Bode George: Tinubu sent Gbajabiamila to beg me not to leave Nigeria

Bode George, ex-deputy national chair (south) of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), says he would have left Nigeria if President Bola Tinubu did not send Femi Gbajabiamila after him. 

In January 2022, after Tinubu announced his presidential bid, George threatened to flee Nigeria.

“I will move away from Nigeria. I’ll leave because he will be your representative in the international plane. Which investment will he bring here? I am not talking because I have any hatred for him,” he said.

“This is not the kind of person we can hand over this massive country to manage. He will be the greatest joke on the international plane. We should bother who should lead us.

“If by whatever chance he gets to the villa, I won’t be part of this country. And I am not joking. I can go to Ghana and be watching with binoculars from afar. You will see what will happen.”

It was the umpteenth time George had threatened to leave Nigeria for good in the event of a Tinubu presidency.

Speaking in an interview with Arise TV on Wednesday, George said it took Gbajabiamila, the president’s chief of staff, to get him to change his mind.

“During the campaign period I stated it and I meant it; that if by whatever measure Bola Tinubu wins this election, I was going to get out,” he said.

“Once they heard that, Tinubu sent his chief of staff, who is my little brother from Lagos state, Femi Gbajabiamila, to appeal to me.

“He came to say: ‘my boss said I should tell you, please be calm’. They knew they had wronged me. They said they were sorry.”

PDP CRISIS

George said the crisis in the PDP began during the buildup to the 2023 presidential election.

He also asked Nyesom Wike, minister of the federal capital territory (FCT); and Atiku Abubakar, presidential candidate of the PDP in the 2023 election; to sheathe their swords and work toward a resolution of the internal crisis.

“The last convention — the presidential convention — was when everything started. Instead of arresting it, they were exacerbating it,” George said.

“With all that, you cannot have the chairman of the party and the presidential candidate from one side of the divide — they didn’t listen.”

George recounted how he confronted Iyorchia Ayu, ex-party chair, over his promise to step down if a northern presidential candidate emerged.

“Ayu made a public statement that peradventure the presidency comes from the north, he would resign. But when the results were announced, he said, ‘I have four years; I’m not going anywhere’.

“This is breach of trust! Of course, people would react to that. It’s against the party constitution to have the chairman of the party and the presidential candidate from the same zone — it is an anomaly.

“I want to appeal to the leaders of the various groups in the party that it is time to shelve your personal ambitions and let us rebuild the party.

“There is no organisation in the world without crisis but the ability to rebuild the crisis is needed.

“This crisis didn’t start now; it started from the presidential convention and nobody was able to manage it.

“Atiku and Wike should calm down and let us go to the elders meeting where we would start this discussion, to trace this crisis back to that convention, because that was where everything started going in the wrong direction.”

George recalled expressing dismay at the party’s disunity ahead of the election and noted that a crucial meeting was held two days before the poll.

“Two days before the general election, we had a meeting in Abuja, and it was only Oyo governor and Wike that came,” he said.

“They told us the stories of what they were going to do, and Wike said, out of the two candidates from the south, ‘I think we can go with Tinubu’. I said, at this meeting?

“I looked around and said there is nobody that knows Tinubu better than me, and I can’t do that; it would be wrong for you to leave this meeting and have a communique issued that our group has agreed to support Tinubu.

“They further asked me what my suggestion was and I told them they should take the discussion to their respective states to discuss whether they wanted Peter Obi or Tinubu.”