Senator Musiliu Obanikoro, exercising a right of reply has hit back at the former Deputy National Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Chief Olabode George, asking him to seek rehabilitation for post-traumatic stress arising from his stint in jail.
The former minister was responding to George’s statement that portrayed Obanikoro as a lunatic after Obanikoro had accused him of manipulating the recent governorship primaries of the PDP in Lagos state that favoured Jimi Agbaje.
Obanikoro has gone to a Federal High Court in Abuja to challenge the verdict. The court will give a ruling on 23 December.
Obanikoro in reference to George’s spell in Kirikiri Prison before the Supreme Court acquittal said: “Indeed, there is nothing unexpected about the recent tantrums by Chief Bode George targeted at me in spite of the ignoble role he played in the fraudulent outcome of the Lagos PDP gubernatorial primaries. For whatever it is worth, it is to Chief Bode George’s credit that his family name is tainted and now constitutes a generational blemish as Nigeria’s leading metaphor for gross moral deficit, lack of integrity and public dishonour.
“As Chief Bode George embarks on his feeble attempts at painting a picture of me that exists only in his perverted imagination, let someone remind him that the post-traumatic stress disorder that comes with a time in jail would take more than just an unholy alliance with a pharmacist to heal.
” It is instructive to state here that not only that I am properly raised in the best of Yoruba tradition, I owe a large part of my successful public service career to a childhood and education built on godly principles and sound moral values.
“In all my life and public service career, I have never been accused, arrested or convicted for fraud whether at home in Nigeria or abroad and I have been happily and responsibly married for 34 years”.
The latter was also a punch below the belt for Chief George as he divorced his first wife, Feyi, before marrying Roli.
In his statement,George dismissed Obanikoro’s allegation that he manipulated the PDP primaries as alarmist provocations and described the former minister as “a desperate and obsessed man who is apparently incapable of absorbing the reality of his defeat by a well-bred and better man.”
“For Obanikoro to claim in sheer ludicrousness that I, even remotely, identify with any intimations of violence is utter lunacy and blind, vindictive madness. Surely, Obanikoro is possessed and obsessed. He needs immediate psychiatric treatment. He is a desperate sinking man, grasping and thrashing in self inflicted chasm.
“What is the pedigree of this young man who has abandoned the typical African deference to elders? We know who sprung from violence and banditry. We know whose antecedents reek in noisome, vagrant, untidy ruffianism.
“Politics is not a do or die affair. No civilised person with impeccable pedigree will seek a tacky refuge in destruction and ruin simply because he has lost in a free and fair contest. Obanikoro should go quietly into that good night if he means well for Lagos.
“Enough of his desperate tantrums and lunacy. Lagos has moved on, far beyond the primitive wretchedness of little, ill-bred hooligans.”