Former president, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, yesterday said issues bordering on morality, principle and national commitment noticed in the ruling Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) make him to distance himself from affairs of the national body of the party.

Obasanjo, a former chairman, PDP Board of Trustees, said in a statement in Abeokuta yesterday that he would rather remain an active ward member of the party, noting that it was expedient on him to clear the air on “the avalanche of news and cacophony of appeals” and pleadings from some quarters of the PDP leadership.

The statement was against the backdrop of reported appeals by the PDP leadership to the former president to return to the party.

“Talking of inviting me back to the PDP is wrong and it is a great misrepresentation as I have never left the PDP and I will never leave. I have said it before and I will say it again, I rose to become the president of Nigeria on the platform of the PDP and for that reason alone,

I will remain a card-carrying and ward-active member as long as I have to be a political party member”, he said.