Former Deputy National Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party, Chief Olabode George, in this interview, clears the air on the pronouncements by the two factions of Afenifere on the candidate they are adopting for president. He also speaks on how the party will win the coming elections and the alleged infighting in Lagos PDP, among other issues. AYO ESAN brings excerpts.
It is alleged that there is infighting in your party in Lagos State and that this will affect your performance in the forthcoming elections. What is your reaction to this?
I am here to discountenance the deliberate misinformation running out there. Contrary to the misleading opinion in some sections of the media, our party is not disrupted by any infighting. We are woven in a united vision, summed up in a thoughtful unanimity of purpose. We are emboldened by a well articulated truth and summative defining purpose and shared beliefs. We might have had differences in the past, during the strongly contested gubernatorial primary, but that was in the past, the contest had been won and lost, we have moved forward. We are one, indivisible family. There is no rancour in our midst. There is no bitterness or hatred. We are no longer contesting anything with ourselves. Jimi Agbaje is our unifying gubernatorial candidate. We support him wholeheartedly and with total commitment. The enemy was out there and the contest was now against the monstrous, dictatorial, reckless, godfatherism that has held the state hostage for the past 20 years. Lagos must be redeemed and unchained from the manacles of APC and the madness will not continue because Lagos needs a real, progressive fundamental change. We are moving forward with a vow to bring meaningful enlightenment into the lives of fellow Lagosians. No more burdensome taxation. No more brazen gutting of our treasury. No more criminal cronyism that has reduced our state to serfdom and helplessness.
What are you doing differently to make Lagosians vote for your party?
Our candidate, Jimi Agbaje, and his deputy, Busari are indigenes of Lagos State. I went to my local government the other day and all the young people there have no jobs. I wondered what was going on? The white will tell you, you don’t need a second chance to make a first impression. We saw their first outing yesterday, it was very bad. You have heard from our candidate. He comes from a very good home, why will he want to create mayhem in his own home? Lagosians are peace-loving people. Even before I was born, that has been the welcome attitude of indigenes of Lagos State.
Lagos is a commercial nerve centre in West Africa. Why will you not train these young people, organise skill acquisition programme instead of training them only for thuggery. It was indeed a show of shame yesterday. The governor was speaking and Oluomo and his people unleashed havoc. Instead of showing such rascality, political thuggery and violence, they are going to make sure that skill acquisition will be a number one issue to get the boys back to work, whether you want to be a mechanic, tailor, you just abandoned these boys and you go and sleep in your kingdom. I am promising you that if you give Jimi and our party the mandate; Lagos will be the real Lagos. The Lagos we knew as we were growing up, they were the best in education, skill acquisition. If you have Lagos where everyone wakes up in the morning, they have nowhere to go, of course, you will have problem in your hands. We will teach them how to fish and not give them fish, so that they can feed
themselves.
What are the issues that will determine the voting pattern in the coming weeks?
You can have the best blueprint in leadership but if you do not have character, then, it is a problem. There are two kinds of politicians, those that seek power for service and those that seek power for self. What you have in Lagos today are those that have been in power for 20 years that have power for self. What they are running in Lagos is an oligarchy. You can compare two different governments, you can compare the Jakande era and you will see that it was power for service. You had education addressed, health, works, and housing. You had so much in four years. In 20 years, whatever these people have put in place was only to benefit a few people.
Sometime last year, you organised a colloquium, where Afenifere and others endorsed the PDP’s presidential candidate, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, as the Yorubas’ adopted candidate for 2019. Shortly after, another group of Afenifere, led by Ayo Fasanmi, said President Muhammadu Buhari was the candidate the Yorubas are supporting. What is your reaction to this?
You know, the real Afenifere with the founders were the ones that joined with us. Can you mention Afenifere without Baba Ayo Adebanjo? Can you mention Afenifere without Baba Reuben Fashoranti in Akure? These were the people after Baba Awolowo and Baba Adenihun Ajayi, Baba Abraham Adesanya had found the group, these were household names.
Yes, you could find some other names. Senator Durojaiye was also part of the names, he came to them later. Then you have Senator Ayo Fasanmi from Osogbo; he is based in Osogbo, but he came from Ekiti. When you talk about Afenifere, this other one, they call themselves the Renewal Group, when you say Renewal Group, the real stems are the people we spoke with and they believe in our cause. The Renewal Group is different from the real group, ‘igi imu jina sori,’ (the nose is nowhere near the head); that is what the Yorubas say and then, of course, you cannot write the history of Yorubas without those names being there and those are the people that we have since known when the struggle was heavy, and they would forever be on the pages of history. When you say breakaway, we are breaking away, that is like what you call peeling off the overused cover of the unions. The real onion will still remain there.
And not only the Afenifere came there to the colloquium, so many other people were there. Would you talk about Prof. Banji Akintoye, who was a defunct Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN) senator? He was an irredentist Action Group member, carried to the diaspora in America. They invited me to the Afenifere group and I spoke with them. He was the chairman at the occasion and you heard what he said. Now, those who congregated them to one corner, screening us, you know, the Yoruba say we cannot all be sleeping and facing one direction, it is not possible.
Those who are with us are the core Afenifere. I have a lot of respect for Baba Fasanmi, but when you talk of the real leaders of Afenifere, Baba Fasanmi would come a little bit lower.
So, when Bola Tinubu and co are trying now to do exactly what we did, then we are saying let’s leave it to the Yoruba people to decide and it’s coming soon. They will decide, they will know who is truly their leader and not the fellow who has been the emperor and who has acquired all the resources of governance to himself, his wife and his children.
Who is this emperor?
Bola Tinubu, I am not shy to say it, he is the emperor of Bourdillon. He is now the one who is deciding ‘this governor must go’; ‘this one must not’. Look at what has happened in Lagos State. Because of the culture of Lagos, we normally accommodate people, but it has gotten to a disgraceful level that is very disturbing. The governorship candidate Bola Tinubu nominated is from Ijebu, he is from Ogun State. The deputy governorship candidate, Obafemi Hamzat, his father today is the Baale of Ewekoro in Ogun State, so he is also from Ogun State, from Egba side.
Now, the three senatorial candidates, Olamilekan Adeola Yayi is from Yewa in Ogun State, Senator Oluremi Tinubu is from either Edo or Delta State, Hon. Pepper is from Ijebu in Ogun State, so there are no indigenous Lagosians anymore. Enough is enough. This insult is getting too much. He himself is from Iragbiji in Osun State. I went to his village in Osun State. The fact that Lagos is so accommodating doesn’t make us a fool.
The reason they gave for adopting Buhari is that he has related well with the Yorubas and the race is occupying key positions in his government…
Have they forgotten history? Why are they trying to rewrite history? Why are they trying to distort history? If you are saying Buhari has done this and that and he is the closest to Yoruba because he put Yemi Osinbajo in office, what has Osinbajo’s impact in Yorubaland been? The only thing I see Osinbajo has done is to go to the markets in Lagos to be distributing N10, 000. Is that governance?
First of all, I challenge and I ask, was the money budgeted for, where did he get the money, how would a whole vice president, a professor of Law, descend so low as to be distributing N10,000 to market women now, trying to woo them? That is politics of primitive age. Show them how to fish and you will feed them forever. Where is the skill acquisition? Lagos is in a state of reject.
I went to my local government, I saw these people, they were eager looking for something to do, but no job; they are able-bodied boys. You can train in whatever trade, so what has happened? Go to anywhere in any part of Lagos and you can see the number of people who have no jobs, these young men; I am not even talking about graduates who are wasting away. He wants votes; this is not the way to acquire votes. And so if Baba Fasanmi and co are saying Buhari did this and that, haba! Let them wait and they will see what people will do.
First of all, Atiku would be one unique Nigerian whose home, his own family home is a thorough bred Nigerian. His first wife is a Yoruba from Ilesa in Osun State; he has a wife who is of Igbo extraction; he has two other wives who are Northerners. So his children who are running round his house, the Nigerian blood is flowing down there in their veins. Would he discountenance any zone? He cannot be hijacked by anybody, by any two men as we are being told that my oga (Buhari) is hijacked. Even if anybody hijacks him, the wife from Southwest would wake him up in the night and say ‘this man, wake up, my people are demanding for
A, B, C, D’.
The Igbo wife too would do the same and say ‘my people are demanding for A, B, C, D’. So even in his household, his children have the blood of Yoruba flowing in them, I am not a young man, that’s what I am saying, let our people see it. In each zone, he has the family blood inside his house, what could be more asserting than that?
What do think must have led the Fasanmi group to take the decision and who do you think is behind them?
Look, it is not farfetched; you don’t need to be a rocket scientist to see that. They went to Osun, who is now the governor in Osun? Bola Tinubu’s cousin. Tinubu saw that it would be too hot for him to do it in Lagos; he went to his state of origin and brought Baba Fasanmi of over 90 years. We haven’t heard of Baba Fasanmi for a long period; suddenly from nowhere, he brought him to the Government House and that was where they conceptualised the idea and now decided ‘this is the Afenifere Renewal’s position.’ Who told them the other one is defunct? What are they renewing?
Are you saying that what they have done is a joke?
It’s a huge joke; it’s a huge joke. Let our people decide. I am not a tribalist, my best friend today is still a Fulani man that I met in the Navy. I have absolutely no objection about our being brothers, but when we come to talk facts, let us be real. You cannot continue to enrich only your family members.
They will decide, they will know who is truly their leader and not the fellow who has been the emperor and who has acquired all the resources of governance to himself, his wife and his children … Bola Tinubu, I am not shy to say it, he is the emperor of Bourdillon
Your wife is a senator, you want her to be Senate President. You are also thinking, come 2023, you want to be President of Nigeria. All the assets of our people in Lagos, you have acquired them, you are now the emperor who dictates who should go to toilet, who should go to sleep, who should go to Government House and who should go to National Assembly, haba! And you are not scared, you must be devil incarnate. Rome is on fire and the emperor has gone to sleep, thinking all is going to be well, no sir. The people of Lagos must be ready, the people of the South-West zone must open their minds, they know what they want, they know what is real from something that is unreal. Who has impacted more on the people?
My last question to our people is: are you better today than before? Let them ask themselves as they go to the polls: are they better off today than before?
You know what the APC people did in Osun election; I must congratulate the Osun people because in 1963 when it happened, the ‘wild wild West’ was not in Ibadan, it was in Osun. I must thank them that they were able to calm the nerves of the people because eventually, you’ll realise that you will just kill for nothing, let’s go to the court for adjudication. We are
waiting.
We saw the international community report that Ademola Adeleke won that election neat and clean, let’s wait, no fighting, no violence, let the judiciary take their decision, our people have waited, they are still waiting. It is the same thing in Ekiti, go and read the international community report on it,
it’s damning – the EU report and the American report. What they all saw in those elections was very disgraceful; we pray that this barbaric thing would never happen in the forthcoming general
elections.
