Obasanjo insists he never attended PDP event, says his resignation from politics is final

Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has spunned reports that he  attended the inauguration of the committee for the forthcoming convention of the Peoples Democratic Party.

According to him, his visit to the Shehu Musa YarAdua Centre that day had nothing to do with PDP.

Obasanjo had reportedly appeared at the inauguration of the committee in Abuja and had talks with the party officials for six minutes. The report had said the party members held a brief discussion with him before proceeding to inaugurate the committee. However, another version of the report said it was a chance meeting as Obasanjo was at the venue for a forum organised for farmers. Obasanjo was said to have left the venue about one hour after the PDP event ended.

The report made many Nigerians wonder if the former president was planning to return to the party which he abandoned when he publicly tore his membership card just before the 2015 general election.

In a text message to Premium Times, Obasanjo said the PDP wanted cheap political gains adding that the reports were planned to embarrass him and get him angry.

He said he was at the Shehu Musa Yar'Adua centre as guest of Senator Abdullahi Adamu, the chairman, Senate committee on agriculture, when the PDP leaders came to greet him. He added that his resignation from party politics is final. He said: “Chief Obasanjo's resignation from party politics is final.” Premium Times further reported the former president as saying: “Those who know me, know that I have publicly announced my quitting partisan politics and those who will believe the purported story will believe anybody who tells him that his or her mother is not a woman. “If I quit a party when it was alive and seemingly united, how could I go back to a now divided, factionalized party grasping for breath?” In another statement from Obasanjo's office, he said: “The attention of the former president, His Excellency, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo has been brought to the photonews story, which has gone viral on the social media on Friday, August 5, 2016 of his purported being 'spotted' at a Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) event at the Shehu Musa Yar'adua Centre, Abuja',the statement reads.