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The APC IS Not Wooing Obasanjo – Fashakin

A senior member of the All progressives Congress (APC) has dismissed rumours that the political party’s visit to a former Nigerian President, Olusegun Obasanjo, was … Continue reading The APC IS Not Wooing Obasanjo – Fashakin


Rotimi FashakinA senior member of the All progressives Congress (APC) has dismissed rumours that the political party’s visit to a former Nigerian President, Olusegun Obasanjo, was to woo him to join the party.

Rotimi Fashakin said that the visit was basically for consultation and aimed at generating Obasanjo’s panacea to the myriad of issues militating against Nigeria’s progress.

He told Channels television on Monday that Nigeria’s situation needed a broad-based approach that would cut across tribal religious and political lines.

“There was absolutely no invitation to APC in the meeting. There was nothing about telling Obasanjo to come into APC. Obasanjo even gave a disclaimer in the beginning of his statement, saying he is a card carrying member of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP)” he said.

He, however, pointed out that if Obasanjo was disgruntled about the PDP he could join another party.

“There is nothing that is cast in stone that you must die a PDP. If things within the PDP are no longer conducive for him, he can decide the party to join,” Mr Fashakin said.

The visit he said was “for the sake of salvaging the Nigerian state from the ruinous, precipitous governance under the PDP government”.

Critics have condemned the acceptance of former PDP governors as members of the APC; saying that the APC was apparently absorbing members of a party it had said was corrupt.

He also dismissed the insinuations, saying that politics is meant to achieve a particular purpose.

“When you join a political party, you believe that you have the inalienable right to aspiring to whatever position.

“There are many reasons someone may become disenchanted with his party.

“No human being is intrinsically bad.  We know that the ambience in the PDP now is not conducive for constructive engagement; we provide the right ambience for the disgruntled PDP members.

“Democracy is about the game of numbers and when you are not able to stimulate that number well, you run into problems like the one the PDP is having now,” he stressed.

A government’s spokesman, Doyin Okupe, had described the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), one of the political parties that merged to form the APC, as a spineless party that lacked leaders.

“They scout for members that they would present as candidates when an election is coming. That is what they are also doing now” Okupe had said while commenting on the defection of the PDP governors to the APC.

But Mr Fashakin flawed Okupe’s claims, insisting that if the ACN was spineless, it could not have taken over the leadership of Ogun State from the PDP.

He bemoaned the way the PDP had handled situations in Nigeria.

“In the last three years we have seen the most noxious spectacle of ethno-religious bigotry exhibited at the height level of governance in Nigeria.

“The security situation that we have in this nation is traceable to the handling and the way the administration has conducted affairs.

On the Monday morning breakfast show of Channels Television, Sunrise Daily, he also said that President Goodluck Jonathan did not do polemical justice to Mr Olusegun Obasanjo’s letter to him.

He said that the response the president gave to the alleged training of snipers was not polemical.