The Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, National Working Committee, NWC, from 2005 to 2007, Ahmadu Ali, has disclosed that as regards governance, former president, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, is presently the greatest Nigerian alive, adding that the former president is a 100 per cent statesman.
Speaking when the Sun newspaper sought his reaction on Obasanjo’s recent criticism where he said that PDP does not present a credible opposition and that the APC is not also presenting a strong leadership at the centre, Ali said Obasanjo “is no more interested in partisan politics, he is a 100% statesman and that is why he is chastising both APC and PDP.”

He had said: “That man (Obasanjo) is the greatest Nigerian alive today when it comes to the governance of Nigeria and one has to be very careful if you want to analyze his statements because some of them are heavily loaded and you don’t know and you are seeing so much that his statement weighs a lot both nationally and internationally.”


Recall that shortly after hosting a factional national chairman of the PDP, Ali Modu Sheriff, the former president had said: “For our democracy to thrive we need strong political party in government and strong political party in opposition. Today, PDP cannot claim to be a strong party in opposition, I don’t know if APC can claim, at the national level, to be a strong party in government either. Now that is part of the misfortune of this country today.

“That being the case, it must be the concern of all Nigerians that the present democratic dispensation must not be allowed to be derailed and for it not to be derailed, we must have a strong political party in government and a strong political party in opposition.”

Reacting to this assertion in the interview, the former minister averred that what Obasanjo said, “is the fact.”