After
weeks of speculation, former governor of Borno State, Senator Ali Modu
Sheriff, on Monday in Maiduguri, the state capital, confirmed that he
was defecting from the All Progressives Congress (APC) to the Peoples
Democratic Party, PDP.
The ex-governor, who arrived in Maiduguri alongside several members
of the National Assembly and was received at the airport at about 2 p.m.
by a mammoth crowd of supporters from both the PDP and ruling APC.
He was thereafter accompanied by a convoy of hundreds of cars from the Maiduguri airport to his Giwa Barracks Road home.
Confirming his exit from the APC to journalists who interviewed him
in his house, SAS, as he is fondly called, said he also came to pull his
“people” out of the APC.
“There is nothing to hide as you can see, I have come to consult with
my people on our resolve to pull out of the APC and join the PDP. But
this is just a private visit which turned out to be some kind of rally
because our supporters wanted it that way”, the former governor said.
“We are still consulting with the national officers of the PDP on how
to go about it, because the pull out is going to be big, and we hope to
organise it after fasting. Presently, as you can see, majority of our
people are fasting and praying for peace to return to our dear state.
But after the Ramadan we will come back and pull our people out of the
APC”.
Asked why he was dumping a party he helped built, Mr. Sheriff, who
was one of the chieftains of the party reportedly schemed out at the
just concluded national convention of the party, said the APC was not
inclusive.
“The game has changed both in Borno and at the national level. APC
has no solid foundation; a party cannot be built around an individual”,
Mr. Sheriff said.
“I have taken time to study the package called APC and came to
realise that it won’t work. And any serious politician, who knows his
onions would not want to be in a ship that is bound to crash”.
“For now we are in high-level consultation with our people and also
with the PDP national officers. It is sad that our people here are in
serious want; I came and saw many of them in serious difficulties, and
we feel pained that we have to do something fast to assist them. We have
no option now than to come and tell them that we are sorry, that we
brought them a wrong party, but now we have come to correct our
mistakes”.
Speaking on how he helped make his erstwhile political godson, Kashim
Shettima governor of the troubled North-East state, Sheriff said:
“Kashim Shettima was my commissioner for four years before God gave us
the opportunity of assisting him become the governor of Borno state in
2011. It cannot be doubted that I took him round the 27 local government
councils of Borno and sold his candidature to the people before he was
accepted and voted as governor.
“But now the game has changed, and we have no choice than to do what
the people of Borno State want; we know there was too much sufferings
but we call on the people to be patient. We all pray that God should
bring us peace so that Borno state can regain its name once again as the
home of peace”, he added.
Sheriff’s visit to Maiduguri by air comes barely 24 hours after the
Governor Shettima left the state capital for Abuja by road, as the
military insisted the airport was closed for security reasons.
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