I stand here today in historic significance to testify 
Our party, the People’s Democratic Party was in power for 16 years of unbroken democratic governance. In this particularization, every zone in this pluralistic nation had enjoyed the significant helmsmanship of our party’s apex leadership except the South West.
This is troubling. This is not fair. This is unacceptable. This much we will fight against with all our Strength, with all our energy and with all our purposeful dedication.
There is no doubt about it : it is our turn. Now it is our right as the people of the South West to mount the apex leadership of our party.
Now, this much is our position. Now this much is our pursuit. Now, this much is our absolute declaration: We need the best of us. We are resigned and resolved to bring out the great personality that will seize the moment and steer our party back to national leadership and purposeful renewal.
In this pursuit, in this firm resolve and contemplative clarity, we hereby proclaim and assert that Chief Olabode Ibiyinka George is the best candidate for the job.
Here, we mince no words. Here we do not withdraw into personal sentiments or retreat into collective frivolities. We are dead serious.
We are absolutely resolved and affirmed that our party can only be enhanced and renewed towards the winning ways only when we bring out the tested, the proven, the matured and the responsible person to lead us to electoral victory in 2019.
This is not the time for trial and error. This not the time for some crude illogic experimentation.
We dare not fail. We dare not falter. We dare not temporize nor make the wrong move. Chief Olabode Ibiyinka George is now the man of destiny. He is the right choice for our party now in this challenging times.
I want to be absolutely clear about our purpose here today. What we do here and now is the voluntary collective effort of all leaders of the South West and even beyond who mean well for our party and our nation.
Nothing here, let me emphasize firmly, has any direct connection with my good friend Bode. This is our own initiative. We are the people drafting Chief Bode George to put his hat in the ring and come out boldly to contest the position of our National Chairman.
Our resolve is not frivolous. We are very serious. We want the best for our party. We want the best for our nation.
We have weighed Chief Bode George on all complementary criteria for our party’s leadership. He is proven and tested. He is serious and dedicated. He is honest, fair, smart, sharp, intelligent, humble, sincere, patriotic, accommodating, selfless, candid, totally resolved on justice and fair play.
He has a fantastic network that is hardly rivaled in this nation. He is never detained by tribalistic urges. He is vast, expansive in his national accommodating largeness.
This is the man that can now help our part to resuscitate and renew itself along the line of a triumphant new beginning. Our challenges are many. The road ahead is still very rough and unclear. Nothing yet is certain.
This is the more reason why our party needs a strong, firm and steady captain. We need a skipper who knows the terrain. We need an excellent captain who can steer us calmly amid the turbulent sea.
We need a rational and courageous leader who will be fair and just, who will lead with democratic conscience, who will carry everyone on board, making sure that all issues are debated, insisting that every voice must be heard before a decision is taken.
Chief Olabode George had served with meritorious distinction for 10years in our national secretariat, rising to the position of the Deputy national Chairman, effectively the number two position in the whole party.
In 2003 he coordinated and brilliantly marshalled the PDP victory in the South West where we won five out of the six states. Even Lagos state which we allegedly lost was instigated by the enemies within.
A man of prompt conciliatory largeness, Chief Bode George, my personal friend who I have known for more than 48 years is a great mediator, and an instinctive peace maker whose historic effort brought together the Ife people and the Modakeke people to a permanent peace table, thereby banishing forever the internecine war that had disrupted and destroyed the peace of both communities for decades.
The Ife people and the Modakeke people are now at peace. The discord of war is long flung away. Mutual enmity is now forgotten. The ancient bond of brotherhood is now restored.
It is this great, historic mediatory intervention that prompted the late Ooni of Ife, Oba Okunade Sijuwade to give my friend the very significant title of Atona Oodua of Yorubaland. The last time this title was given was in the 13th century. This no doubt emphasized the primacy of the Atona title.
Of course the Atona is the torch bearer, the pathfinder of the Yoruba race. He is the Shepherd who leads the way, who clears the ground and sanitizes the horizon for our great progenitor, Oduduwa himself. The Atona is the purifier of the cluttered passages, the defining cleanser of the primeval beginning.
I have gone to this length to define, to articulate the summative distinction of Chief Olabode George as the right man and as the appropriate choice for the position of our National Chairman.
The Yoruba people have clearly and boldly made their choice at the Akure declaration where the genuine and legitimate leaders of our people gave a resounding consensus to the candidacy of Chief Olabode George as our choice for the National Chairman.
We hereby confirm, reaffirm that historic Akure consensus. There is no going back. If our party must reclaim the Aso-Rock Villa in 2019, we cannot afford to put a neophyte to lead our team.
We cannot afford to sacrifice our collective interest for personal benefit. We do not need any man of divided loyalty. We do not need anyone whose motives are unclear, whose loyalty is blurry, who focus is distorted.
We need a man of clear, pure, and steadfast integrity. We need a strong man of honour. We need a fighter, a vibrant steward, a shepherd of forthright instinctiveness.
We need Chief Olabode Ibiyinka George, the Atona Oodua of Yorubaland.
To the detractors, the back-biters, the woolly-headed, the unfair and the deliberate sadistic and the defamatory league who insist on maligning my friend by calling him an ex-convict, I want to silent you now and forever by quoting the concluding judgment of the Supreme Court which discharged and acquitted Chief Olabode George:
I quote:
“It has been established that the case of the respondent rests on a shifting sand. The charges framed against the appellant in respect of splitting of contracts and disobedience of guideline in Exhibit P3 is unknown to any written law at the material time. They rest on nothing in the face of the provisions of section 36(8) and (12) of the 1999 constitution. They cannot stand as they fall flat.
….. And to cap it, the prosecution laced the extent charges with intention to defraud, an extra element of the charge which was not proved beyond doubt. It was a complete mistrial by the lower courts.
I must stop here as nothing useful will be served in moving forward in respect of other issues. The appeal is allowed as same is, no doubt, meritorious. The appellant is hereby acquitted and discharged forthwith.”
This immortal words were read and written by J. A. Fabiyi, Justice of the Supreme Court.
To the enlightening, to the informed and to the well meaning, now we have a closure. Chief Olabode George cannot and must never be referred to again as an ex-convict. Any recourse to such outrageous expletive again is is defamatory if uttered and basically libelous if written down. Now let the odious detractors beware!
Bode George is now clean as a whistle. He is the victim here. But to God be the Glory. The coast is clear. He is now redeemed. He has paid a terrible and undeserved price. He is ready to serve. He is prepared to lead. He is the right Choice.
May the God Almighty crown our efforts with success. I thank you all.
– Chief Ebenezer Babatope, CON,Former Federal Minister Transport & Aviation
Lugard Avenue, 16th August, 2018
