THE LAMENTATIONS AND TEARS OF THE ALMAJIRI PEOPLES CONGRESS

Since I left the Almajiri Peoples Congress they have been insulting me and getting their Haramite footsoldiers to attack me in the newspapers and on the social media with all manner of press statements, sponsored essays and paid adverts.

If this is an attempt to intimidate me or discredit me I wish to assure them that it will not work and neither will I lose any sleep over it. As a matter of fact I am used to such shenanigans and better than them have tried in the last 24 years ever since I joined partisan politics.

Such antics only strengthens my resolve and proves my case. The charge was that I left the APC and went back to PDP after one year. That was my crime and what a terrible crime it was. Yet Vice President Atiku Abubakar, a man for whom I have the utmost affection and respect, was once in the PDP.
He later left the party and joined the ACN. After some time he changed his mind again and went back to the PDP. Again a couple of years after that he once again left the PDP and joined the APC. Were his actions criminal as well? Did he go back to his vomit too? Did they take out paid adverts about him with malicious intent?

I am not given to exchanging words with plebians and peasants because it offends my sensibilities. More often than not involving myself in any form of literary or verbal discourse with the unlearned and the uncouth vexes my spirit and troubles my soul. Yet in this case I will make an exception. Permit me to educate my detractors a little here.

Many leaders of the APC were in other parties and exchanged the harshest words with one another in the past only for them to now come together in the APC and become one. Not one of the APC governors was elected to office on the platform of the APC but on that of other parties yet they left those parties, or scrapped them, and are now in the APC.

I do not begrudge any of these people the right to change parties and to change sides mid-stream. It is their right and the prerogative and I do not assume that they have the worst motives for doing so. Yet it appears that it is only Femi Fani-Kayode that does not have the right to change parties without being accused of ”going back to his vomit”.

If indeed I ”went back to my vomit” then so did many others, including people like Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu and General Muhammadu Buhari who were once at loggerheads with one another when they were in diffferent parties. Now they are the best of friends. This is not to mention Vice President Abubakar Atiku who has changed political parties four times in the last 5 years. I am therefore in very good company.

Then there was the charge that I was of no value to the APC anyway. Such words are most uncharitable and very childish. They are the sort of banal and emotionally-charged sentiments that are expressed by a jilted lover or a broken-hearted spouse that has been used and dumped.
The truth is that deep down the Almajiri People’s Congress are biting their finger nails and sweating profusely simply because they are losing their leaders and members one by one and the whole party is about to inplode.
Yesterday it was Buba Marwa, Attahiru Baffawara, Boni Haruna, Ibrahim Shekarau and Markus Gundiri, the next day it was Femi Fani-Kayode, the day after that it was Senator Femi Lanlehin and tomorrow it will be God knows who.

The leadership of the APC are trembling and silently suffering but on the surface they are expressing the highest level of the usual ”I don’t care attitude”. In any case surely in politics everyone matters: even if that person has only his one vote and voice to offer.
If I was never of any value to the Almajiri People’s Congress and they never trusted me then why the loud lamentations, the open aggression and malice, the loud expressions of deep angst and anger, the bitterness, the insults, the compilation of past qoutations, the vivid recollection of past events and the uncontrollable and wild tears simply because I have left them? Can’t they just leave me alone? Is it hurting them that badly? If so they should get over the pain or live with it.

Out of respect for the few dear friends that I still have in the party I have held my peace but if I am sufficiently provoked and I start on them they will be damaged beyond redemption. This is a war that they cannot possibly win. Those that love them best advise them to leave Achilles alone because they cannot stand against him in battle.
If I choose to speak out, fight back and tell the world who and what they are, what they represent, how they love to shed blood, their relationship with Boko Haram, the truth about Chibok and the role some of their leaders played in it, their islamist agenda, their links with the Middle East and the Arab world, their born to rule mentality, their desire to use the south west and later dump them, their utter disdain for southerners, the Middle Belt, the northern minorities, the moderate muslims and the christian community and so much more this country will burn.

For 38 years they enjoyed power and now they are destabilising the government, making the country ungovernable, slaughtering innocent civilians at will and abducting children just to get it back. They have also infiltrated the military and our security agencies with their moles and they have divided our army. Yet these are the people that are talking and pointing fingers at others.

Like Shakespeare’s Henry V said, they should “wake not our sleeping sword lightly”. I am not like most people and I do not know the meaning of the word fear. I am not an easy man to fight because God is with me. I am Achilles and the Biblical David all rolled into one- I love with passion and I fight with rage.

The PDP and the Federal Government do not have the best of records and they have got a lot of things wrong over the years. For the last three years even before I left them I have said so openly and courageously despite the fact that I had much to lose by saying so.

I once described the party as a ”sinking ship” and, at the time, I meant it. However it is now my firm resolve that we shall join hands with all men and women of good will from now on and, together, we shall stop that ship from sinking. This is because we have no choice but to do so.

I would rather go back to a sinking ship and salvage it rather than be in bed with a bunch of ruthless men and women who have blood on their hands and whose desperation for power and to rule over those that they believe were born to be their slaves borders on obsession.

Simply put, the Haramites in the Almajiri People’s Congress cannot be trusted with power. It is as simple as that. They are the greater evil and they are the greatest of all evils. They are the darkness that seeks the darkness. Whether we like to accept it or not PDP is the only party that can stop them from winning power at the centre in Nigeria and that is why I have gone back to that party.

I will also use my good offices to talk to President Obasanjo to stop flirting with these demons in the APC because deep down they secretly hate him. Other than those that left PDP to go to APC the rest of them despise Obasanjo and are only using him. We must save Obasanjo from them.

So far I have only revealed 10 per cent of what I know because I do not want to create havoc in this country but slowly the whole truth about the Almajiri People’s Congress will emerge. Who really started the party, what it’s real agenda is, whose interests it is designed to further and protect, what foreign links it has, what it’s historical antecedents are, where it’s real funding comes from and so on and so forth will soon come out.

Sadly the overwhelming majority of it’s members have no idea what is really going on behind the scenes and what the agenda really is. Those are the ones that I really feel sorry for. They will cry at the end of the day if the Almajiri’s are ever able to seize power at the Federal level because if that happens we will all become second class citizens in a new colony.

In addition to this most of the more reasonable and rational leaders in the party are complaining bitterly behind the scenes but they are too scared to speak out or to leave the party. I urge them all to do so before it is too late.

One day the Nigerian people will thank me for the step that I have taken but for now those that have sympathy for the APC can continue to abuse me for what I have done. At least I have the courage of my convictions and, unlike many others, I have refused to be intimidated and to remain silently in what is essentially a primitive personality cult with islamist connections.

Despite all it’s defects and challenges I have gone back to my family the PDP and I am glad to be back there. I am also glad that they have welcomed me with open arms. Now the work begins. To the Haramites of the Almajiri People’s Congress I say ”eat your hearts out and go and die”.

Your insults, lies and misrepresentations do not move me one bit. They only strenghthen my resolve to protect my country and my people from the evil that you represent.

To my brothers and friends who once served in Obasanjo’s government with me, who are now in the APC and who are fighting me behind the scenes I say ”I see your hands”. We shall meet in the field of battle and at the end of the day, may the best man remain standing. You know me well and destroying me will not be an easy task for you to achieve. Others that are bigger and better than you have tried in the past and they have failed.

Your threats mean nothing to me and you know that I do not back down. I dedicate my cause and my future to the Living God. It is what He thinks of me and purposes to do with me that matters and nothing else. As long as He is with me I know that I am not alone. As long as He is with me I cannot be defeated or overwhelmed.

I cannot be in a party in which the official spokesman, one Lai Mohammed, only last year said that it was wrong and ”unconstitutional” for the Federal Government to proscribe Boko Haram.
This is the same Boko Haram that has killed no less than 15,000 Nigerians in the last three years. I cannot be in a party where the leading Presidential candidate, only last year said that the members of Boko Haram ought not to be killed but instead ought to be treated like the Niger Delta militants and granted amnesty.
I cannot be in a party where that same leading Presidential candidate said, in 2001, that muslims should only vote for people ”who will protect their faith” and that it was his intention to ”spread sharia throughout the nation”.
I cannot be in a party where a number of leading people question the secularity of the state. I cannot be in a party which appears to have politicised the Chibok affair and who are not sincere in trying to get the girls back.
I cannot be in a party where a few of it’s leaders are more interested in hurling bricks at our military than in helping to encourage them to do a better job.
I cannot be in a party in which the role of one of it’s governors in the Chibok issue is still not clear: this is a governor that has not been able to explain to the world why he insisted that the girls should go ahead and do their exams in that school and remain there for the night even though WAEC and the Federal Government, through the Federal Ministry of Education, had warned them about the dangers of doing so and told them not to do it.
I cannot be in a party in which one of the leading members was the individual that orginally founded Boko Haram. I cannot be in a party in which another of it’s leading members has openly insulted my traditional ruler the Ooni of Ife and called him, together with many of our other traditional rulers in the south-west, ”useless”.
I cannot be in a party in which one of it’s most prominent and powerful elders, a leading northern politician whom I once revered, confidently told me that ”a good muslim like Buhari must be our next President because that is the choice of the north”, that ”the christians in the north are nothing” and that ”a christian cannot possibly be our flagbearer because our support base is the muslim north and the muslim south-west”.

He went further by saying that ”ours is a muslim party with a muslim ethos and muslim values. Your quest to get a christian flagbearer to be our candidate is an exercise in futility: it will fail”. He concluded by saying that ”the christians would even be lucky to get the Vice Presidential slot”. I cannot be in a party with such religious bigots.

I cannot be in a party in which dissent and having a differing opinion with others on fundamental issues is seen as a grave offence and something that ought to be frowned upon. I cannot be in a party whose membership violates the biblical provision that says ‘’there can be no fellowship between light and darkness’’. Thanks and God bless Nigeria.