The All Progressives Youth Forum is planning to organize a nationwide thanks giving with special Sunday church service and Jumma’at prayers over the defection of former Governor of Borno State, Ali Modu Sheriff from the APC to PDP, the Forum’s chairman, Ismail Ahmed said on Saturday.
Sheriff had on Friday confirmed his planned defection to PDP when he told State House correspondents after a closed door meeting with President Goodluck Jonathan that his movement to PDP was in Nigeria’s best interest.
Ahmed said the Forum received the news with so much joy as it considers his exit as the best thing that would ever happen to the life of the party due to what it calls ‘strategic blackmail of the APC by the PDD using Sheriff’s alleged links with the Boko Haram, regardless whether Sheriff was guilty or not”.
The Forum said “it has conducted very serious investigations about all the games in trying to attach a bad name to the APC locally and internationally. We found out that the PDP uses sponsored commentators in Nigeria to link Sheriff with Boko Haram, rightly or wrongly and because he was a chieftain of the APC, it was easy to sell that to Nigerians using the media. The Forum recalled that the Minister of Information, Labaran Maku and Femi Fani Kayode recently said in public that Sheriff was behind Boko Haram and they openly used that to associate APC with Boko Haram.
The Forum further recalled that the PDP in Borno State as far as 2011 sent a delegation to media houses and alleged that Sheriff was responsible for the emergence of a violent Boko Haram attack after a certain deal he struck with their late leader to support his bid in 2003 to be Governor and in return Sheriff created a Ministry for Religious Affairs and made one of the Boko Haram’s major financial backbones, Buji Foi as Commissioner for Religious Affairs, but that Sheriff along the line fell out leading to the 2009 first major crisis and that Sheriff ordered the killing of Mohammed Yusuf whereas he was captured alive and also ordered the killing of the former commissioner, Buji Foi while he was also captured alive, all in an attempt to silence both Yusuf and Foi from revealing some information about their dealing to the public we are now where we are. Boko Haram went viral over the extra judicial killings of their members to the extent that the crisis has taken a confusing dimension.
But the PDP led Federal Government deliberately refused to arrest Sheriff, instead, the FG blackmailed him into working against the ANPP then and thereafter planted him as a spy in APC, where he was able to report every strategy of the APC to the PDP since as a national leader of the party he was privileged to attend strategic and highly sensitive meetings of the party.
Most importantly also, the PDP and the Federal Government are in the habit of telling the international community that APC has links with Boko Haram and in each of their meetings with representatives of foreign countries and international institutions, the PDP and the FG cited Sheriff’s membership of the APC as basis of APC’S false link with Boko Haram. At a point two months ago, some agents working to satisfy PDP wanted British parliament to move a motion in session seeking to probe APC’S alleged link with Boko Haram principally on the basis of Sheriff’s membership of APC
By the time Sheriff leaves the APC, nobody will have any reason to further demonise the party locally or internationally. We had actually recommended his expulsion to the leadership of the party a while ago if not for some people like the Governor of his State and Kashim Imam who intervened.
We don’t want him one bit in APC. He was a big burden to us, we feel so relieved and this is why we will call on our members nationwide to attend special sunday church service and jumma’at prayers to offer thanksgiving to God almighty for cleansing the APC.
His exit is the best thing that ever happened to the APC since it came into being. The APC was not happy with the departure of Shekarau and Bafarawa but Sheriff, no,no, we wanted him out and we say thank God he has left us, let him go far, far away with his controversial history and antecedents. We don’t want any Hitler related past around us’ the Forum said.