Former minister Bolaji Abdullahi quits PDP, says not quitting politics

Former Minister of Youth and Sports Bolaji Abdullahi has resigned from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

Mr Abdullahi is a close political ally of former Senate President, Bukola Saraki, under whom he served as commissioner of education when the latter was governor of Kwara State.

The former minister addressed his resignation letter, dated 16 December, to the PDP Chairperson in Ubandawaki Ward in Ilorin West Local Government Area of Kwara State.

Mr Abdullahi said he had ample time to reflect before coming to “the difficult conclusion that this is the only tenable option for me at this time.”

He thanked the leadership of the PDP for the opportunities he had to serve KWARA State and the country on its platform, “and for the great moments we shared.”

In a telephone conversation with our reporter, the former minister said he was still consulting on his next move, stressing, however, that he was not quitting politics.

“How do you expect me to quit partisan politics at my age when the likes of former Vice President Atiku Abubakar and other elderly Nigerians are still very active in politics,” he retorted when pressed on the issue.

According to him, “In the next few weeks or months, I will make public which of the parties to join ”

Reacting to the development, the state chairman of PDP, Tunde Mohammed, said his office had not formally received Mr Abdullahi’s letter.

He said the party has procedures for reacting to such issues and would react at the appreciate time.

Mr Mohammed said the PDP is intact in the state and urged its members and supporters to remain committed.

Saraki and Abdullahi

His dumping of the PDP indicates a parting of ways with Mr Saraki who initiated him into public service and politics.

Mr Saraki is trying to revive the PDP in Kwara where his family kept it in power until the family was swept out by the “Oto ge” movement in the 2019 general election.

In the last two elections in the state, the PDP won only a single state House of Assembly seat, a massive reversal of fortunes for a party that won every election in the state between 2003 and 2011.

Mr Abdullahi was a journalist with Thisday newspapers when Mr. Saraki appointed him as his special assistant on media and strategy in 2003 after Mr. Saraki took office as governor in Kwara State.

Mr Saraki appointed him as education commissioner in his second term from 2007 to 2007 before former President Goodluck Jonathan appointed him Minister of Youth Development in July 2011 and the Minister of Sports till 2014.

He left the cabinet after Mr Saraki and his loyalists joined a group in the PDP to defect to the newly formed All Progressives Congress (APC). Mr Abdullahi served as the spokesperson of the party from 2016 until 2018 when he returned with the Saraki group to the PDP.

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Ahead of the 2019 elections, Mr Abdullahi ran unsuccessfully for nomination as the PDP governorship candidate but won the party’s nomination for a senatorial election four years later. However, he lost the election to his APC rival.

Mr Abdullahi is a writer and the author of “On A Platter of Gold”, which reviewed President Jonathan’s loss of the 2015 election, and Sweet Sixteen, a novel adopted by the JAMB/UME in 2019-2020.