A chieftain of the Peoples Democratic Party, Chief Bode George, has described the Lagos State House of Assembly as a private enterprise where the owner hires and fires at will.
The former Deputy National Chairman of the PDP said this in an interview with Saturday Tribune following the crisis in the assembly.
The Eagle Online recalls that a former Speaker of the assembly, Mudashiru Obasa, was reinstated 49 days after his ouster and replacement by the Deputy Speaker, Mojisola Meranda.
When asked by Saturday Tribune for his views, George said: “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.”
When told that Meranda resigned as the speaker to pave the way for Obasa’s return, the former Military Governor of Ondo State told Saturday Tribune: “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 misdemeanour 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 (Governance Advisory Council).
“What is the effect of the GAC?
“So what are their own approaches to resolving the problem?
“Nothing.
“Nothing.
“They got divided.”
On the committee made up of former Governors Bisi Akande and Segun Osoba and some others that waded into the dispute, Chief George said: “You mean the committee that went to (President Bola) Tinubu in Abuja?
“Are they from Lagos State?
“You now raised the matter beyond the state…
“If you look at this party called APC (All Progressives Congress), apart from (Abdullahi) 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.”
