007 negotiated his way into the
position of PDP BoT chairman from which he resigned in 2012.