Former Labour MP, George Galloway, this time running on the platform of his newly-formed Workers Party of Britain, pulled off a mini political earthquake by winning a by-election in a Labour Party stronghold last night in cold Rochdale, in the Greater Manchester area. His win was bad news for Keir Starmer, leader of the Labour Party, who has backed the Israeli slaughter in Gaza, as Galloway exploited his long history of supporting the Palestinian cause.
But another of Galloway’s causes will be making President Bola Tinubu of Nigeria sweat in the humidity of Abuja as Galloway heads to Westminster and the platform being an MP gives him. Last year, Galloway used his Mother of All Talk Shows YouTube programme to expand on Tinubu’s drug-dealing, certificate forging, and all-round criminality, including granting a platform to exiled Tinubu nemesis David Hundeyin, a man who has risked his own life to bring Tinubu’s gangsterism to the fore.
With his fiery oratory and way with words, Galloway regularly tongue-lashed Tinubu, calling him, among other things “the illicit president of Nigeria” and “a dog-eared and ragged example of corruption” who “can’t even spell his forged university degree correctly”.
Galloway alleged in November that “Tinubu and gang were threatening” him.
In August Galloway explained why Tinubu, who he called a “bagman” for drug dealers caught his attention:
Truth is if #Nigerian #Bagman #Tinubu hadn’t threatened to invade #Niger and have #Africans murdering Africans for #France and the #USEmpire he might never have caught my eye – I have many fish to fry. But now that he has, and his barking chorus is in full-song I won’t give up…
— George Galloway MP (@georgegalloway) August 15, 2023
In response to one caller on Galloway’s show who tried to defend Tinubu, the new MP said: “I’m against him because he is a crook. I’m against him because he is a thief. I’m against him because he is a bad man. I’m against him because he forged his election papers. I’m against him because INEC forged his victory in the election”.
Galloway once asked rhetorically “if you don’t punish lying in your political leaders, then why should they stop lying?” He was at the forefront of exposing the lies that led to the US/UK invasion of Iraq in 2003. He was expelled from the Labour Party for saying truthfully that British soldiers should disobey “immoral orders” from their seniors as the invasion of Iraq was illegal.
Telling the truth to power is what has won Galloway many friends and many enemies, and elections, especially last night’s by-election. Tinubu, who has not been punished for all his lies, fraud, forgery and crimes, and has risen to the highest office in Nigeria instead, could get the long-deserved punishment after making an enemy of such a truth-teller as Galloway, particularly now he has the platform offered by the “Mother of all Parliaments” in Westminster.
