Nigeria: Buhari, Pantami And The Burden Of A Nation

 By Charles Okoh

The recent unearthing of the not-so-wholesome past of the Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Dr. Isa Ali Pantami, has brought doubts on the sincerity and desire of the government of President Muhammadu Buhari to end insurgency and all sundry security issues that currently engulf the nation.

 *Buhari and Pantami

Pantami has shown little or no regards for the tenets of democracy and democratic principles in his capacity as a minister in a democratic government. He has carried on as a despotic leader who would brook no contrary view no matter how genuine and objective. His disposition to governance would only come as a surprise to those who knew little about him before the tremor caused by the expose on his sordid past came to the fore recently. 

Who but a sadist and despotic leader would wake up one day and ask over 200 million people to get their National Identity Number (NIN) and Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) card synchronised in two weeks or get disconnected at no other time but in December? To think also that this mandate was coming at a time when the world was confronted with a much bigger and life-threatening disease, COVID-19, only goes to underscore the fact that Pantami and his likes should not be anywhere near the civilized world. All entreaties by well-meaning Nigerians for a rethink, given the debilitating effect of the COVID-19 scourge, only fell on deaf ears. 

Between that time when the first directive was given and now, the deadline has been shifted on several occasions. Why create unnecessary tension and anxiety across the land and providing opportunity for the already famished and poverty-stricken Nigerians to be exploited by fraudulent NIMC officials at a time when government officials and political office holders were more preoccupied with rerouting palliatives meant to help cushion the effect of the pandemic? 

The same minister has lifted the ban in another hasty decision he earlier placed on purchase of new SIM cards. He had cited security as reason for the ill-digested policy. He just woke up and realising the groundswell of opposition against his conducts and suddenly lifted the ban as though the so-called security reason cited for the ban in the first place no longer exists.

If the minister had allowed reason to prevail and allowed the sale of new SIM cards with the same condition he now gives for lifting the ban – that it should be sold to only those with NIN – would he not have saved those businessmen who have invested a lot of resources the avoidable loss of revenue and also provided more revenue for the stifling economy, rather than the hasty blanket clampdown? 

The need to begin to track and identify crime is not in doubt. The need to check activities of criminal elements in our midst is without question especially given the growing concern over insecurity in the land. But the threat arising from this would pale into insignificance, if the nation had experienced the scourge as it was experienced in Europe, America and the rest. How do you explain that a nation that is just coming from a total lockdown of its economy would be sending its people out on a frenzy search for NIN/SIM registration? 

Now, Pantami has reached his wits’ end. His past has caught up with him. For those still wondering why the Federal Government has consistently sought ways of placating insurgents in their so-called de-radicalisation and reintegration project and why they are treating bandits with kid-gloves, they need look no further. If you are still in search for the reason the fight against insurgency has remained protracted then search no further.

The presidency’s backing of Pantami is not unexpected. The FG similarly backed Ibrahim Magu, in spite of calls for his sack, and damning allegations against him by the DSS. So, if President Buhari and his presidency had done otherwise, it would have been inconsistent with their character.

If President Buhari thinks that Pantami as an Islamic cleric is greater than Nigeria, then he should take full responsibility for the failure of his government to track the rising cases of insurgency and banditry and other crimes in the land. 

Pantami’s violent preaching of calls for jihad as an obligation for every single believer, especially in Nigeria and several extremist views that have been attributed to him, is an open confession of a man whose hatred for non-Muslims cannot be waved away. 

His Salafist ideology, which he has espoused unapologetically in the past, until his recent make-believe, so-called renunciation, is too damning to be taken for granted. Renouncing his past deeds now so that he can keep his job is not acceptable. 

It is easy to begin to connect the dots now when people cry of the hidden agenda of the Fulani hegemony to Islamise the nation, when with such a sordid past, the Federal Government still considers him worthy to superintend over such a strategic assignment as warehousing the nation’s data base. 

It is a shame seeing how some obviously compromised media outlets have left the real issue which has to do with the man’s self-confessed sympathy for terror groups as well as his openly expressed calls for killing of so-called unbelievers and are now fixated with whether or not he is on the watch list of the U.S. government. Which has greater implications to the country, nay the world; is it being on the U.S. watch list or his shameful association with and sympathy for groups who have made killing innocent persons their major pastime? 

In denying the initial report, the minister had said he has never condoned terrorism and rejected any affiliation to terror groups. 

Hear him, “I have long preached peaceful coexistence amongst people of every faith and ethnicity. In some cases, I was attacked by my fellow Muslims for supporting my Christian brothers and sisters.” 

Yet, it has been reported that a fatwa against a Christian boy was passed and executed in a mosque where he was the imam, as recent as 2004.

He also said Italian authors of the academic paper that chronicled his Salafi teachings as a bulwark of radical views amongst university students in the North had misrepresented him by failing to reach out to him before concluding the papers. 

“They did their research but failed to contact me and sit down with me for an interview before publishing their papers. 

“It is possible they used a translator that did not understand Hausa or just did not like me,” Mr. Pantami said. 

Then in a volte-face, he tells us a few days later that; “Some of the comments I made some years ago that are generating controversies now were based on my understanding of religious issues at the time, and I have changed several positions taken in the past based on new evidence and maturity. 

“I was young when I made some of the comments; I was in university, some of the comments were made when I was a teenager. I started preaching when I was 13, many scholars and individuals did not understand some of international events and therefore took some positions based on their understanding, some have come to change their positions later.” 

President Buhari cannot in his right conscience keep Pantami in office when the same government accepted the resignation of Kemi Adeosun as minister of finance over an offence that is nowhere near what we have at hand now. This is a moral burden on a government that claims to be fighting insurgency and terrorism when within its ranks there exist people whose antecedents have compromised and seem to expose the government as being tolerant of extremists and terrorists. 

To think that the Federal Government had security report on Pantami’s sympathy for terror groups and yet sent his name to our pliable National Assembly to accord him their infamous, take-a-bow-and-go shenanigans, only exposes the level of conspiracy of the APC government against Nigeria.

Some shameful media organisations, also in pursuing their narrow ethnic and religious cards, are now beginning to make it appear like a north and south or Christians and Muslim face-off. I say so to them because the same media organisations did not support Adeosun or take similar position while we all were baying for her blood. 

Pantami is a greater threat to the unity of Nigeria than Nnamdi Kanu and Sunday Igboho and more, put together. A man with such dangerous ideological leanings and training, whether renounced or not, cannot be trusted with the national data base of a multi-religious, multi-ethnic and pluralistic societies like Nigeria. 

His allusion and the disappointing claim by the FG to the fact that it is those against the ongoing SIM/NIN registration that are behind his ordeal or that his travails are politically-motivated do not hold water and therefore inconsequential. He is not the only Nigerian that can handle the job; besides, what we have at hand is more fundamental and of greater threat than the danger of not carrying out the NIN/SIM registration exercise. He should resign or be sacked immediately. Anything short of this is an open admission on the part of the government that it not only condones terrorists and extremists but has deliberately recruited and placed them in positions of authority. 

We have enough trouble as a nation to be tolerating a self-confessed extremist and hardliner. No amount of politicking and support by the FG can sweep this obvious danger under the carpet. Posterity will judge accordingly those who had opportunities to unite this nation but failed to do so, because of narrow interests.

*Okoh is a commentator on public issues