Obasanjo feigns ignorance of labour strike
LAGOS — FORMER President, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, returned, yesterday, to the country from vacation, and said President Umaru Yar’Adua, as leader of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), reserved the right to decide who to work with and how to run his government.
Chief Obasanjo also feigned ignorance about last week’s strike that grounded the nation for four days.
Meanwhile, there was clarification yesterday on the retention of Chief Anthony Anenih as the Chairman, Board of Trustees (BOT) of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP). Vanguard exclusively gathered that the issue of the chairmanship of the BOT was never discussed at Monday’s meeting. Indeed, sources said the issue would be discussed at the party’s national convention later in the year.
Anenih remains PDP BOT chairman till convention
Vanguard was informed that at Monday’s National Executive Council (NEC) meeting in Abuja, the issue of the chairmanship of the BOT was never discussed.
Vanguard also gathered from a highly dependable sources within the PDP BOT that the main agenda for Monday’s meeting was the “ratification of the new membership of the BOT.”
It was suggested that since the likes of Abubakar Rimi, Second Republic governor of Kano State, and Chief Audu Ogbeh, former national chairman of the party, dumped it for another political group, “what the BOT did on Monday was simply to replace such members as Rimi and Ogbeh who left for another political party.
“At no time did the meeting on Monday discuss the issue of BOT chairmanship. The matter was never discussed. And if the matter was never discussed, the issue of the party dumping former President Obasanjo does not in any way come up.
“The BOT, for your information, would be meeting very soon on other matters. But for now, there is no issue at all, especially in view of the newspaper reports.”
Obasanjo back from Jamaica
The former president, who arrived the Presidential Wing of the Murtala Muhammed Airport, Lagos, from Kingston, Jamaica, reacting to a question on his view on President Yar’Adua’s invitation to members of the opposition parties to run a unity government, said: “He (Yar’Adua) is the leader of the party.”
Pressed further, he said: “I have just come back. Don’t stop what I have just brought back. I brought back relaxation, recreation and recuperation.”
Obasanjo said he was ignorant of the strike called by the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and Trade Union Congress (TUC) to protest the increase of the pump price of petroleum products and Value Added Tax (VAT).
“I am as ignorant as an ignorant person. I just travelled out to rest and, therefore, I shut myself out of the outside world,” said the former president, who arrived the country in company of three of his daughters and his personal physician, Prof. Femi Bella.
Dressed in a grey kaftan, black cap and a pair of black leather footwear, Chief Obasanjo arrived the Lagos Airport at about 10:30am aboard a chartered Bombadier Challenger 300 executive jet operated by Dantata Charter Air Service.
Chief Obasanjo waited in the lounge for some 30 minutes for his passport and those of others in his entourage to be stamped at the Immigration post at the International Wing of the airport.
The former president left the airport for hisOta Farm, Ogun State, in a convoy of seven cars at about 11:00 a.m.
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