*Citizens say ex-President is testing if he is still popular
“How can you say you are marginalized? Your bloc has the number three and number four positions in the APC government. CPC has only number one, while ACN has number two. You should even have symapathised with ANPP because they have none other than the Minister of Science and Technology and they are doing fine contributing their own quota to the success of the government. It is only you, the New PDP bloc, that have collaborated with your former party in the National Assembly and have wrecked havoc seriously on the government to weaken it so as to allow the corrupt party back into power. What then is your own definition of marginalization?” Yahya said in his reaction to Obasanjo’s new party, ADC, and New PDP threat.
The Coalition of Nigeria Movement (CNM) promoted by former President Olusegun Obasanjo has eventually found a political party, African Democratic Congress (ADC), into which it collapsed.
The former President announced this Thursday during a press conference that he personally addressed at Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library in Abeokuta, the Ogun State capital.
With the new development, Obasanjo, who vowed not to ever play active politics following his tearing of his People’s Democratic Party’s membership in the buildup to 2015 general elections, is said to be fully back in it he vowed during the press conference to rescue Nigeria through the political project that he has initiated.
He spoke just as some Nigerian citizens, still not sure whether the activities of Obasanjo lately are not a dream, said he appears more to them like somebody whose popularity looks much like overridden by the popularity of President Muhammadu Buhari and only wants to test to know where he stands in the eyes of the world.
One of them who spoke through his social media handle said, “Obasanjo has not proved to us that his vow to rescue Nigeria has anything to do with our collective good and so we will never listen to him. He things he is still the Obasanjo that has the support of the International Community in terms of him versus the kind of sitting government like of Buhari. He appears to want to test if he is still popular or not but it is just a matter of months, he shall be retired finally while Buhari continues to move on with the stage he has taken over from him (Obasanjo).”
In the meantime, sources close to events say the New PDP bloc in the APC arrangement may have concluded plans to join Obasanjo in his new political party as they are said to be indisposed to joining PDP due to moral and image problems that it has sustained as a result of its corruption, impunity, damaged economy and self-inflicted insecurity that characterized its 16 years in power thereby plunging Nigeria into sorry state.
It will be recalled the New PDP had on Wednesday given APC leadership including President Buhari a seven days ultimatum to address their complaints of marginalization or they find solution to their own problems by themselves.
But speaking in Lagos on Thursday, a Civil Society activist Habeeb Yahya told The DEFENDER that it had become almost impossible for the New PDP to scale through in their ultimatum to the APC leadership in the sense, according to him, that there is no sign their bloc in the governing party is marginalized except that they themselves had been the ones not contributing progress but backwardness to the government of the APC since it started in 2015.
He said, “How can you say you are marginalized? Your bloc has the number three and number four positions in the APC government. CPC has only number one, while ACN has number two. You should even have symapathised with ANPP because they have none other than the Minister of Science and Technology and they are doing fine contributing their own quota to the success of the government. It is only you, the New PDP bloc, that have collaborated with your former party in the National Assembly and have wrecked havoc seriously on the government to weaken it so as to allow the corrupt party back into power.
“What then is your own definition of marginalization? Now that you have threatened to quit, where are you going to? Back to PDP or SDP? I am more sure you are going to join Obasanjo in ADC and I sincerely wish you all journey mercy,” Yahya said in his reaction to Obasanjo’s new party, ADC, and New PDP threat.