A former Deputy National Chairman (South-West) of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Chief Bode George, has reiterated his reason for not congratulating President-elect Bola Tinubu.
George spoke in an interview on Arise TV on Tuesday.
He first spoke on the matter when Prince Tajudeen Olusi, the Chairman of the Governance Advisory Council (GAC), and a former judge of the Lagos State High Court, Justice Ishola Olorunnimbe (retd) led a high-powered delegation of Lagos State indigenes to his home to broker peace between him and the president-elect over the weekend.
Another Lagos political stakeholder and Speaker of the House of Representatives, Hon. Femi Gbajabiamila, also met with the PDP chieftain.
On the Arise TV programme, George maintained that he has no personal beef with the president-elect.
He said that he could never be controlled by Tinubu, noting that he only disagrees with the former Lagos governor’s “methodologies of governance, his own ways of managing the resources of the land for the benefit of the people”.
George added, “For now, I don’t agree with going to say congratulations. I will never. Bode George will never do that.
“It’s not impacting on the people. I’m a thoroughbred Lagosian. I was born and grew up here, there is so much degradation. Go to my local government,” George said.
“First of all, Femi Gbajabiamila had been here, we had discussions. I told him all the things I would want them to do in Lagos.
“What matters to me is let Lagos be like the best city in the world, make life more meaningful, impact on the minds of the people positively because the power rests with the people.
“But if there is nothing, the method of management, the financial management will be completely despicable.
“So, I said to them I have no objections and as far as I’m concerned there is nothing personal, sir. Whatever he had done to me in the past, as a Christian, vengeance is not mine.
“So, for me, the last option, the last request was that we should, whether the court has finished or the court has not finished or the processes is over — I should join the others to go and congratulate Bola Tinubu like our group, Wike and Seyi had done.
“I said I’m not Seyi and I’m not Wike. I’m much older than them, that’s their opinion. For me, if peradventure, at the end of the analysis, our party is looking forward to winning at the court; if I jump ship, how would I look like? Like a swine, like a traitor?
“I was born into a political family in this Lagos and respect what is right, what is just, what is fair, those are the ways of my upbringing. Nothing personal.
“If they say he has won and I said that it is for me to decide whether I would live under the control of this and he cannot individually control me, I won’t break the laws.
“And what we want is the rule of law. What is democracy? The government of the people, the rule of law and when you go to every court in this country, you’ll find the lady of justice blindfolded with the sword and the scale and she dispenses justice based on facts.
“So, let’s wait until the outcome of the Supreme Court.”