Segun James
Chief Olabode George monday warned that the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) is at cross roads and that he was best suited to take the party to the next level as its national chairman.
George said this as he launched his campaign for the chairmanship position at the party’s convention which comes up on August 18 at the Lagos State party’s headquarters.
The PDP chieftain who is also the leader of the party in the South-west lamented that “these are not happy times for our party. The times appear dark and bleak. The horizon is uncertain. We are being assailed in every corner.
“Problems brew everywhere. Our challenges appear endless and intractable. Every day, we are confronted with a new drama and with a new hurdle. Certainly, there are some obvious and not so obvious interests inside and outside our party that do not wish us well.
“Today, our effectiveness as the opposition party is being rendered inconsequential and virtually of no value as we engage ourselves in a very destructive mutual consumption.”
He stressed: “Our party needs a rescue. Our party needs redemption. Our party deserves a balanced, experienced, tested, trusted and faithful hand. Our party needs a team player and a unifying leadership. Our party needs stability.
“Here and now, I am humbly making a stand and a declaration as an aspirant for the position of the office of the national chairman of our party with a vision to serve as a bridge builder, as a peace-maker and as a healer of the broken places.
“I cannot do it alone. Nobody can. I cannot resolve all the issues or reconcile all the differences alone. But I promise to work with our leaders to find a common ground and negotiate a healthy compromise to achieve a common purpose of a strong, prosperous, equitable, democratic and a victorious organisation.
“I cannot pretend that I have all the answers. But I am prepared and willing to work with all strata of our party to ensure that the dreams and the visions of our founding fathers are fully restored once again.”
He lamented that what was now happening within the party was not the way the founding fathers engraved the values, the normative patterns and the nuances of the party more than 17 years ago.
George recalled the ideals that necessitated the founding of the party, saying: “The originating tenets and founding idealisms of our party were grounded and then enforced when the sacred seeds of the formation of the PDP were sowed and nurtured on the unifying soil of Abuja.”
He stressed that those who founded the party discarded and abandoned personal ambitions without any narrow agenda or selfish pursuit of individual goals.
The politician stated that it was in this selflessness and ultimate resolve that “our founding fathers were able to put in place a viable and enduring democratic legacy. This was our great beginning. This was our enviable pioneering foundation on which we built 16 years of enduring and great democratic structure.
“But which system in the world is without flaws? Surely, we had our own failings in the past. But we were able to use internal mechanisms to correct our errors. We were able to look within our party for the solution to any problem. Our party was self-rectifying.
“The organs of our party were democratic, self-reliant and self-guided. Our machinery was humane. Our purpose was clear. Our destination was firm and obvious.
George however regretted that things have changed as “our great party is no longer recognisable today. A lot of distortions have set in. Indiscipline has eroded the foundations of old. Selfishness and greed have compromised the great idealisms and the logical principles of our founding fathers.
“We lost the presidential election because we had lost faith in the goals and the standards that had been erected by our founding fathers.
“We lost the election because we became distant and indifferent to the needs and the aspirations of the people. The centerpiece of every democratic society is the embrace and the cultivation of the populist inclinations and necessities.”
