Pantami Now a Member of "al-jamʿiyyāt al-kāfirah"?

 By Farooq Kperogi  I just read that Isa Ali Pantami, the previously intense, PDP-phobic Sheikh who invoked a famous malediction against the...

 By Farooq Kperogi 

I just read that Isa Ali Pantami, the previously intense, PDP-phobic Sheikh who invoked a famous malediction against the party and equated it with an assembly of unbelievers is now running for governor of Gombe on its platform. Ha!

Around 2014 or thereabouts, the Sheikh said, اللهم عليك بـ PDP وسائر الجمعيات الكافرة

Transliteration: Allāhumma ʿalayka bi-PDP wa sāʾir al-jamʿiyyāt al-kāfirah.

Idiomatic translation: “O Allah, punish or destroy the PDP and all the other parties of infidels."

So what happened? Has the Sheikh become an infidel or it is the PDP that has stopped being a party of infidels?

Well, since PDP has two factions, it's probably the Wike faction, which is, for all practical purposes, an extension of APC, that the Sheikh is a new member of. 

If that is the case, we need to cut him some slack. The Wike faction of PDP, to the extent that it's an extension of APC, may be exempt from being part of al-jamʿiyyāt al-kāfirah (i.e., party of infidels). 

Sheikh Pantami will probably switch to APC if he wins the election next year. That was what the guy who won a chairmanship election in the FCT on Wike's PDP platform did.

But, seriously, there is no limit to the absurdity Nigerian politics can throw up. Good luck to the Sheikh.