Former deputy national chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Chief Olabode George bares his mind on the operation show identification card recently announced by the military, the nation’s electoral system, among other issues, in this interview conducted by KUNLE ODEREMI. Excerpts:Â
WITH the recent judgment of the Supreme Court on the outcome of the last presidential election, what do you think are the alternative or options left for the PDP to re-position itself?
As a General and Christian, the Almighty didn’t say you will not fall occasionally, but your ability to bounce back is His own grace. So, we must as believers know that this a lesson for us. It doesn’t mean death when we fall. As a General, grab your gauntlet, spring back up and start to move. Meaning we should have a postmortem analysis of what went wrong. Of course, some must be our mistakes; we should learn from that. Some would be external; we should do a comprehensive X-ray of the situation and we come back and get ready. There is no need to start crying over spilled milk. It’s been given and it’s has been given and by law, that is the terminus of all the legal battles. We should start preparing for the next battle since we are still alive and the grace of God never finishes. So, we should be downcast and feel all is finished. Like the president’s Senior Special Assistant on Publicity, Garba Shehu, who said the country is becoming a one-party state, I want to tell him that the PDP is not dead. Yes, the APC has been declared to have won now, we in the PDP will quickly get our acts together, do our own inside analysis and start the next roadmap for 2023.
If you were to analyse what happened, what do you think went wrong for the PDP?
As a loyal leader of the party, it is like the family theory. If you have a quarrel, you don’t go to the marketplace to start talking about it. It must be a closed-door issue and we will talk seriously to ourselves. That is the way I know an organisation should be. If I explain to you now, we are opening our flanks to our opposition and that is not done. I’m not disloyal and I can never be. We should get back in and do our own analysis. That is where the shouting, the howling and talking will happen and the details of our analysis will guide us in moving forward.
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So, you see the PDP bouncing back strongly in the shortest possible time? Â
Yes, we will if we call this meeting. The fact that we lost an election doesn’t mean the end. It means that something happened that was unpalatable to us. How did it happen? What did we do wrong? Was it the methodology or strategic planning or the disbursement of the election materials and all that? What happened? But let me tell you one thing which is national. The procedure that the present Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) used in coming to the final results was shambolic, archaic and disheartening. That in the 21st Century that people are still physically carrying results to the collation centre in Abuja, it is disgraceful. Absolutely disgraceful for Nigeria! Where is the Giant of Africa? We were ranked the same level with Brazil, India, and Malaysia before. But what happened? India had a general election, in which 800 million people voted. It took them just two weeks to the final collation, because India is massive; it is the largest democracy in the world. I was very keen to see what would happen because we were still juggling three months going to court and tribunals, not one person disagreed with the result of the election held in India and headed to any election petition tribunal. What’s the total number of people that voted in Nigeria in the last general election held in Nigeria? You know they have a silicon valley too in India. Their equivalent of INEC is technology-based. We are not in the Stone Age. For God’s sake, it is a disgrace to this nation. In my days at the University of Lagos, we had mechanical resolver. Now the speed at which these things are working is tremendous. But, they are making it look as if we have not arrived at that level in this country. If you have a bank account, no matter where you are, if somebody puts money in that account, you get an alert. If they remove money from that account, you get an alert. It is still the same data processing. When you shot in the Permanent Voter Card, it will clear you for accreditation. What do you call that? Is that manually done? We are deceiving ourselves. The moment our election procedure remain archaic and is manipulative, Nigeria will never see the light. There will never be development.
Do you know why? Those who go for the election will call on millions of people to line up to vote. At the end of the day, you will decide it is not the will of the people you are announcing. Some judges will sit to decide. Then, let the judges appoint the governors, senators, and others into positions. What is democracy without the people? Why are the governors and legislators there without the will of the people? It is the will of the people that matters and if the people should make a mistake, in the next election they correct it. That is why every four years, you go back to renew your mandate. If they don’t want you, they vote you out. But right now the people do not have powers, because the process will be manipulated. So, those in the saddle don’t care.
Look at Lagos State now, somebody came to me and said that Bola Tinubu has been controlling Lagos and I said yes, indeed, you can see the fallout. You think the people in Lagos today? But is their will respected? Even they say no, let’s vote them out, throw them out of power, how do they do it? You hear professors, who have been made retuning officers during elections, talking from both sides of their mouths! Look at the judgment delivered by the Appeal Court on the governorship election in Osun State. They said one of the judges didn’t sit and you based your judgment on it. Haba! I’m not a lawyer, but I have sense and fear God. Justice delayed is justice denied. We are building up a gunpowder. But, these are pitfalls of the past which we must avoid. So, my appeal is the Federal Government owes the country just one thing.
What is it?Â
The one thing is we should scrap the INEC; sack everybody there. We still have enough time before 2023 to do the needful now. Then, you set up an election process that will be technology-based. If we can’t do it, we can buy it; if we can’t buy it, we can steal it; if we can’t steal it, we can copy it. But it must be technology-based, otherwise, the future of our great country is in doubt. It is wooly, cloudy and the problem is self-inflicted.
Which one should come first, collapsed infrastructure, including power necessary for a quasi e-voting; restructuring of the existing political structure and devolution of political power?
We are not talking about going back to any other system of government that does not guarantee a transparent analysis a transparent route. What are you talking about? The first leg and the most positive is the procedure for electing those to manage our resources. Professor Ayodele Awojobi of blessed memory of the University of Lagos was gifted. While we were students, he told us, ‘everything that you want to do, the first step is key. Those we elect are supposed to manage the resources of the land for the benefit of the people. Everybody cannot be on the driver’s seat at the same time. You must elect some individuals to manage the affairs of the country at a point in time on our behalf. If the process of electing them is squalid, sloppy, muddy and probably reprehensible and strategically dumb, how will they now remember to manage the resources for your benefit? Do they respect the will of the people? So first and foremost is for us to get the procedure right.
A number of observers are surprised that our democracy is still fraught with the majority of the challenges that were inherited from the military era more than 20 years ago. Why have we not been able to overcome those issues?
It is because the people past are still promoting all the irregularities and as long as those things persist, the country shall keep groping in the dark. When you start a process and it doesn’t work, you take a break and look back to ask, ‘what we are doing, is it right? You should not be deceiving yourself when in as a matter of fact nothing is working. Even the president accepted that all is not well, which means he is also looking for solutions. And I am suggesting that the first thing which he owes this country is to overhaul the total process of people emerging as the representatives. If you don’t get that right, nothing will work; you are just putting palliatives. They will never work because the will of the people has been subverted. And what is democracy if the will of the people is not respected? An efficient and effective process will force people to bond with their constituents. They will run to their constituencies to feel their pulse on critical issues. When you talk about constituency projects, for example,, how many of the lawmakers visit their constituencies? Once the procedure is right, like the operation show your identification card of the military, they will visit their constituencies and ask the people how it will impact on their lives. Those teeming youths, who have no means of livelihood, are still looking for how to survive. And you are asking them to get the National Identification Number for N5, 000. If they have such money, I’m sure they will spend it on food.
You just talked briefly about the military operation show your identification number, which has drawn flak from Nigerians. What is your views on the issue, given your professional background?Â
I was in the military. That’s not our training. We don’t have that kind of calmness of mind to deal with any civilian because you are trained to fight another fellow who is armed. Whereas, the police job is to deal with civilians, the Immigration Service personnel are to deal with civilians, ditto the Customs Service men, we are trained to meet another army, who is also armed. So when you say, ‘stop there!’ he will have to stop. If he doesn’t stop, you take it as an enemy scenario. That’s the rules of engagement in the military. We are not in any emergency. I led one operation before in the Nigerian Navy. It was general strike by workers. I was a Lieutenant in the Navy and General Yakubu Gowon was the head of state then.  All the labour workers downed tool and the police could not cope with the situation. So I was asked to the lead the operation called aid to civil power. I led the group to the Ijora thermal power station to make sure that nothing strange happened there. Immediately all the union members and their leaders who had been hauling objects everywhere in the area saw us, they began to fret; they lined up and moved out quietly.
But the authorities said the objective of the current army operation is to fish out insurgents that have fled the North-East and other troubled sports to the South-West especially….
Do you know how complicated such an exercise would be? What is the total number of army that will be sent out for the operation? Are they up to 120 million men in the armed forces? Go to Lagos Island, Alimosho, Mile 2, Oojo, Lekki Belt or Oshodi, densely populated areas. The first mistake I saw as a former officer was the statement issued by the army directly to the populace. Where is the minister of defence? Where is the minister of information concerning the army telling us that they are starting this particular operation? When you allow the army to talk direct when there is no emergency, where is the chain of command? Have we lost our minds? The army is to be seen and not heard, except the commander-in-chief has sanctioned that the police can no longer cope. The directive must come from him and no other person or his representative because in a democratic dispensation, you must first of all educate the people. Don’t jump gun because you will become an army of occupation to Nigerians. We are not foreigners here. The various strata of administration: governors, local government people must be involved because they are the ones closest to the grassroots level. Now, you just want to come directly to the people. Is that the way to subject the citizens of the country to this kind of tension? If it was the reverse, the minister of information would have been shouting all over. Where is he now? The information is not coming from him but direct from the military. Something is wrong.
Let me tell my younger colleagues that are in the armed forces: where is the chain of command? You don’t talk directly to the public unless there is a conference they invited you to come and talk. And you must have got the permission from the minister of defence. So, if it erupts into something negative, who is going to be held responsible for the consequences? Have you educated the people? We only read it on the pages of newspapers that the military was embarking on the operation and I screamed, do what?  If they are going on an exercise in a particular area, one, the chief security officer of the state, who is the governor, has he been informed? Once you tell him, the head of the Directorate of State Service, Commissioner of Police, the area Commanders, Divisional Police Officers and local government chairmen would know and inform the people, as well as prepare a seamless operation. That’s the way I was trained as an officer. In this case, somebody represented the Chief of Army Staff at the National Assembly to explain the operation that some people escaped from somewhere to other places. How do you locate them, especially in Nigeria, where house numbering is a serious issue?
The debate that is gradually becoming pronounced is which geopolitical zone should produce president in 2023. The Igbo say it should be the turn of the South-East, while some groups and individuals are making a case for the South-West to appreciate the Yoruba for their loyalty to the Buhari administration and the APC that produced him. Are you surprised such campaign has begun in earnest?
First of all, those people behind the campaign for 2023 presidency are not human beings. They are greedy. Such characters have nothing to offer the country because they are self-conceited and greedy. Those are not the characters we want in this country. They are only concerned about themselves, their wives, children and nobody else. Such characters should be containerised and taken away. Nowhere in the civilised world will such campaign happen. Let us go and resolve whatever problem that may have arisen over the conduct of the 2019 general election in the next three years and in the fourth year, you can start politics. So, it is devilish, stupid and absolute lunacy, as well as the height of insanity, for anyone to start talking and campaigning for the 2023 presidency even when Buhari has not even spent six years in office after the controversial election and the 2020 federal budget is still moving back and forth in the National Assembly. Nigerians are saying there is hunger in the land and a few self-conceited individuals are talking about 2023. They do not fear God. In short, they are godless people. They should keep their mouths shut.
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