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Why does Baba Iyabo hate PDP so much?

Obasanjo hates PDP so much these days. Why so?

His declaration arrived soon after he held a closed-door meeting with PDP caretaker chairman, Ahmed Makarfi, within the bowels of the Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library.

Obasanjo’s disdain for the PDP has been palpable for a while. In 2015, Baba Iyabo (as Obasanjo is fondly called) commissioned the PDP chairman of his ward in Ogun State to rip his party membership card to shreds before a jubilant crowd.

“I am no longer a politician, I am now a statesman”, Obasanjo declared emphatically at the time.

After making a show of tearing apart his PDP membership card, Obasanjo went on to work against then President Goodluck Jonathan in the general elections. Jonathan would go on to lose that contest to incumbent President Muhammadu Buhari.

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In referring to the PDP as “vomit” this week, Obasanjo reiterated that he’s done with partisan politics.

"I have said no partisan politics for me again. But Nigeria is my passion until death do us part and anything that concerns Nigeria; the good of Nigeria, you will see my involvement."

Obasanjo’s relationship with the PDP hasn’t always been this frosty. He was the first elected president on the party’s platform in 1999 and served a two-term of eight years with the infamous PDP rigging and arm twisting machinery at his beck and call.

His attempts to seek a third term collapsed like a pack of cards in parliament in 2007 and Obasanjo retreated into a shell for a while.

However, it was clear Obasanjo had lost it with his party in 2013 when he sent an uncomplimentary letter to Jonathan, upbraiding the then president for losing his way around governance.

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Now 80 years of age, Obasanjo has dedicated himself to championing humanitarian causes through his library; and his best days as a politician are now firmly behind him.

He isn’t joining the APC or any other political party for that matter, but when students of politics sit down someday in the future to chronicle political romances gone awry, there’s little doubt that Obasanjo’s well documented love-hate relationship with the PDP will be making the cut.

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