Familiar Foes, Musiliu Obanikor, Bode George Back In The Trenches Over Usual Discord, Lagos Guber!

The battle gong has finally been sounded.

Familiar foes, Musiliu Obanikoro and Bode George are officially at war again.

And as usual, the cause of their of battle is regular contender, Obanikoro's attempt to become the flag bearer of his party in the upcoming Lagos gubernatorial election.

Here are the details

of the first salvo in a fight that promises to be interesting.

The immediate past Minister of State for Defence, Senator Musiliu Obanikoro, has accused a former Deputy National Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party, Chief Bode George, of meddling in the party’s ward congresses, held in Lagos on Saturday.

According to a notice of complaint forwarded to the PDP National Chairman, Alhaji Adamu Mu’Azu, via Twitter on Monday, Obanikoro said George had unduly interfered with the conduct of the congresses.

While reporting George to Mu’Azu, the former minister, through his Special Adviser on Media and Strategy, Ohimai Godwin-Amaize, also noted on Twitter that the congresses held across the state were far from being free and fair.

Obanikoro, who is a Lagos State governorship aspirant on the platform of the PDP, urged the leadership of the party to checkmate George’s influence, ahead of the party’s primaries

.

“PDP needs a free and fair primary that is devoid of Bode George’s undue interference as seen during the ward congresses,” he wrote in a message to Mu’Azu.

Obanikoro boasted that even “one million cynics” would not stop his governorship bid, which he explained was meant to bring about a “greater Lagos.”

“What I see is a greater Lagos where the hopes of the little girl growing up in Mushin are the same as the dreams of the child in Victoria Garden City.

“Cynics have perfected the art of telling us that the Lagos of our dreams is not possible. We refuse to agree with them!

“One million cynics cannot stop the dream of a greater Lagos. While they focus on impossibilities, we focus on a greater Lagos,” he added.

But the PDP national chairman stated that he had received “opinions, suggestions and feedbacks” on the ward congresses.

Mu’Azu described the various complaints he had received as a fallout of “clash of interests” within the party.

Arguing that such clashes were “very normal in politics,” the former Bauchi State Governor said that key actors in many of the states where he had received complaints only out-smarted one another in the political scheming.

“Power belongs to the people at the ward level. Ward politics is an integral part of democracy. The people in the ward are the ones who decide the political destinies of many political actors.

“Our people must continue to have a direct say in the affairs of their nation and how they are governed. Our Ward Congresses are meant to elect responsible delegates, who in turn will elect candidates to represent our party in elective positions.

“Most of the complaints about our ward congresses are a clash of interests which is a very normal thing in politics. Politician ‘A’ comes to the venue of a ward congress with his perfect plan only to discover that politician ‘B’ has out-smarted him,” Mu’Azu wrote, in a series of tweets.

....punch