Femi Fani-Kayode has wondered aloud whether the leadership of the PDP “have gone completely mad or they are working for elements outside the PDP”—for imposing Sen. Ali Modu Sheriff as the party’s national chairman.
“Are they suggesting that you need a godless Haramite to run the affairs of the party before we can ever win power at the center again?”
Fani-Kayode’s outburst in his article published Friday somehow contradicts PDP Gov. Ayo Fayose’s insistence that Sheriff’s choice is good for the party.
This is the first time Fani-Kayode and Fayose will publicly contradict each other since both took leading roles in the run-up to 2015 presidential election when their campaign themes against APC candidate Muhammadu Buhari were in sync. Fani-Kayode was PDP Presidential Campaign spokesman then.
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PDP’s governors rooted for the appointment of Sheriff because, according to them, he is rich and bold—although he’s asaid to be the original backer of Boko Haram when he was governor.
“Others may seek to justify such a course of action but I cannot, in good conscience, do so,” Fani-Kayode said of the appointment of Sheriff who, he claimed, might be a double agent working for Chadian President Idris Derby because the PDP chairman is more Chadian than Nigerian.
He accepts Sheriff’s membership of PDP as normal because politics is a game of number. But he decries the chairman appointment on principles. “If we are comfortable with the likes of Ali Modu Sheriff leading us then on what basis did we criticize and oppose President Muhammadu Buhari for appearing to support Boko Haram when he said, “an attack on Boko Haram is an attack on the north”?”
According to him, Sheriff has a long-term plan to remain as chairman, to jostle for the 2019 presidential candidate ticket, and win the election.
“This will fail because it does not have the blessing of God. Time will prove me right,” he said.
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Fani-Kayode, who now enjoys flashing his new-found Evangelical CV when he criticises, is the second PDP member, after Doyin Okupe, to have publicly condemned the party leadership for appointing the APC defector as PDP chairman.
Both agree the party’s decision has just sounded the death knell for the former ruling party of 16 unbroken years.
“It is a tragedy of monumental proportions and I have little doubt that God will judge them for what they have done,” said Fani-Kayode.