Nigerian Ruling Party Lashes at Obasanjo

Nigeria’s ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has described former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s call on President Umaru Yar'adua to step down due to ill-health as an "an insincere attempt at self exoneration."

The PDP's National Publicity Secretary Rufai Ahmed Alkali accused Obasanjo of abandoning established channels of communication to make statements capable of causing disharmony and disaffection in the country.

Meanwhile, the opposition Action Congress (AC) blamed Obasanjo for “imposing Yar'Adua on the PDP and rigging the 2007 presidential election for him”.
Constitutionally barred from seeking a third term as Nigeria’s president in 2007, Obasanjo handpicked Yar’Aadua, then the little-known governor of the remote northern state of Katsina, and shooed him in as the PDP’s presidential nominee and president of Nigeria.

President Yar’Adua has been out of the country since November 2009, when he was admitted to a Saudi Arabian clinic with a serious heart ailment. Pressure has been piling on him to hand over to Vice President Goodluck Jonathan. [PE]