Former Deputy National Chairman of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Chief Olabode George spoke to reporters on the ‘infighting’ in the Lagos chapter and how it intends to win the March 2 governorship election. MUSA ODOSHIMOKHE was there.
Can you comment on the alleged infighting in your party in Lagos?
We are 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, defining purpose and shared beliefs. We might have had our differences in the past during the strongly-contested governorship primary, but that was in the past. The contest had been won and lost and 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 governorship candidate. We support him wholeheartedly and with total commitment. The contest is 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 the APC and the madness would not continue, because Lagos needed a real, progressive fundamental change. We are moving forward with a view to bring meaningful enlightenment into the lives of fellow Lagosians. No more burdensome taxation. No more brazen looting of our treasury. No more criminal cronyism that has reduced our state to serfdom and helplessness.
Why should Lagosians vote for your party, rather than the APC?
Our candidate, Jimi Agbaje, and his running mate, Mrs. Haleemat 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? As the Englishman would say, you don’t need a second chance to make a first impression. We saw their first outing during the recent APC rally in Lagos, 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 attitude of the indigenes of Lagos. Lagos is a commercial nerve centre in West Africa. Why will you not train these young people, organize skill acquisition programmes, instead of training them only for thuggery. The rally was indeed a show of shame. 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 and skill acquisition. If you have Lagos where everyone wakes up in the morning and have nowhere to go, of course you will have problems on your hands. We will teach them how to fish and will 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 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 them. We have gone back, our education is worse; we have a Lagos today where in the last 20 years only 20 per cent of our children scored five credits, plus English and Mathematics. I can go on. So, if you ask me, what we are bringing, I will say we will first bring character leadership in Lagos that will be people’s Lagos, rather than one man’s Lagos. It will be about the people, rather one man or a few people. We will address education, health; provide a future for our young ones. Today, it is a hopeless future for them; they don’t see any future for themselves and these are things we must address. If look back at what Jakande has done, that in 30 years after, you can talk of Jakande legacy. Twenty years from now, I wonder what legacy we will have. There is nothing that I can think and say that they have as a legacy that they can be proud of in 20 years from now.
Your party complained recently that its billboards were destroyed. Are you well positioned to challenge the ruling party in the elections?
I hope you can see that they tried to intimidate us, initially when we put up our boards. I think they were intimidated by the quality of our own boards, because what they brought out was some kind of cheap things, compared with the money that they had budgeted for them and it was obvious after that they wanted to silence us. But we have refused to be silenced. The more they removed our boards, the more we replaced them to show that we are ready to match them in any way. I think they have accepted that those boards are there to stay. In the same way, we will go for elections to show them that we are going to match them. We believe that our votes would count this time. We have learnt our lessons from the past. We are prepared and we believe that Lagosians are on our side. We have the goodwill; our job is to ensure that the votes count. We want to assure Lagosians that we are putting a lot of things in place to make sure that their votes count. When we start and the debates start, the character of the candidates will be seen. It is true that there are photographs; but these days photos do lie. We also have a woman as a running mate. It goes to show you that we have respect for the woman gender.
People are disturbed about the likely violence before and after the elections. What do you think can be done to curb this?
I want to remind the electorate that when we had our primary at Yard 158 in Oregun, I can confidently say that there was no outbreak of violence. When the PDP had its national convention in Port Harcourt, it was seamless. So, if we were able to do that, why would we now embark on violence in Lagos for the election? Our candidate will move out with the people peacefully to sell our manifesto, so that the people can trust him. When you are going out for political position, you are telling the people to trust you that you will use the resources of their state for their benefit. All these young people that are being used as thugs, we will give them skills, train them at the expense of the government.