Bola Tinubu is a perfect description of Al Capone, says Bode George, insists he must be exposed and stopped from becoming president to save Nigeria
Chief Olabode Ibiyinka George (Bode George), retired Commodore, former military governor of Ondo State, former Director at the Nigerian National War College (NWC) and former Principal Staff Officer to General Oladipo Diya when the latter was Chief of General Staff, is an interviewer’s delight. A straight talker, the former PDP National Vice Chairman (Southwest), Deputy National Chairman (South), always shoots from the hip.
He is proud of his Lagos origins and passionate about the state. But he is unhappy how Lagos has been run since 1999 and blames former Governor Bola Tinubu for the alleged rot.
In this interview with IKECHUKWU AMAECHI and EUGENE ONYEJI, Bode George talks about the 2023 elections, the chances of PDP and why Tinubu’s presidential aspiration must not see the light of the day.
What is your assessment of the state of the nation right now?
We are in a state of flux. Whether you are a very wealthy man or you are a very poor man, things are not working. This country used to be known as the giant of Africa, but today, when they call the meeting of G20, nobody remembers us. They invite South Africa and Rwanda. Doesn’t that ring a bell of concern?
Investors, apart from the Chinese who are all around us, real foreign investors, where are they?
There is an air of uncertainty for the younger generation. The unemployment, the issue of insecurity, and what is the number one responsibility of any elected government? It is the security of lives and property. Travelling from one state to another has become a nightmare and even suicidal.
Yes, they still lend them money but what is the current debt portfolio of our nation. Where are the borrowed funds going into?
Is there anything to show that, yes, we have borrowed to do ABCD projects and our income will be able to sustain what we are borrowing?
Look at the poverty alleviation programme. The concept they adopted was to say, go and give them cash, in a system that has no data. I mean cash – federal government money. So, when they spend that money, what would you do? Won’t they come back?
Our party, the PDP, had an arrangement which we called skill acquisition programme. All those young people, we told them register, fill the forms and if you want to be a bricklayer, a painter, an hairdresser, a shoemaker, whatever, all those artisans, we asked them to fill the forms and we sent them, depending on the field, we told them how many weeks they will spend. And at the end of the training, they put them into cooperatives, maybe in groups of ten and then give them interest-free loan for them to start business.
It was novel. Our youths were being lifted from the state of helplessness and hopelessness to a future that looked bright.
But immediately this government came in, they scrapped it. And suddenly, I saw the Vice President, Yemi Osinbajo, in the market here in Lagos, physically distributing money. I thought I was in a trance. And now there is a DG in-charge of this distribution. You will now go to the Central Bank or whatever bank to withdraw billions of Naira in cash and share in the markets. That is like voodoo economics.
So, the expectations of the people have really come very low and everybody is waiting. We are in 2022. This is the year for preparations for election, a year to do another stocktaking. We will ask our people, are you better off today than in the previous eight years?
Are you confident that the average Nigerian electorate can answer that question and make informed decision?
We have never been so hit by a lackluster administration like this. We have an adage in my place that if you hit a pitfall once, next time you would have acquired all the necessary experience that will make you say, never again.
It is no longer about card carrying party members alone, it is about the survival of yourself, your family and the future of your children.
University of Lagos is going to turn out another 12,000 graduates by next week. What are they going to do? Where is that state of expectation for them? We will ring the bell. We will canvass, we will discuss, we will debate and let them come out from the lethargic situation they have been and get involved.
It depends on how the political parties mobilise the people and when you keep talking in the markets, in the shopping malls, motor parks and all that, you must sell yourself to the people, sell your policies. And you know why this will be different from the rubbish we used to do is that they have told us explicably that our votes will be electronically transferred.
I saw the charade we were running before now. You go to your polling booth, you swipe your card, and yes it confirms that your PVC is you, then you fill the form which is manually done, and that result will be manually carried also to the collation centre. And from the local government collation centre, it will be manually carried to the state collation centre and from there to Abuja.
But the President is yet to sign the Electoral Act (Amendment) Bill. Considering what happened before the 2019 elections, are you hopeful that he will do the needful this time?
You know, because it is his own bill, he has said that he will not support the direct primaries but the electronic transmission of results will remain. I disagree with that concept because if you want to go to equity, go with your clean hands. What he has done now is like a half-way measure.
Direct primaries are extremely good because no godfather would handpick the delegates who will vote. The difference between direct and indirect primaries is that indirect would select some people and those who have enormous amount of money can buy them off. But in direct primaries, every card carrying member will line up even for your own primaries, for you to emerge as a candidate. We did it before in this country. That was the famous Option-A4.
So, when the president started saying that it will be too expensive, I said how? Are the political parties coming to the government for money to conduct their primaries? They have no business with the government. They say INEC will monitor it. And so? Wouldn’t INEC monitor other elections? And INEC had already said it was ready for it.
The president owes that to this country because it is his own Bill. The National Assembly has already accepted. So, why is he now backing off? Let us get out from the primitive procedure we use in our electoral process. Americans, with their huge population, that is what they do.
In any primaries of the Republican Party, Democratic Party or any of the smaller parties, everybody votes for the person of their choice. Then, whoever emerges will have it at the back of his mind that he is being sent there by members of the party and whatever he is going to do, that picture will keep flashing in his mind that he owes it to the people, unlike the other fellow, Bola Tinubu, who is saying that he is the kingmaker and that he has been making the kings and now he wants to be the king himself.
Do you trust President Buhari to do the right thing?
I expect him to because this is his seventh year on the saddle. By May, he will enter his eighth and last year in office. And whatever he has done will be written on the pages of history. So, how would he want his name on the pages of history? He has said that electronic transmission of results is accepted. If you remember when Professor Attahiru Jega was announcing the results of the 2015 election, people were physically bringing results by hand. That was a joke.
But this time, INEC must get equipment – foolproof – that nobody can manipulate. And they are available in the market. The one Americans used in their last election was solid gold. That is the responsibility of INEC chairman and his people. For once, let us get out from this doldrums. We must make sure that we do it right this time so that our country can join the civilised world where democracy thrives.
You earlier talked about how bad things have become since Buhari became president. But the APC and Buhari insist that things are better today than prior to their coming. They insist that security is better today than in 2014.
Are you kidding me? I don’t believe them. The North is in the worst situation security-wise, the whole North. You saw what happened in Zamfara recently? You saw what happened in Sokoto? Is the North-East safe now? Thank God there is a sort of lull in the menace of Fulani herdsmen but nobody’s mind is at rest because whether you are rich or poor, as you move about in those areas, you are looking over your shoulder. You don’t want to be kidnapped, you don’t want to be robbed.
So, if that is their perception, when the time comes to campaign to the people, we will present the facts to the people and let them make up their minds.
As long as we do not allow any manipulation of the electoral process, then whoever wins knows that he has the mandate of the people and I am sure such a person will not go there and mess up. That is the beauty of democracy.
Most elected officials don’t care because they are sure they will manipulate the results. They don’t care about what the electorate will say. So, if we modernise that process and reduce the manipulation drastically, those who get there will think first about the people. Will I be able to face my people in the next election to say this is what I have been able to do?
Because you were sent there to guarantee the lives and property of the people, to have policies that will allow their children to attend good schools. Even state governments should be able to fund feeding in schools, at least one meal a day for a child in school.
We used to have that when I was in school. What are we doing now? I am 77-years-old. So what happened? Today, children will go to school and they are afraid. Things that were absolutely unheard of.
How ready is your party, PDP, for the 2023 elections?
I have absolute and implicit trust. You know in any organization, you will find people who are serious managers and you also have fake managers. There is no organisation, anywhere in the world, that will not have disagreements at one time or the other. But the ability to manage the crisis and live and work above that will be a measure of your competence.
For me, we have a procedure in our party, we have a methodology of how to handle primaries. It would have been much better if we were having direct primaries, not indirect. From the beginning of PDP, it wasn’t meant to be a party that will be the private business of an individual. No individual controls the PDP. We don’t have kingmakers. Every member is a kingmaker and the elders will meet, either through consensus or through serious elections, our candidates will emerge.
When people came together in 1998 to establish the PDP – Chief Bola Ige from the West, an Afenifere leader who will normally not sit in a political discussion room with somebody like Dr. Alex Ekwueme, Chief Jim Nwobodo, Alhaji Adamu Ciroma, Bamanga Tukur, Abubakar Rimi. These were the same people who came together and said, look, let us make sure that we establish a system whereby every tribe – majority tribe, minority tribe – will have a sense of belonging in this country.
So, they divided Nigeria into six geo-political zones – North-West, North-East, North-Central, South-West, South-East, and South-South.
You know in those days, with the old political parties, the minorities were subsumed under all those majority tribes. So, they were to be seen and not heard.
Then, they now said what are the six top positions having broken Nigeria into six geo-political zones. You know that is not even in our constitution. It is a procedure that can bring sanity and peace. They now went further, having created the six geo-political zones to assign the six top positions in the country – President, Vice President, Senate President, Speaker of the House of Representatives, Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF) and National Chairman – to the six zones. Six positions, six geo-political zones. So, every zone will take one and that gives you that strong sense of belonging. And after eight years, they rotate it. All positions in the North come to the South and all positions in the South go to the North.
So, whether you are minority or majority tribe, someday, it will come to your turn. All you need to do is to ensure that you get the best out of your zone that will be acceptable to all the others.
You first of all guarantee that yes, it is now time for you to produce the president. The question will now be, who are you bringing forth and they will x-ray him. They want to know about him before they can now say, okay this person is acceptable, he has the knowledge, flair, character and he is a reliable, respectable, responsible Nigerian with a track record, positive track record, not an armed robber or some Chicago-based liar. And they will vote for him. That was the concept.
But at the time these founding fathers of our great party met, they couldn’t have envisaged losing election and how to manage the situation in the circumstance as it is happening now.
When the APC came, they said they didn’t believe in zoning but what did they do? The President is from the North-West, Vice President is from South-West, Senate President is from North-East, Speaker is from South-West, the SGF is from North-East and chairman from South-South. So, in a way, zoning has become acceptable across party lines.
But in our case, we have zoned chairmanship of the party to the North. We have the concept that the chairman cannot be from the same zone with the president. Now, we have to put our heads together and resolve that crisis. We will still go back to the drawing board, we still have some time. There will be lots of debates and discussions and that is the beauty.
Like I said, the founding fathers never put the opposition party into their calculations. Now, the opposition party is in power and the President who is from the North is spending eight years. That was never in our consideration. So, others are saying, Buhari is not in our party. The last time power should have been in the North under a PDP government, so, it should still be in the North. There will be a lot of discussions, no fighting. And if we come to equity with clean hands and we are sincere, and we have abiding loyalty to this country, we will get over it.
What you said about the PDP founding fathers is correct. They had a vision and a clear idea of where they wanted to take the country to. But former President Olusegun Obasanjo, who was not there when the party was founded, corrupted that vision particularly with the culture of imposition. He imposed Yar’Adua and Jonathan on the party in 2007.
Obasanjo didn’t falter on Yar’Adua’s candidature. You know, unlike the APC is telling you now that the President is not the national leader of their party, that Bola Tinubu is the national leader of their party, it is a joke. In America that we borrowed their system, whoever is the President of the country is the leader of the party. So, this one that they are putting Tinubu above where he should be, it is a joke.
Coming back to PDP, Obasanjo did not impose Yar’Adua. Having spent eight years, the presidency went back to the North. Now, Obasanjo didn’t force anybody. After eight years, all positions in the South must go back to the North and vice versa. That is the concept and that was what we achieved in 2007.
So, he didn’t impose anyone. I was there. Others who wanted to compete did. Yar’Adua wasn’t the only one. You know we had a convention but of course, Obasanjo was the leader and if he was perceived to be leaning on the side of an aspirant, people will know.
Of course, it is not designed but he was not expected to be aloof. He voted himself. A lot of people competed against Yar’Adua. In fact, I moderated that convention and Alhaji Ciroma acted as the electoral umpire.
But I have also seen the lacuna in this process. Because it is an oral history, people talk about it, the procedure must be written down so that those who will keep on interpreting to suit their whims will be told to go home. The only position as put down by the founding fathers that should never be micro zoned is the president. If it is to the South, any zone in the South can compete. If it is zoned to the North, any zone in the North can compete. But the position of chairman of the party is not as weighty as that of the president. That position must be micro-zoned so that one particular zone does not continuously control it because in his position, the chairman is sitting as the chief manager of the party.
Now, the deputy chairman is there. Secretary of the party will be there and all those things are also micro-zoned so that you will balance all the positions so that that sense of oneness will be there when they are taking decisions on the management side of the party.
But for the presidency, anyone can contest. If you remember that Alex Ekwueme contested against Obasanjo twice. Abubakar Rimi contested even when he knew that the position was not zoned to the North.
Recently, the APC National Leader, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, said he had told President Buhari of his intention to contest the presidency in 2023 and you were quoted as saying that his aspiration is a joke. But there are some people like Mr. Fouad Oki, who think that rather than Tinubu’s aspiration, it is actually your position that is a joke because you are not a member of APC and have no say in who emerges the party’s candidate. So, why do you think Tinubu’s aspiration is a joke?
You know, if this country is serious, put Tinubu on a pedestal and let us x-ray him. Who is this character called Tinubu? I didn’t say that he doesn’t have the legitimate right to throw his hat in the ring. That is not what I am saying but it is a joke because what are his track records? A man that has all the negativisms of life in terms of character, in terms of education, in terms of even pedigree. What I mean by negativism is defining him as a human being. Who is this character?
I don’t know why Fouad is suddenly waking up from the wrong side of his bed. Is Fouad, a Lagosian, happy about the way the boy (Tinubu) has run my state? These people will be culpable along with Tinubu.
How has Tinubu run Lagos State that you are not happy about?
Now, one thing that Tinubu himself accepted the day they launched Bisi Akande’s book, he said when he came to Lagos, the IGR was N600 million per month but that he increased it to N20 billion a month.
Now, when he came to serve, did he sign on that he must take part of that money? Isn’t it service? Didn’t he present himself that he wanted to serve the people, to manage the resources of the state for the betterment of the people, not to your damn family – wife, children and lackeys?
Who owns Alpha Beta Consulting that is still collecting the internally generated revenue of Lagos on behalf of the state and what percentage of it is Tinubu taking now – is it 15 per cent or 10 per cent? Where else in the civilised world is that done? You are looking for Al Capone. Tinubu is a perfect description.
What is Fouad talking about? Is he now speaking on Tinubu’s side? We want to know those of them who have been part of Tinubu’s escapades.
Lagos generates N60 billion every 30 days and Alpha Beta collects the money on behalf of the state and 15 per cent of that is N9 billion, which one individual takes on a monthly basis. And you say we shouldn’t ask?
When you hear of billionaires, not the Al Capone types, you know what they do. How has Tinubu acquired his wealth? Where in the world, civilised or uncivilised, have you ever seen anybody, a politician on an election day bring two bullion vans into his private house and when they asked him, what were you carrying, is it garri or rice, he said, it is my money.
Your money? Really? Coming from where? And you don’t see the need to ask this man questions, somebody who is aspiring to be president of my country? You are telling us just to railroad him in there? Those days are gone.
We will put everybody contesting on that pedestal. We will x-ray them, we will find out their pedigree, what have you done in the society, what have you been able to contribute, where did you get your wealth from. Is it yahoo-yahoo? Or is it through drugs? Whatever! We have a right to know. And we will campaign.
Truth is the spinal cord of democracy. If you cannot tell me your pedigree, where you are from, your background, then I have an issue with that.
You know the U.S. Senator that died recently – Harry Reid – who became Majority Leader, the guy was born to a white, desperately poor family. The home they lived for years had no running water. He started boxing to make ends meet. Eventually, look at the respect they gave him when he was buried. He made a name and got to the highest office in the U.S. legislature as Senate Majority Leader.
If he had acquired all kinds of illicit wealth, would he have been so celebrated? The system must be such that characters like Tinubu must be exposed to save our country because whoever becomes your leader is a reflection of yourself.
Aside this Alpha Beta issue, what else is the matter?
Look, Tinubu comes from Iragbiji in Osun State and that is an established fact. I have been there. They showed me the primary school he attended in Iragbiji. In 1999, when he was contesting for governorship, they filled a form, he said it wasn’t him because there were so many falsifications, outright lies.
He said he attended Children’s Home School in Ibadan. He didn’t go to any Children’s Home School. He said he went to Government College Ibadan and we say, what year, where are your classmates? He went to St. Paul’s Arolaya. I am a bona fide Lagosian, Lagos Island. Even before the state was created, we were the Islanders and I attended St. John’s School Arolaya because it was a community school at Itafaji.
What exactly is Tinubu’s real age? He has a daughter who is 60 years old. His nephew who is the governor of Osun State, Gboyega Oyetola, is 66 years and Tinubu says he is 69 years. So, at the age of nine, Tinubu was already making babies. He must have been a special being from the outer space.
Is there anything wrong in telling the people the truth about yourself, your background? Look at Senator Reid. He didn’t lie.
I come from the George family on the Lagos Island. My great grandfather was a Reverend who went preaching and evangelising in the Nupe Kingdom in the present day Niger State. That was where he found his wife. He married a Nupe woman and because he was a Reverend gentleman who had a white horse, he brought the woman back.
So in my family, my great grandfather married a Nupe woman and my grandfather spoke the language of their mother. And you know the Oshodi area of Lagos Island was traditionally inhabited by Nupe people. Even the gunuku that we dance around there is a Nupe masquerade.
My paternal grandmother came from Brazil. They were from Bahia State. Her father, a black man, had two wives. When the slave trade ended, the blacks were given free transportation to return to Africa. That was how my father’s mother left Brazil with their mother and three of her children – two girls and one boy. And they landed in Lagos. She went to St. Mary’s primary school in Ajele, Lagos Island and my grandfather was working at the Federal Government Printing Press on Broad Street and saw this beautiful girl and married her.
So, in our family, we have the Brazilian side from my mom, my great grandfather’s side was from Lagos and then married this Nupe woman. Then on my mother’s side, my great grandmother was related to the mother of Papa Herbert Macaulay, who was Nigeria’s first politician.
So, if you want to come into public service, if you tell the people that you want to serve them, they must know about you, they must trust you. They want to know, this man who said he went to Government College Ibadan, is it true? One of my friends said he must have attended Government College Iragbiji, not Government College Ibadan.
You say you have a degree in this and that. Where are the certificates? With our experience in this country, once you want to come into public office now, we want to know everything about you because you are telling us, trust me.
Do you hate Bola Tinubu?
Why should I hate him? He is a creation of the Almighty God. All I am saying is that this man says he wants to lead my nation, we want to know who he is.
What has he done? Some say he turned Lagos around. What a heck. I was born, bred and schooled here. What did he do?
When he said that he increased the state IGR from N600 million to N20 billion monthly, was that a guaranty that he will now start taking a portion of that? Who registered Alpha Beta Consulting? His Attorney General. Who was the Attorney General? Is it not this man, Yemi Osinbajo, the Vice President?
That is why he handpicked all those people, who should go to the House of Assembly and who should not, to do his bidding.
The day of reckoning is just around the corner. People are tired. Look at the local government secretariat by Glover and Kingsway. See what he has built there. Now they started the construction of the Nursing School hostel which was established during the era of General Mobolaji Johnson and the idea was to allow those trainee nurses reach the General Hospital at a very short notice. Now he has acquired it and so many other public properties that he has acquired.
Who is the only man who controls the whole signage of Lagos? Tinubu’s son. If you are into advertising, you cannot put a billboard anywhere. You must go through the company of Tinubu’s son and how old is the boy? The Iyaloja, a cultural position, he gave to his daughter. She is the Iyaloja of Lagos and you know she collects money from all those traders. The perpetual senator representing Lagos Central Senatorial District is his wife.
How much impact has that woman made in the lives of the Central Senatorial District people?
If Tinubu is guilty of all these indiscretions as you allege, why is there no outrage in Lagos? Why is it that only Bode George is wailing?
I won’t say that we are lethargic in Lagos. He came with a bloated lie that he is from the Tinubu family. That was the first lie and he took this Mama, respectable, reliable Mama, Alhaja Mogaji Tinubu, and Mama said she is my son, from my womb.
You know we respect elders and initially nobody gave it a thought. But when I became National Vice Chairman of the PDP, I started asking what was going on. I know people who grew up with him. You know as Vice Chairman of the PDP, South-West, there are 137 local governments in the region and I toured all of them a minimum of five times
There was a PDP senator in the 5th National Assembly, Kola Ogunwale (Jumokol), who is also from Tinubu’s village in Osun and we started going round and he said Baba, this is Tinubu’s home in Iragbiji. I said, are you kidding me? He said Tinubu was his senior in primary school. Then some of his friends whom he grew up with in Ibadan came and said, what are you talking about? We all grew up in Ibadan with him. So, that caught my attention.
So, when people ask me do you hate him? I say, what is my own, why should I hate him? It has nothing to do with hatred. He is sitting down there and all of you are pretending that you didn’t know that this guy is creaming off the best of our assets.
Maybe the boldness of Papa Macaulay is in me. This is a collective treasure for all of us. General Johnson, the first governor, Papa Jakande, Otedola, then the military people that ran the state they didn’t cream the state off as this guy is doing.
If I am lying, let him come out and defend himself. Let him controvert what I am saying. Is there no Alpha Beta company? The company’s office is in Ijora. Lagos State government gave them office. You remember their former Managing Director, Dapo Apara, who released the details? So, a lot of our oldies, our egbons, our big brothers have soiled their hands and soiled their souls. Now, it is getting clearer by the hour that there is a problem.
I am not the only one talking but I am talking as a politician from Lagos and I am feeling very angry that our people should be in a much better stead than what this fellow has done.
And he went to Osun, his own state, and boasted to the Kabiyesi in Osogbo that he is much richer than the State.
What decent man will come and tell you, “I have been a kingmaker all my life, now I want to be King?” In our local parlance, we say that kingmakers don’t become kings. It is the height of arrogance.
What in particular is your fear about a Tinubu presidency?
If Bola Tinubu becomes President, he will convert the NNPC into another Alpha Beta, all the returns of the Central Bank will be converted. Our crude oil will be going to some unnamed refinery that will be making returns to him. And then, he will be President of the Federal Republic, his wife will be Senate President, his son will be Governor of Lagos State and his daughter will be the Iyaloja of all the markets in Nigeria.
Even if you don’t hate Tinubu and there is nothing personal, there is no arguing the fact that you are bitter. Chief Segun Osoba, former governor of Ogun State, suggested recently that you are angry with Tinubu because you blame him for your imprisonment in 2009. Is that correct?
Absolute thrash. I don’t know where he got his conclusion from. Osoba knows me and he knows what I can do. He knows what I will stand on any day, anywhere.
They are leaving the facts and chasing shadows, talking thrash. What I am saying about this man, Tinubu, are issues. They are now going to non-issues. Let us face it. So, if he now thinks that Bola Tinubu sent me to prison, so he is justifying the fact that you know, the boy thinks that he knows everything. He does all kinds of things. So, I can’t see Osoba’s rationale.
Osoba should come out and defend Bola. As I said, let us have a debate. Now that he is going to the national level, in Segun Osoba’s mind, if he is decent, honest, committed and has abiding loyalty to this country, is Bola Tinubu the right kind of man he would put at the helm of affairs in this country or the man who will take the ticket of their party?
What is he talking about? Oh, so it is true. The Oyewole boy – referring to Justice Joseph Oyewole who jailed him and four others in October 2009 on a 163 count-charge of conspiracy, disobedience to lawful order, alleged inflation of contracts and contracts splitting while he was chairman of the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) board – you know what Segun Osoba is concluding is that the Oyewole boy who tried us, immediately after that trial, Bola Tinubu now wanted to appoint him as the Chief Judge of Osun State.
The boy was number 32 in seniority in Lagos State, so, Osoba has confirmed that my imprisonment was a convoluted conspiracy. That is what he is confirming. And that means that he himself must be part of that conspiracy.
But they didn’t create me. You know Fela had a song, “trouble dey sleep, inyanga go wake m, na wetin him dey find … na palaver.”
But why would they conspire against you?
Because they were all governors of the Alliance for Democracy (AD) and I was the thorn in their flesh. We whacked them in the 2003 polls and it was genuine. They were genuinely defeated. I went to the people and we were canvassing for votes. The Yoruba know if you are a deceitful character. They were all wearing Awolowo’s cap when they started in 1999 raising their two fingers and we said these are not representatives of Awolowo.
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Baba Awolowo created free education. He did wonders in terms of infrastructure, public health, all over. The Western Region at that time extended to the present day Delta State, Edo and so many other states.
So, if Segun said that, there must be something he knew. I have heard rumours but now he has confirmed it because they thought that I was the one that cleared them from their government houses.
So, Bode must be put in prison. But you see, rather than them to think that they would drown this man, I am a sailor, like a solid submarine, you can dive, go to a safe area on the depth of the water and then pop up again. They committed a hara-kiri. It was a convoluted conspiracy amongst them that Chief Bode George must be containerized and the container sealed.
If I am lying, I didn’t tell them Segun Osoba did this or that. I said this man – Tinubu – did this and that. Let those who don’t believe come out and say what I am saying is a lie.
You were recently quoted as vowing to go on exile if Tinubu becomes President. Do you still stand by that vow?
I want to confirm to you that if by whatever yardstick, Nigerians forget or sleep off, you know as a former military officer, if you sleep on duty, it is a very serious punishment for you. You don’t sleep on duty. That is why we are starting early to educate the people. Tinubu’s deceit is too much. Find out how his beginning has been. I am just telling you what he has done in and to Lagos and that is his first step. And you now want to entrust national resources in his care? I will leave Nigeria. And I am not joking. No nation will take you serious if Tinubu is the man you put forward as the representative of this country.
When Tinubu came to Lagos, he came in a yellow bus, but now he has two aircraft, one of them can fly from Lagos to New York non-stop. Where is Segun Osoba’s aircraft? Does he have any? He has served and he is still acceptable among his friends. Yet, he is not showing off looted stupendous wealth like this fellow. Have they ever seen a bullion van driving into Segun Osoba’s house on Election Day? Or that is also a lie?
Segun knows and we all know because he grew up here. He went to school here, he has classmates here and if he starts to do that, many of his classmates will pull him by his ears and say, are you crazy? We have ethos, we have character and we have things we were taught during civic lessons. We don’t belong to Bola Tinubu’s level.
I am happy that Osoba has now confirmed the rumour that I have been hearing about Oyewole who is now in the Court of Appeal. That was why he did the job that he did and they over-promoted him. You know what the Supreme Court said in their judgement? They looked at Oyewole’s judgement and said, what is this? This thing should not have gone to trial at all. I didn’t write the judgement. The five or seven justices of the Supreme Court unanimously said so. There will be a day of reckoning. If you, like a rat will go out and poke and poke and poke, a day will come when that catcher will hang you there. I am not the one pushing him to go to the national. It is nemesis.
Why I said I will leave this country if Tinubu become President is this: First, that country where Tinubu will be President will no longer be Nigeria. He would have turned it into a Tinubu enterprise – with his wife as the Senate President, his son as the Governor of Lagos State and his daughter as the Iyaloja General of the Federation.
What is it that you can point to that these are monuments that Bola Tinubu has put on the marble except all the personal wealth that he has stolen? And there is no secret. You see, Lagos is big but at the same time, Lagos is small. We know ourselves. And I am eternally grateful that two of my childhood friends, we have met and come together and that is the Omo Eko Pataki and we are already mentoring our brother, Uthman Shodipe, because the three of us are all in our 70s now.
Just the four of us, we don’t want more members, you know God says our years are three score and ten and anything after 70 years is extra time. It means that after 70 years you are in the departure lounge and God can call your flight any time. But we want to leave it on the pages of history that at least these three people with Uthman spoke the truth and fought for the survival of Lagos State and to block the stealing, the humongous, mindless stealing going on in the state.
You know, after Federal Government’s debt portfolio, Lagos state is next. Do you know why I am not bothered? Someday, all those acquisitions, all those properties, whether he put them in his name or fictitious names, when the day of reckoning comes, the truth will be told.
We have a saying in Lagos that Lagos money no dey leave Lagos. Tinubu won’t carry nothing across the bridge to Iragbiji ooo. Lagos money, na here him de de ooo!