Former Deputy National Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Chief Bode George, has described the incident at the party’s national secretariat on Monday as “disgraceful” and “a show of shame,” after he and other party elders were denied access to Wadata Plaza, the PDP’s headquarters in Abuja.
In an interview with Channels Television, Bode George recounted the events that unfolded when members of the PDP Board of Trustees (BoT) arrived for a scheduled meeting, only to be met by heavy police presence at the premises.
“Back at Wadata Plaza today. It was disgraceful. This is the home, like you are going back to your home and suddenly you were surrounded by police and I thought what on the globe was happening,” George said.
He explained that although the security personnel were civil, they offered no legal justification for their actions: “I asked the policeman there. They were not rough, they were quite civil and I asked, did you have a court order or what on the globe is happening? He just says, ‘we are on orders.’”
George said he proceeded into the building to meet with staff but later moved to the rescheduled meeting at the Yar’Adua Centre: “The Board of Trustees is the custodian of the assets and the liabilities of the party. It is the upper chamber of our party. It is the conscience of the party.”
Expressing his frustration over the incident, he said,
“If we were going to hold a meeting without any court order or anything… I flew in from Lagos, others came from their villages, local governments all over the country. I was so furious. What is going on? Who is the order from above? That is what we kept asking.”
George acknowledged that the disruption was later resolved, attributing the mix-up to a misunderstanding: “The guy who made the mistake apologized, said he didn’t know there was going to be a Board of Trustees meeting and he was just trying to safeguard the place because of the meeting that was going to come up later on in the day. What can we do? We have apologised.”
He emphasized that despite the crisis, the party was able to reconcile internally: “These experiences that we are having are a load of lessons for the party members. Never did I ever believe or remember that all the time I spent as a working committee member, did we ever have this show of shame.”
“In the final analysis, in the end, like one family, we came together… Let me assure Nigerians, the electorate, that there is no organisation anywhere in the world that would not have a crisis… In the end, you must come out united. That is what we have achieved today. That is a measure of the competence of the members”, he added.
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