Obasanjo said this just as the
Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party, Alhaji Bamanga Tukur, likened the
current crisis rocking the ruling party as a “surgery” which must bring some
pain to members.
Obasanjo who was responding to guests
who spoke during the grand finale of a civic reception organised in his honour
by the South West Zone of the PDP said there was no way he could associate with
Okorocha who had jokingly referred to the former President as his “colleague.”
Okorocha, a governor on the platform
of the All Progressives Grand Alliance had defected from the PDP to the All
Nigeria Peoples Party where he contested for the presidential ticket of the
party in 2003 but failed to secure it.
The Imo governor had earlier in his
speech talked about his days as Special Adviser on Inter-Party Affairs to
Obasanjo, saying he gave the ex-President advice that resulted in the good
decisions that Obasanjo took while in office.
The Imo governor said, “Obasanjo is
indeed PDP. But in the actual sense, he’s a national leader. He does not belong
to the PDP alone but a national leader of Nigeria. If I have another
opportunity to advise him, I will tell him to be the national leader of the
country and not the national leader of the party.
“We are here to give honour to whom
honour is due. Obasanjo will remain immovable and unshakable. He is a man that
is very difficult to describe. He represents different things to different
people. But for me, he represents a former colleague. We both ran for the
office of the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. And later when he
appointed me as his adviser, I gave him all the good advice.
“All the good things he did for those
eight years, I advised him but all the bad ones he did, I travelled out of the
country. I want to join Nigerians to celebrate this icon — this great and
steadfast Nigerian, who is not afraid of fighting any battle. But when he
starts fighting he doesn’t stop until he finishes fighting. He’s a general’s
general and a soldier’s soldier.”
But the Governor of Akwa Ibom,
Godswill Akpabio, in his message immediately came to Obasanjo’s defence and
told Okorocha that, “I was not as lucky as Governor Okorocha to work with him
Obasanjo. So I did not give him advice. I’m very sure that even the few things
that he did were actually taken out of the bad advice of APGA where Rochas
Okorocha must have represented. Baba,
I say the good ones are from you, not from him (Okorocha).”
In his reaction, the former president
said he could not be a colleague to Okorocha.
He said, “I met Okorocha a long ago
by virtue of the fact that he was brought up in Jos — one of the few cities
that I found in the fifties and seventies as a genuine melting pot in
Nigeria. He is a true Nigerian and when he wants to pull me down, he will
say we are colleagues. How can I be a colleague of a failure? You are a failure
in contesting the presidency of Nigeria!”
Tukur in his speech said the
crisis-ridden PDP was undergoing a surgery in which pains must be felt for the ruling
party to get over its current unhealthy state.
He said, “Let us fight and win unity,
peace, development for our dear nation. The surgery we have started in our
party, the PDP is in line with our vision for a better society and the
aspiration of all Nigerians. In this surgery we are aware we must lose some
blood, undergo some pains and challenges but surely the result will eventually
be one sacrifice that we made for ourselves.”
Vice-President Namadi Sambo who used
the occasion to talk about the achievements of the Jonathan-led administration,
described Obasanjo as a true nationalist.
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