Ex-President, Olusegun Obasanjo
People’s Democratic Party (PDP) National Caretaker Chairman Senator Ahmed Makarfi yesterday held a private meeting with former President Olusegun Obasanjo, ostensibly to seek his help in rebuilding and rejuvenating the crisis-ridden party.
But according to sources, the outcome of the hour-long meeting at the Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library (OOPL), Abeokuta did not fit into Makarfi’s expectations.
Obasanjo, it was learnt, told the former Kaduna State Governor that he was done with PDP and would not want to reverse himself on a decision long taken about the party.
Obasanjo, who was elected President twice on the ticket of PDP and later became the party’s Board of Trustees Chairman, in the build-up to the 2015 general elections, publicly tore his PDP membership card and quit partisan politics to become an elder statesman.
At the conclusion of the private discussion yesterday, the ex-president, who barred Makarfi from speaking to reporters, said it was a meeting of two former colleagues.
Obasanjo added that he told his guest that he was “no longer of the PDP, having quit partisan politics.
He said jokingly: “This is two colleagues’ meeting, two colleagues before before. When I was the President, chairman was a governor; two colleagues before before.
“I have told the chairman that I was in PDP before but not now. God forbid, say when a dog vomits, it will go back to eat its vomit, no. I have said no partisan politics for me again and not partisan politics. But Nigeria is my passion until death do us part and anything that concerns Nigeria; the good of Nigeria, you will see my involvement.
“So, the chairman has come to greet me and ‘I greet am’, and now that we’ve greeted ourselves, chairman will be going. You gentlemen and ladies of the press, you can now go, leave the chairman alone.”
Obasanjo added: “I have said publicly before and I will say it again. For our democracy to thrive and continue to be strong, we need strong party in government and strong party in the opposition.
“It has to be that way, otherwise party in government will get away with impunity and that is not good for democracy.”
But Makarfi, after leaving Obasanjo, shunned the party’s state secretariat on Ibrahim Babangida Boulevard, Abeokuta – about 250 metres away from OOPL, where he met the ex-president.
Factional PDP state chairman Adebayo Dayo and hundreds of others that had massed up at the secretariat to welcome him to Ogun State were disappointed.
Adebayo told reporters that they had mobilised PDP members from across the state’s 20 local government areas to receive Makarfi and regretted that they could not see the caretaker chairman throughout his stay in Abeokuta.
He vowed never to recognise Makarfi as PDP leader for treating him and hordes of other party members with contempt.
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