By Miftaudeen Raji
The governorship candidate of the Lagos State Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the 2023 election, Abdulazeez Olajide Adediran, popularly known as Jandor, said he did not expel Chief Bode George from the party.
He said, “I did not expel them because I have no power to do so; I would rather say they expelled themselves when they declared for another party during the 2023 electioneering process. There is evidence on national TV both for the presidential and gubernatorial elections.
“When a supposed leader of a political party goes on national TV to say, ‘Don’t vote for the candidate of my party, irrespective of what it is, it shows that the leader has gone to the other party.
“If the party they supported had won, they would have been part of the government today. I don’t have the power, and they never said they’d be expelled; they did it themselves.
“What we’re saying is that because you’ve declared openly, you have no say in this party,” he said.
Recall that Jandor had earlier said that leaders of the party who supported another candidate during the last elections have ceased to be members of the party.
Jandor stated this in a State of the Nation address, where he also declared that he is now the leader of the PDP in the state.
According to him, leaders of the party who openly declared for another candidate both during the presidential and governorship elections are no longer members of the party.
Jandor came in third in the governorship election, won by incumbent Governor Babajide Olusola Sanwo-Olu.
He also lost the cases filed at the Tribunal, Appeal Court and Supreme Court where he sought to be declared the winner of the election, alleging that the governor presented a fake secondary school result.
Jandor said the experience of the PDP and its candidates in the 2023 election was not different from the past, when some party leaders betrayed the party by working against its candidates.
Some leaders of the party worked for the candidate of the Labour Party, Peter Obi, in the presidential election.
The governorship candidate reiterated that working against the party has been the stock in trade of those party leaders, recalling that in the 2019 election, the same group declared support for ADP against PDP and also worked for Labour Party in the 2017 local government election.
