Former Akwa Ibom State governor, Obong Victor Attah, yesterday, said he had quit partisan politics, saying his action should not be misconstrued as accepting to join All Progressives Congress, APC.
According to him, by November 20, he would be 77, and had become an elder statesman, noting that there had been other statesmen who served and continued to serve Nigeria outside partisan politics.
At a briefing organised in his honour by Akwa Ibom Liberation Coalition, Attah said he had always been a committed professional in politics and not a professional or career politician.
He said:: “So, I can formally state that I have quit partisan politics to play the role of an elder statesman and to continue to serve this country with love, strength, and faith with integrity to the best of my ability. Let nobody take this to mean that I want to remain in the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, or therefore jump to the opposite, that I am going over to APC or any other party for that matter”
The former governor, who was a PDP Board of Trustees member, criticised the PDP National Publicity Secretary, Mr. Olisa Metuh, for comments in an interview granted to Sunday Vanguard on September 19, 2015.
He said that when the interviewer insisted that he was still a member of PDP, Metuh said he was not sure as he (Attah) had made utterances for PDP to fail, saying, “Indeed I made several utterances and I stand by all of them including those ones for which I was, from time to time, accused of anti-party activities. The tragedy for the PDP is to now blame its failure on such utterances rather than its perilous refusal to heed the warnings they conveyed.”
