By Idowu Akinlotan
Nearly two weeks after a section of the media began reporting the religious fanaticism of Communications and Digital Economy minister, Ali Pantami, the presidency at first kept curiously silent. To many disquieted Nigerians on social media, it was inconceivable that presidency officials were not aware of Dr Pantami’s past, and how that past would in time upset the present. It didn’t also make sense that the secret service did not avail both the government and the Senate, which screened him for a cabinet position in 2019, the correct state of mind and activities of the beleaguered minister. By keeping adamantly quiet for about two weeks as the controversy became bad-tempered, the presidency allowed speculations to run riot, including the suspicion that the influential Dr Pantami was probably central to many of the controversial and insular actions and policies of the government.
When eventually the administration responded last Thursday, they were combative, insinuative and threatening, with a part of their defence of the minister sounding like a panegyric, and other parts going ahead to insult and blackmail critics. The administration’s response was signed by one of the presidential spokesmen, Garba Shehu, complete with awful timelines that wrongly attributed Dr Pantami’s behavior and discourses to wrong dates, and with the wrong dates in turn leading the government to draw wrong conclusions regarding the motive and genuineness of the minister’s alleged reformation. To Mr Shehu, critics of Dr Pantami who insist he has no business remaining in office, belong to a ‘cancel’ culture, and were probably induced anyway. It is doubtful whether any other government can lose its moral compass so badly as the Buhari administration has. After praising Dr Pantami to the high heavens, and excoriating his critics as undiscerning and criminally inclined, Mr Shehu concludes: “In putting people first, the Minister and this administration have made enemies. There are those in the opposition who see success and want it halted by any means. And there is now well-reported information that alleges newspaper editors rebuffed an attempt to financially induce them to run a smear campaign against the minister by some ICT companies, many of which do indeed stand to lose financially through lower prices and greater consumer protections. The government is now investigating the veracity behind these claims of attempted inducement, and – should they be found to hold credence – police and judicial action must be expected.”
So, rather than investigate Dr Pantami, and satisfy the public that the minister is truly contrite and constitute no danger, overtly or covertly, to the republic, critics are the ones to be investigated. Surely, running an administration cannot be so complex that even third-rate officials can’t position the horse and the cart appropriately. Little is left for the minister to do after the administration has so disrespectfully lambasted his critics and exonerated him. However, in some ways, Dr Pantami is still fighting tooth and nail to hang on to office. He is loth to relinquish his position, perhaps not because he derives private gain from it, but probably because his stay in the cabinet and in the ministry confers certain unstated advantages to the controversial worldview he represents. It has always been the mantra of the administration that whenever there is opposition to its policies, it invariably represents corruption fighting back. Dr Pantami has adapted that refrain by suggesting that his peremptory policies in the Communications ministry were responsible for the attacks he is receiving. In fact, some of his supporters have argued that the opposition to Dr Pantami is religiously motivated, a red herring the embattled minister has done precious little to dispel.
Initially, Dr Pantami disputed most of the allegations against his person and motives. But confronted by a barrage of evidence, most of them unflattering, he has shifted his position and adopted a more conciliatory but hardly convincing posture. He blames the headiness of youth for his brashness and extremism over the years, a position he says his increasing maturity, particularly after he joined the Buhari administration, has led him to ameliorate. Dr Pantami is 48 years old. In 2010, when he was about 37, and long past the age of accountability, he was alleged to have presided over a Jama’atu Nasril Islam (JNI) meeting in the Bauchi Central Mosque where blistering attacks were leveled against Christians and fellow Nigerians opposed to their worldview, and treasonable plots were hatched to cause mayhem, execute jihad, assassinate a governor, procure arms, compromise security forces, engage in land seizures, liberate (religious cleansing) Kaduna, undermine the constitution, and disrupt and subvert Christianity. His supporters have, however, alleged the document to be fake. Refuters of the document insist Dr Pantami is not a member of JNI, let alone preside over the said meeting, and that he was not even in Nigeria at the time of the meeting. A Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) leader has also come out to debunk the communiqué, declaring it a forgery.
It is indeed possible that Dr Pantami can find reasonable explanations for his extremist past, but it is uncertain he can use age to extenuate the long list of excesses alleged against him, including conniving at the murder in 2004 of a 400-level student of Abubakar Tafawa University, Sunday Achi, whose father, a professor, told the media his son was strangled in the mosque for blasphemy. Dr Pantami was reported to be the chief Imam of the university mosque at the time. The embattled minister cannot take refuge behind age. For instance, he argues that he had been opposed to terrorism for about 15 years. There is nothing to substantiate this, other than his word. His other extenuation is even flimsier. He says he has since recanted his fiery views — some of them as recent as his fiery 2006 public lecture — on terrorism and other forms of extremism, and is a changed man. There is doubt that he believes himself, seeing how he clutches at straws to stay above water. In fact, his critics have published statements he made when he was well over the age of 30 in which he fanatically supported terrorism and declaimed against other religions and worldviews. He might have begun preaching at 13, as he said, but he grew and matured into an unconscionable extremist in his 20s and 30s, a vice he cannot now begin to excuse on the grounds of age.
More revelations will likely expose and damage Dr Pantami, considering that the Buhari administration has unwisely and combatively decided to keep him in office. It is dispiriting that the administration is lending the nobility of the highest office in the land to a cause that is so sinister. It is also unfortunate that the government does not think it should investigate the alleged Bauchi JNI meeting which the minister was said to have presided over, even if the document and the meeting are at first sight fake. The document containing the minutes of the meeting is already in public space; investigators need to put the lie to it to convince everyone. The document needs to be interrogated because it makes sweeping and dangerous allegations. It horrifyingly sets out justification for constituting the Nigerian security agencies in the hands of one religion to the exclusion of others, in effect giving the impression that Dr Pantami is a philosopher for the religious takeover of Nigeria, and that he has also become the brain behind the political plots by some state governments to circumscribe the constitution against other religions and minority ethnic groups? It is simply not tenable to evade a thorough investigation even if the Bauchi meeting is believed to have been a forgery, and the minutes fictitious. All that the minister has said over the decades and the documents alleged against him have shown how unerringly modal his views have become for both the Buhari administration and state governments irrationally plotting the collapse of the nation’s secular structure.
There is enough in the allegations against Dr Pantami to cause him to be indicted and prosecuted. It sullies the administration’s already controversial and unflattering image that it is unable to appreciate the weight of the allegations against the minister, or the implications of keeping him, to a presidency long accused of Fulanisation and Islamisation. Despite its intransigence, the presidency does not have an option on whether to ignore the allegations or act. It has to act; and the sooner the better, even if Dr Pantami is their controversial conscience. The allegations cannot be swept under the carpet, and his conversion to a patriot and democrat cannot be assumed. If Dr Pantami has any honour left in him, especially as he has accepted responsibility for many of the bigoted statements attributed to him, he should resign, regardless of his claim of past exuberance, and regardless of the shocking lack of outrage by the administration. Few Nigerians think the Buhari administration has risen to the inspiring height of representing the whole country and running an inclusive government, or possessing the kind of honour found in countries that care about peace and unity. But despite this handicap, it must investigate Dr Pantami and bring him to book.
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