A member of the Board of Trustees of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Chief Bode George, has traced the current internal strife within the party to injustice and the refusal of leaders to adhere to party constitution.
According to him, for lasting peace to return, party stakeholders must undertake an unbiased post mortem analysis of the immediate and remote causes of what led to crisis before setting up a reconciliation committee.
Chief George said this while speaking during a television programm on the topic: "National Reconciliation and Discipline in the PDP," achored by Femi Akande, late on Sunday.
He described the setting up of a Reconciliation Committee as putting the cart before the horse.
The PDP chieftain said, "There's no chance in the world that the chairman of the party will come from the same zone as the president, 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. And of course, divided how will we not be defeated house?
"We could not prevent that from happening. And as we are now, there is no solid opposition to counter the lackluster or non-seriousness of those in government now. We are busy fighting ourselves.
"There's a new concept recently from the Democratic Party in America by President Joe Biden. It's time to go. You've been 40 years as a senator, eight years as Vice President, four years as president.
"You have made your mark in the world and going into a new election at 81, you are no longer as punchy as you are. Please, in the interest of their nation. Just please seat back."
Speaking on events preceeding the current crisis and the efforts made to reconcile fueding members, George said, "I was one of those elected on the first elective convention of our party in 1998 December, and we knew what they handed over, no perpetuity in any office. That is why they divided it three down to the south and three to the north.
"All positions will not come to the south. All positions will not come to the north. And as they go, they rotate around there but they now wanted to denounce that and we said, look, the man who just finished as head of state, Buhari, my boss had just finished.
"Now, when my dear friend, Atiku said he wanted to, we said, no, this is not possible. How do we sell that to our own people, for them to accept us? Because members of a political party are not the only electoral members who will vote.
"People are looking at you. They are watching you. How would I go and campaign, no, the Constitution is clear. And then somehow he emerged.
" And then we said, okay, fine. After a lot of discussion, bargaining and all that, we said, okay, the national chairman must now go back to the south. He said, no, that was where the division started.
"And 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, we will discuss it and after that, you will now be able to now set up a committee to reconcile people.
"If you try to go for a competition and you lose, whether you win or lose, you must do a postmortem. There will be areas where you have made certain mistakes, because to air is human.
"People are just arguing in their various slots, insulting people and I said, let 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 look at what happened, who created this? Who did that to avoid the reccurence in the future."
In response to allegations that he refused to support Atiku because he's not from his region, the PDP BoT member 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 here 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 now went back for second election, this 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 go forward? We will set up a committee to look into the general election and the postelection so that we can prepare ourselves, look the percentage of card carrying members of the party. How many? What is that percentage in the population?
"The problem with the PDP, everybody is a problem, no one person that is the problem. If you have that kind of thing in an organization, what do you do, if you don't want to scatter the organization?
"A proper committee to investigate what has led to that, what is agitating the mind of A, mind of B, and this is what I am saying, as a life member of the Board of Trustees, for God's sake, let everybody calm down.
"Let's get back to the table to make sure we get back to that format which the founding fathers gave us, they handed over to my age group. What am I looking for?
"Now, if I cannot tell you the truth, what is it? I'm almost 80. I'm almost on the eight ladder of life. What are we running after? Why are we scattering this?
" I'm not saying everybody is clean or everybody is rocked, but it's when you go into the depths of why we get ourselves to this position that's when we can say, Okay, let us avoid the pitfalls going forward.
"Damagum has his own view, and nobody is the owner of the enterprise. It was an enterprise established for purposes of civility, for purposes of oneness."
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