Wabara asks Obasanjo to quit as PDP BOT chairman

Taiwo Adisa, Abuja - 30.05.2008

FORMER President of the Senate, Senator Adolphus Wabara, has asked former President Olusegun Obasanjo to immediately resign his chairmanship of the Board of Trustees of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), saying that the continued occupation of the seat by the South was unfair to the North.

Senator Wabara, in an interview with newsmen in Abuja, said the seat of the BOT chairman of the party was not really befitting for a former president, who, he said, would have been preoccupied with international engagements.

He said the former president needed to quit the seat now that the ovation was loudest. According to the former Senate President, Chief Obasanjo retained the seat of BOT chairman in the South throughout the eight years he was president, adding that it would only be just if the seat was moved to another zone.

On his relationship with the PDP since he left office, Wabara, who resigned his position in April 2005 as a result of the pressure mounted on him by the government of Obasanjo, said he was still a member of the PDP and the BOT.

“Of course, I am fully in the party. Thank God that he(Obasanjo) could not remove me. I am a member of the Board of Trustees of the party. We are having our next meeting on June 25 under the chairmanship of Obasanjo. But my advice to him would have been for him to throw in the towel.

“A good orator leaves the stage when the ovation is loudest. But with all these scandals here and there…, people like us did not resign because we were guilty,” he said.

He said many Nigerians were already making passes at the former President on accounts of reports they were getting from the media.