Former Deputy National Chairman of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Chief Olabode George, in this interview by BOLA BADMUS speaks on the leadership crisis rocking the Lagos State House of Assembly and the reinstatement of sacked Mudashiru Ajayi Obasa as its Speaker following the resignation of Mojisola Meranda from the position.
You recently described the reinstatement of Mudashiru Obasa as the Speaker of Lagos State House of Assembly as “an embarrassment.” But some other people will argue that it is democracy in action because he was re-elected by his colleagues.
Did they re-elect him? Did they sit to say okay, they wanted a new speaker? Did they remove Meranda as the incumbent Speaker? There are procedures to these things.
But Meranda resigned as the Speaker and therefore paved the way for Obasa to return to his former position.
And so they now returned him? If they are deceiving themselves, they cannot deceive the general public. If you are the leader of a party and the party was going to go through a procedure, and they accused the Speaker of a lot of inappropriate activities – financial and otherwise – shouldn’t you even address those issues? Since he didn’t do it, there is no need for Obasa to respond to the allegations levelled against him. The same people came back and reinstated or re-elected him. It is an indecent approach to what democracy is all about.
If you were accused of certain misdemeanor openly and people went through a process by which they said enough of you, if you want to come back, you know you will have to defend yourself first. It’s already in the public domain but there was an order that he should be reinstated since it is a private enterprise. Do you return people like that in a democratic dispensation to override whatever others had been saying? Is it that those Assembly members didn’t know what they had been talking about before they removed Obasa, or they are absolutely acting like a military organisation? When I look at it on the political side, our party (PDP) has a system; our party has procedures. Sometimes, you can have these procedures to reassure the public that we are better managers when we are challenged.
You can see who is in charge. It’s a private enterprise, he can hire and fire. Is that democracy? You can’t have your opinion to explain yourself based on the demands from your constituency. I have said several times that APC is not a proper political party but a congregation of strange bedfellows. It was a Lagos State House of Assembly matter, do they have a caucus? Does the executive of the party in Lagos have a caucus? When I say caucus, it’s the unifying group, like the equivalent of the Board of Trustees at the national level, do they have that? The caucus would meet, the Speaker himself would be a member, the deputy Speaker would be a member of the same caucus, the state chairman and the state secretary would be members, and then some elders from some other local governments would be members of that caucus representing those local governments, like they claimed they have a GAC, what is the effect of the GAC? So what are their own approaches to resolving the problem? Nothing. Nothing, they got divided.
There was this committee comprising former Governors Bisi Akande and Segun Osoba that met over the matter.
You mean the committee that went to Tinubu in Abuja? Are they from Lagos State? You now raised the matter beyond the state… If you look at this party called APC, apart from Ganduje parading himself as chairman, who is the National Secretary of APC? Who is the National Organising Secretary of the APC? Where is their Exco? The only thing we heard recently was that they held a general assembly, is that the way to run a political party? So I am looking at it from the angle that because all these shenanigans must be explained to the electorate, the electorate holds the power to elect or sack you at the election time based on your performances and based on their perception of your management style. And you can see it is an emperor that owns that party. All those boys by their various constituencies, how did they get elected? Did the decisions to elect them come from their constituencies or it was just from one desk? Godfatherism is their major definition of a political party. If the big boss doesn’t say you are free to go, you can’t go. So the decision is not with the constituency and the people. The real owners of governance are the people; that is the essence of democracy. They elect who they want and when you don’t perform, by next election they throw you out.
But you see the mess we call INEC? I am now trying to explain the fallout, the lackluster approaches to solve political problems in this country. There is no way we can talk about it without referring to the procedure by which we elect State Assembly lawmakers, senators, House of Representatives members, governors and the president. It is shambolic, it’s a complete disgrace, it should be completely overhauled if we want peace and development in this country. we have to completely overhaul this INEC, the personalities there, because they bought the system, they bought the equipment, the computers so that all these interlopers who write things by hand and manipulate the process can be completely flushed out. Once you vote, the results go to the BVAS and then the results would come out.
The last time they told us it was glitch that caused the problem. So it is not just what is being displayed at the Lagos State House of Assembly, no. It is deeper than that. It has now opened our eyes to the lackluster approach to managing this country. It is not working, and if we continue with that mess without getting to clean out the INEC and the procedure, we are just joking. It would get worse.
It is an eye opener and I am appealing to President Tunubu being from the South West to go back into history to remember all these. Did he not remember the crisis in Ibadan? Did he remember the Ajasin and Omoboriowo crisis? The Abiola issue also came too.
If you were Moji Meranda, what would you have done in the face of her party’s directive that she should resign her position?
What could she do? How did she get the ticket in the first instance? That’s what I am saying. You would say she had a primary election to compete with other aspirants in her constituency, but how did she emerge? Does she have the nerve or gut to talk? The godfather gave her the ticket. Who were her competitors as aspirant? So a house built on nothing would remain on nothing, there is no foundation. I am talking because I had gone through the mill, managing our party, PDP, we have a procedure. Although we are also trying to ensure that that procedure is not manipulated by people. What we are going through now is the shady way of trying to undermine the procedure established by the founding fathers of our party and some of us are saying never. No, PDP is not the private enterprise of anybody. If you want to be a member of PDP, you have to follow the rules. There are rules, we have a constitution, follow them.
The lady (Meranda), in some other countries, the constituency would have told her get out of the way, that’s not what we sent you to do. How did she get it, how many times has she gone back to her constituency meeting to ask for their needs? So if you were handpicked, like you are working for a company, the executive chairman of the company has the right to hire or fire. So you either keep your mouth shut or you are fired.
A group of Lagosians led by General Tajudeen Olanrewaju has been very vocal lately on this crisis. Do you think the group was right in reducing the tussle to an indigene versus settler matter?
It’s a mixture of all of these. They are approaching it not as politicians, I am approaching it as a politician. I am giving you my analysis of the tactical thing as a politician. But as a Lagosian, that is a different ball game. Traditionally, Lagos is the only state in Nigeria where we do not discriminate against people. We don’t discriminate. We accept people because it’s a trading port, the commercial nerve center of Nigeria and West Africa.
So whatever you want to sell, Lagos is there for you, so on that basis, people are now trying to use that and they have the boldness to say Lagos belongs to nobody. You know, you can’t go to Ogun State, first, they would ask you, are you Yewa? Are you Egba? Are you Remo? Are you Ijebu? See how close Ogun State is to Lagos. If you are not part of them, there is no way you can get anything. If you go to Oyo, they would ask you, are you Ibadan, are you Ogbomoso, are you from Oke-Ogun? If you are not, what are you looking for? The same thing happens if you go to Osun. Go to anywhere in any state, but Lagos is an example of the way we should live our lives because we accommodate people. Accommodating people doesn’t mean that there are no indigenous Lagosians.
When it comes to political matters, they are not running it and that is why it is so potently clear who these characters are. They are people who have no face for Lagos. The question would have been instantaneously asked before you even get any ticket in Ogun State. If you are not from any of the divisions, what are you looking for? So for me, there are no normal primaries being done here (Lagos) devoid of godfatherism. He selects the people he wants, whether you are indigene or non-indigene, as long as you kiss his wing, you are a good boy or you are a good woman. That’s not democracy and that is a house built on a faulty foundation and it would not last. There would be cracks because some day you would go and when you go, what happens?
As for the Renaissance, they are looking at the crisis in the Lagos State House of Assembly from the cultural point of view. Where are our people? If you look at the people that were handpicked, and sent down there, I don’t know how many of them are real indigenous Lagosians. The young lady that was put there as speaker before she was asked to resign from the position is an indigene. Is it the indigenes versus non-indigenes playing out in the Obasa issue? It is a political issue. The management of their political system is what is faulty.
With what is happening now, do you think a truly indigenous Lagosian will ever be governor again with the way you the indigenes are antagonising those controlling political power in the state?
You know political power is transient, even life itself is transient. Yes, they need to wake the indigenes up. If you sit down in your house and you are not participating in the process, and you have more of the non- indigenes than you, what do you do? You have to wake your people up, go and campaign and make sure the cultural thing is married to the politics. If you don’t do that you are just going to be howling there.
General Tajudeen Olanrewaju is my friend. We were born in the same area, and we grew up together. But I am in the heart of political activities, the Renaissance is the cultural part and I said the best is to match us together so that the procedures emerging from the political positions or the other, we would put all together and get our people to come out.
What is going on now is a lesson for our indigenous people to wake up, wake up and join a political party. If you don’t join a political party, how do you emerge as governor? Would they come and beg you in your house? If you don’t emerge and be part of it, nobody would come and beg you. They are there, let them come out. Don’t say that politics is dirty, yes, it is dirty, also join and clean it out. You know, it takes a lot of guts to be able to achieve that. Like I said, they don’t do any serious competitive primaries, the godfather handpicks those to go for one position or the other.
What advice do you have for Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu, Speaker Obasa and President Bola Tinubu on the way Lagos is being run?
You know I am on the competitive side, my advice is just to say: Take it easy. If I wanted to be selfish, I would have said, what is my business? I would say it is in the interest of my own political party for them to collapse. But I am a Lagosian. One Yoruba adage says if heaven is going to fall, it doesn’t discriminate at all, but would fall on everyone.
Some people thought they were not concerned about the crisis in the Lagos Assembly. All the crises we have witnessed in this country, some people said they were not concerned, but when the whole thing collapsed, people died, people from across the country. It affected everyone. Let us, for the sake of the younger generation and the future generations of this country, do what is right, let us do what is just, let us do what is equitable because goodness and godliness go together and that is the only investment that does not fail. ‘Wuwuru’ or ‘warawara,’ ‘wayo,’ ‘jibiti’ also have its reward.
Let them take a cue from the performance of Papa Obafemi Awolowo: First in the field of education. Many of those you see today would not have been able to have that exposure if not for Chief Awolowo. He knew that education makes people easy to govern but difficult to deceive. Once you educate people properly, they know their duties as citizens, duties as a child to parents, duties to the state.
What has happened in the Lagos State House of Assembly is just an example of the madness, an offshoot of what God is making us to see and I pray that the electorate would also open their eyes and see the futility and the lackluster management style, and that ‘Baba says’ is not in democracy.