Elder statesman and Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) stalwart, Chief Olabode George has reacted to the allegations that he refused to support the party’s presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar in the 2023 general election.
The PDP chieftain, cleared the air on the purported claim during an interview recently.
He said; “When Buhari contested with Atiku Abubakar, they came to ask for my service.”
“I was in the forefront, because at that time, he was favoured as a presidential candidate. I knew what I did here in Lagos. I knew what I did, even for the first Lady, his first wife, what we did here because we followed the party’s constitution.”
“Let me tell you, I have no iota of any tribalism in my blood. My best friend today was a gentleman that I met in the military. He is a fully bona fide Fulani man. He is my brother at any level. I have a lot of these friends all over this country. So, if you cannot tell the truth to power, then you are deceiving yourself.”
“When we now went back for second election, this last election, we saw that things were not right. Somebody from the North had just spent eight years. How can we now support another somebody from the North for another eight years? No, it doesn’t work that way.”
“They manipulated the system. We kept warning them, don’t do this. He divided the party, and so we divided our votes, and then we lost. So how do we go forward? We will set up a committee to look into the general election and the postelection so that we can prepare ourselves, look the percentage of card carrying members of the party. How many? What is that percentage in the population?”
“The problem with the PDP, everybody is a problem, no one person that is the problem. If you have that kind of thing in an organization, what do you do, if you don’t want to scatter the organization?”
“A proper committee to investigate what has led to that, what is agitating the mind of A, mind of B, and this is what I am saying, as a life member of the Board of Trustees, for God’s sake, let everybody calm down.”
“Let’s get back to the table to make sure we get back to that format which the founding fathers gave us, they handed over to my age group. What am I looking for?”
“Now, if I cannot tell you the truth, what is it? I’m almost 80. I’m almost on the eight ladder of life. What are we running after? Why are we scattering this?”
“I’m not saying everybody is clean or everybody is rocked, but it’s when you go into the depths of why we get ourselves to this position that’s when we can say, Okay, let us avoid the pitfalls going forward.”
“Damagum has his own view, and nobody is the owner of the enterprise. It was an enterprise established for purposes of civility, for purposes of oneness.”