Former President Olusegun Obasanjo said on Saturday that he has no plan to rejoin the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and partisan politics.
Obasanjo who was twice elected President on the PDP platform in 1999 and 2003, shredded his membership card in 2015 and declared he had quit partisan politics.
Before then, he had experienced some indignities in the hands of the Goodluck Jonathan administration, as it turned down its several admonitions about the state of the nation.
Obasanjo restated his position on Saturday at a meeting with the National Chairman of the PDP, Iyorchia Ayu, and other PDP leaders who visited him in Abeokuta, Ogun State.
Ayu led Peter Obi, former Governors, Sule Lamido (Jigawa), Olusegun Mimiko (Ondo), Liyel Imoke (Cross River) and Donald Duke (Cross River) to the meeting with Obasanjo.
The team first met Obasanjo under closed doors for two hours.
But on return to a larger meeting with PDP members, Obasanjo restated his position.
He admitted that having governed Nigeria twice on the PDP platform, the party would continue to be part of his history.
“I’m no longer in partisan politics and there is nothing that can bring me back. Anybody who wants my advice, I will always be there in the best interest of Nigeria.
“Whatever I do in my own life…because I became president on the platform of PDP, PDP will continue to be part of my life.
“Since the day I tore my PDP card, that was the day I ceased to be a member of PDP. That day I vowed not to be a member of any political party.
“I will continue to be a statesman.”
Obasanjo told Ayu that he has the problems of PDP and Nigeria on his shoulders, and prayed God give him the wisdom to carry it.
Ayu told Obasanjo that “if you leave PDP, the blood of PDP will never leave you.”
He said the party would always require his fatherly advice towards governance in Nigeria.
Ayu while applauding Obasanjo for being passionate about the progress, unity, and development of the country, noted that “what we have now falls short of the leadership Nigeria deserves.”
