Chief Bode George, member of the Board of Trustee (BoT) of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), has explained why the recently inaugurated reconciliation and disciplinary committees put together by the party’s leadership will not bring peace.
The former National Vice Chairman of the party, South, who had earlier rejected his membership of the disciplinary committee, said what the party needs is a post-mortem of how the crisis started before the committee can reconcile members.
He spoke Sunday while featuring on a television programme.
“The party cannot but take a look at what happened, who created it, who did what to avoid recurrence in the future,” he said.
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While blaming Atiku Abubakar, Presidential Candidate of the party in the last election, and Iyorchia Ayu, suspended National Chairman, he said: “There’s no chance in the world that the chairman of the party will come from the same zone as the the presidential candidate of the party.
“That was where the disagreement started, and they didn’t handle it well. That was why we went to war, divided.
“So if you are setting up a reconciliation committee and a disciplinary committee, let us do a post-mortem analysis that led us to this division during the election. The pre-election, the proper election and post-election matters, should be discussed. After that, we will now be able to set up a committee to reconcile people.
“People are just arguing in their various slots, insulting people and I said, let us look at all the sides. There are three major sides now. We can’t go to war, divided. We cannot. We cannot but take a looking at what happened, who created this? Who did that to avoid the recurrence in the future.”
On the allegation that he refused to support Atiku because he’s not from his region, George 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 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 went back for second election, 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 move forward? We will set up a committee to look into the general election and the post election, so that we can prepare ourselves.”