by Boma West
Isa Ali Pantami, the firebrand Islamic scholar who once called down divine punishment on the PDP, has joined the very party he condemned as an assembly of unbelievers to contest the Gombe governorship election.
Around 2014, Pantami made a now-infamous supplication in Arabic: “Allāhumma ʿalayka bi-PDP wa sāʾir al-jamʿiyyāt al-kāfirah”, loosely translated as “O Allah, punish or destroy the PDP and all other parties of infidels.” The prayer was fervent, public, and unambiguous. No asterisks, no fine print.
Fast forward to today, and the Sheikh is not just tolerating the PDP. He is flying its flag. This raises two unavoidable questions: has Pantami become an infidel, or has the PDP stopped being one? Neither answer is comfortable.
A charitable reading exists. Pantami appears to have aligned with the Wike faction of the PDP, which political observers widely regard as an extension of the ruling APC in everything but name. If his loyalty sits with that wing rather than the opposition PDP proper, then perhaps by creative theological gymnastics he has found a loophole large enough to walk through without technically joining “al-jamʿiyyāt al-kāfirah”.
There is also historical precedent suggesting this PDP membership may simply be a stepping stone. A candidate who won a chairmanship election in the FCT on Wike’s PDP platform quietly defected to the APC shortly after victory. Pantami, should he win the governorship, may follow the exact same script.
Nigerian politics has always had a talent for spectacular contradictions, but this particular episode is something else entirely. A man’s recorded words are his most honest biography, and Pantami’s words from 2014 now read less like a religious conviction and more like a political position he has since traded in for a better offer.
The real lesson here belongs to the voter. When a politician’s deepest moral declarations carry an unspoken expiration date, the platform he runs on matters far less than the character he carries into office.
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