Chief Olabode George, former deputy national chairman (South) of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in this interview bares his mind on the party’s preparation for next year’s governorship election in Lagos, the issue of religion and zoning and other sundry issues. Excerpts:
By Dapo Akinrefon
As your party the PDP prepares for the 2015 governorship election in Lagos, do you have any particular candidate? The president also met with the aspirants and some party elders few weeks back. Can you give us insight into what transpired at that meeting?
I will answer this question exactly the same way the president answered his own when he came to visit us in Lagos. I think it was former Deputy Governor of Lagos, Senator Kofoworola Bucknor, who asked the same pertinent question that ‘Mr. President, I am told that you have a preferred candidate for Lagos PDP in 2015. He replied by saying ‘ No, I don’t have any preferred candidate. But everywhere I went, I heard one name. To my left, to my right, to the centre, to the back, I hear one name. Even some of his friends who are not even members of PDP are mentioning the same name. In this game, as a leader, all members of a party are your children.
Chief Olabode George
I come from a profession where you look at the direction of your boss, you don’t start creating your own way. Politics and military operations are similar, they are not completely the same but similar.
You watch the ways of your boss and you fall in line. The president told us he didn’t have any preferred candidate but if there is any name that keeps resonating all the time even from the opposition, and then he said that kind of person will also be his own preferred candidate. But in the main time, because it costs a lot of money to purchase the form by the aspirants, he advised the aspirants to tarry awhile, be very careful, go into serious introspection and do a deep-seated thinking. The truth is that these aspirants also hear what others are saying outside. So, he advised them to flow in the line. As a naval officer, I will say, don’t swim against the tide. For me, that is purely very advisory and I believe a child should heed the voice of his father.
As a party elder, do you think the statement made by the president is genuinely from his heart or you think it is an avenue to pave way for his rumoured candidate?
The elders too are still meeting with some of the aspirants to talk to them because N12m is a lot of money to throw down the drain. And this money is non- refundable. So, you have to be sure that there is going to be a return on the investment, otherwise, if it is zero return.
So far, how many have you yielded to the president’s appeal?
Since the president left after giving us the advice, I believe from my reckoning out of about seven who came out, we now have about three maximum who are still in the race. The elders are still working and are more of persuasion and not the emperor style of leadership, the Emperor in Bourdillon. That is not our style of leadership in PDP.
It is alleged that you are backing Jimi Agbaje in the contest against the aspiration of Musiliu Obanikoro who it is alleged had presidential backing to resign his ministerial job to contest. How true is this?
He said that he resigned as Minister because the President endorsed him, that is the greatest lie. Quote me. That is the greatest lie. And when you build your house on lies, it cannot stand a little storm, not now. Who asked him to be Minister? I think the president has made his statement when he came here and I queue up behind that statement.
He is still very much alive. Wike too in Rivers, is it the president who asked him to resign? Did he put his name on the paper? Who signed the paper? Is it the president? People lie. That is a blatant lie. And you can put it down that I said that.
Queueing behind anybody
The president did not say that and he would never have said it. Now on queuing up behind anybody, as a leader, like I said they are all my boys. I have defined the type of candidature that we should have. A man with a sound pedigree that you can trace his lineage, sound education not Toronto, not Chicago, a man who has shown semblance of top level management.
A man who is respectable, responsible, acceptable, manageable and marketable. These are the parameters we will use to put everybody on that scale.
Every aspirant should leave the presidency out of it.
Will the PDP toe the line of the APC hierarchy which has reportedly zoned the governorship to Christians and to Epe?
Ideally it should never be a problem because hardly do you find a family in Lagos that don’t belong to either the Muslim, Christian or traditional religion. My immediate older sister is an Alhaja. She married a Muslim and then she converted. I have a younger brother whose wife originally is a Muslim, today she is a pastor. So, religion should not be an issue. But today, some people said we have had persons from a particular religion ruling the state for 16 years. I don’t know where that idea came from but like I said vox populi, vox dei. You must take cognizance in your tactical table of the arrangement because they will vote. In Lagos, we have the Pentecostal, the Catholics, Anglicans and so on.
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