Obasanjo Has Vindicated Us ‘Buhari Overrated’ – PDP

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has said former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s call for President Muhammadu Buhari’s retirement in 2019 is a vindication of its position that the president was ‘overrated’ in 2015 by Nigerians.

In a statement on Tuesday by its National Publicity Secretary, Kola Ologbondiyan, the PDP also said Obasanjo’s address on Tuesday was a clear indication that President Buhari has “irredeemably failed our nation”.

The statement reads in part:

“Chief Obasanjo’s counsel has rekindled the fate of the people in the democratic process, stressing however that the solution does not lie in creating another political quicksand in a third force but consolidating on a rescue mission with the repositioned PDP which Nigerians have already embraced.

“It said Nigerians would recall that in the heat of 2015 elections, many citizens, who claimed to have become tired of the PDP and its government, opted for a coalition of strange bedfellows who had little or no experience in governance as a vehicle for electoral victory. Expectedly, in their confusion, they have plunged us into this regrettable situation that has brought our nation to its knees.”

“PDP maintained that repeating the old mistake of congregating political strangers cannot help our nation at this time, more so, when the few concerns raised by the former President about the PDP no longer obtain under the refocused and rebranded PDP.

“The fact is that Nigerians overrated President Buhari in 2015 but they have now seen that he never possessed the capacity and the required aptitude to effectively govern our great nation and pilot a healthy economy.

“This accounts for the reason former President Obasanjo, just like most Nigerians today, is concerned about the quality of presidential candidates to be presented by various parties for the 2019 election.

“The fact is that while the APC is already caught up with President Buhari, the PDP is open for a new engagement that will throw up the President, which our nation truly deserves at this crucial moment.

“We, therefore, call on Nigerians, including all our leaders across the board, to come together to rebuild our nation on PDP’s consolidated base rather than traversing on another learning curve.”