Despite Tearing Membership Card, Obasanjo Remains “Undisputed And Authentic” S/West PDP Leader – Okupe

A former Senior Special Assistant to immediate past President Goodluck Jonathan on Public Affairs, Dr. Doyin Okupe, has described former President Olusegun Obasanjo as the “undisputed and authentic” leader of the Peoples Democratic Party in the Southwest region of the country.
Okupe, who stated this in a Facebook post on Friday, carpeted the senator representing Ogun East, Buruji Kashamu, saying he cannot be described as a leader of the party merely because he runs a local non-governmental organisation in Ogun State.
It would be recalled that last Thursday, some leaders of the party from the zone visited the national chairman of PDP, Senator Ali Modu Sheriff in Abuja, where they unanimously endorsed Kashamu as the Southwest leader of the party.
Mr. Obasanjo, who last year February publicly ordered his ward chairman of the PDP, Alhaji Usman Oladunjoye, to tear his membership card of the party to pieces, was until his resignation from partisan politics, the highest ranking member of the party from the Southwest zone.
But Dr. Okupe said despite the action, which he attributed to Mr. Obasanjo’s frustration with the intolerable happenings within the party at the time, the ex-president did not resign from the PDP.
He said: “Senator Buruji Kashamu is not the leader of the PDP in the southwest. He is not even the leader of the party in Ogun state. He leads an NGO called Omo Ilu which engages in empowerment programmes in the state, mainly in the Ogun East Senatorial district.
“Baba Obasanjo still remains the undisputed and authentic leader of the PDP in the South-West. The fact that he tore his membership card is not tantamount to resignation from the party. An action he has not undertaken to date.
“Tearing of the membership card though a very negative action is undoubtedly a knee-jerk reaction to certain unacceptable or intolerable happenings within the party which can and will be redressed.
“In his temporary absence, we have a collegiate or con-federal leadership of eminent and distinguished elders including Chief Bode George, Chief Ogunlewe, Aare Jubril Martins Kuye, Otunba Gbenga Daniel, Chief Mrs Apampa, Dr. Lekan Balogun, Baba Richard Akinjide, Alhaji Yekini Adeojo, Chief Ebenezer Babatope, Shuabu Oyedokun, Iyiola Omisore, Prof Adeniran, Governor Fayose, Governor Mimiko, Senator Bode Olajumoke amongst others.
“We are a proud and a foremost race in Nigeria. We have enviable political antecedents and capable of presenting nationally credible and acceptable leadership at any and all time”.