Bode George withdraws from PDP chairmanship race
One of the nine national chairmanship aspirants in today’s National Elective Convention of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Chief Bode George, has withdrawn from the contest.
He accused the leadership of the party of refusing to keep to the micro-zoning principles that he claimed reserved the chairmanship position for the Southwest, saying he entered the contest on the micro-zoning principle, which he said has now been thrashed “by little men who have compromised.”
“It appears the PDP is bent on self-destruction. I can’t be part of this. The chairmanship position has been sold to the highest bidder,” George stated at a briefing yesterday night.
The party’s former deputy national chairman (South), therefore, called for an unreserved apology from Rivers State Governor Nyesom Wike for humiliating the people of the Southwest with his unguarded statements.
He fumed: “Everywhere you look, the Yoruba people are now being brazenly insulted. The very traditional fibres of our founding fathers are now being trampled upon, debased and soiled by external forces and mercenary traitors within.
“It appears the PDP is now bent on self- destruction. It has obviously allowed money moguls to dictate its thematic largeness. The party has lost its soul. It has lost its principled beginning and the predications of righteousness.
“It has traded the finer principles of democratic guidance and equity for the squalid, dirty and shameful resort to mercenary agenda, where nothing matters, save the putrid, oafish gains of the moment.”
George added: “I cannot be part of this screaming aberration. As the Atona of Yorubaland, I do not expect any well-meaning, well-disciplined, forthright, sincere Omoluabi of Yorubaland to continue with this deceit and shameful theater.
“The PDP has now mangled and distorted its soul and spirit. There is no morality here anymore. There is no sanity or any sense of enlightened civility.
“As a result of these observed aberrations, wherein the position of the national chairman has been apparently sold and auctioned to the highest bidder, I, as an Omoluabi and as an authentic Atona of Yorubaland, I will not partake in this charade.
“I hereby withdraw from this brazen fraud and absolutely preconceived, monetised, mercantilist convention.”
“The Yoruba people have been openly maligned. The Yoruba have been savaged, tormented, treated with contempt, scurried, scoffed at, humiliated and denigrated by little men whose sun will soon set.
“As a Yoruba patriot and the pathfinder of Yorubaland, I will stand by our people, I will stay with them thick or thin, I will fight for their good cause without compromising any ethics.”
