Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has unceremoniously resigned as Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Board of Trustees, several senior sources in the (PDP) confirmed to THEWILL on Tuesday.
THEWILL gathered that Chief Obasanjo tendered his letter of resignation to party Chairman, Alhaji Bamanga Tukur.
In a personally signed statement released in Abuja on Tuesday, the erstwhile two-term president listed increasing international demands on his experience, his willingness to provide mentoring to deserving persons and institutions nationally and internationally, and his wish to focus more on his library as some of the reasons for his decision.
“I have formally sent my letter of resignation as the chairman of BOT of PDP to the National Chairman of the party as prescribed in the party’s constitution,” he wrote. “I have formally requested the President to allow my bowing out and to issue a short statement to that effect.”
He explained that exiting the chairmanship of PDP’s BOT would provide him adequate time needed to meet rising international demands on him, as well as the opportunity to offer mentoring “across the board nationally and internationally in those areas that I have acquired some experience and expertise, and in which I have something to share.”
Obasanjo also expressed interest in further developing his much maligned Presidential Library, and in mobilising and encouraging investment in Nigeria and in Africa.
He also hinted that it was a decision he had been weighing up since 2011, before the general elections; and he had thought he would lower his participation in partisan politics should PDP produce the president after the election. “In 2011, I was in the vanguard of working for PDP to produce a president for Nigeria. God answered our prayer.”
