Pantami: When the past eats the future

The debate has been raging since last week. It has divided an already deeply divided country, as many debates before this have done. At the centre of the controversy, this time is Dr Isa Ali Pantami, Nigeria’s Minister of Communication and Digital Economy. Since audios and videos of the minister, as a young, fiery preacher […]

The debate has been raging since last week. It has divided an already deeply divided country, as many debates before this have done. At the centre of the controversy, this time is Dr Isa Ali Pantami, Nigeria’s Minister of Communication and Digital Economy.

Since audios and videos of the minister, as a young, fiery preacher in the early 2000s, surfaced, it has been a torrid time for Dr Pantami and his supporters.

• National Sports Festival – Never again! –
• Scientists re-infect coronavirus survivors in trial launch

There were clips and audios of a young, impassioned Pantami, then a young, fiery and eloquent preacher, voicing support for terror groups like Al-Qaeda and the Taliban, renouncing other clerics who accepted government appointments and suggesting he was delighted by the killings of certain groups of people who do not share his faith. There was, even though he disagreed and challenged their ideology, an emotional lamentation over the extra-judicial killings of Boko Haram members during their 2009 uprising.

As expected, the controversy that has followed has taken regional and religious slants and has been garnished with conspiracy theories.

Calls for Dr Pantami’s resignation have trended on Twitter with #PantamiResignNow and its various iterations generating many tweets on social media, as did hashtags supporting the minister.

There might be doubts about the motives of those digging up these incriminating proclamations by the cleric and minister. What there is no doubt over is that Dr Pantami did make those declarations.

The angry reactions to the utterances made the minister own up, blaming immaturity and limited knowledge for his views back then.

“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,” Pantami said during his daily Ramadan lecture at Annoor Mosque in Abuja this Saturday.

“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 international events and therefore took some positions based on their understanding, some have come to change their positions later.”

However, this renunciation has not been enough to settle ruffled feathers with the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) asking the minister to quit his office.

“Our party’s position is predicated on the heightening concerns in the public space and in the international arena of possible compromises by the communication minister, who has access to sensitive government documents and information, in addition to data of all individuals including high profile personalities in the public and private sectors, as well as the traditional and faith-based circles,” party spokesman, Kola Ologbondiyan, said.

The calls have cut across party lines with an APC chieftain, Cletus Obun, saying on live TV (AIT) that Pantami’s continued stay in office is giving the government a bad name.

“What did Adeosun do? She didn’t wait to be fired. She resigned. Pantami should resign. If he does not, you sack him,” he said, recalling the resignation of former Finance Minister, Kemi Adeosun, who vacated her office over a forged NYSC exemption certificate.

However, many supporters of Dr Pantami have dismissed calls for his sack as mischievous.

“The campaign of calumny is being pushed by forces against the Federal Government’s NIN policy, Boko Haram terrorists, bandits, criminals in general and political IDPs (Internally Displaced Politicians). No one who has the love of Nigeria at heart will support such a malicious and frivolous allegation,” Director of the Muslim Rights Concern (MURIC) Professor Ishaq Akintola had said.

Dr Pantami’s policy suspending sales of new SIM Card and forcing Nigerians to link their SIM Cards to their National Identity Numbers, a policy that has seen thousands of Nigerians enduring hours at the offices of the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) in a pandemic has been criticised. There are insinuations that those whose business interests have been hurt by these policies are behind the revelations. In any case, the minister recently relaxed the ban on sales of new SIM card, a move many saw as an attempt to deflect the heat of this controversy.

This would not be the first time public officials in the country have been caught in a dilemma over previous sentiments they have held.

During the 1966 counter-coup, called Operation Aure, the northern military officers behind the plot were more concerned with revenge over the killing of senior military officers and, to a lesser extent, political leaders during the January coup. They planned for revenge and the subsequent breakup of the country. As they executed the operation that July, they had an aeroplane waiting to evacuate them to the north from where, it was reported, they would announce the dissolution of the country.

The coup succeeded, the planned secession didn’t as they were prevailed upon to change their views. That meant they had to help govern a country they didn’t want and spent the next three years fighting for the unity of that country, which was contrary to their objective that July when they struck.

From that crisis, Chukwuemeka Ojukwu rose to prominence. When the northern region decided against secession, the momentum shifted to the Eastern Region where Ojukwu led a bloody secession attempt that ended after a 30-month civil war.

The same Ojukwu returned and in 2003 and 2007 sought to rule over a united Nigeria. His sentiments during the war were always held against him and by extension every Igbo person aspiring to rule the country.

Some of the protagonists of that conflict that has continued to shape Nigeria even today were young, fiery ideologues—starting from the majors Chukwuma Nzeogu and Emmanuel Ifeajuna, to the Yakubu Gowons, the Murtala Muhammeds and the TY Danjumas among others who were all in their 20s or early 30s at the time.

The exhibition of youthful exuberance has continued to haunt public figures such as Ralph Nwazuruike, who championed the Biafran agitations in the early 2000s only to be persuaded to radically change his views.

Often, politicians have found themselves in hot water over similar comments and convictions. Sometimes they have nonchalantly shrugged them off and plodded on such as when the likes of Nasiru Mantu, Tom Ikimi and others championed General Sani Abacha’s self-perpetuation bid only to do a sudden about-turn after the strong man suddenly died.

These men formed the bases of the political parties, especially the PDP, that have been key players in the post-Abacha democracy since 1999.

Dr Pantami is only 48. Most of those utterances were made when he was in his 20s or early 30s, like the hotheaded soldiers who drove Nigeria to a civil war. However, his preaching has since evolved, and he has even taking anti-terror stands, according to him.

“For 15 years, I have moved around the country while educating people about the dangers of terrorism. I have travelled to Katsina, Gombe, Borno, Kano states and Difa in the Niger Republic to preach against terrorism,” Pantami said of his new perspective and altered mission. “I have engaged those with Boko Haram ideologies in different places. I have been writing pamphlets in Hausa, English and Arabic. I have managed to bring back several young persons who have derailed from the right path.”

This may still not be enough to convince some Nigerians. While those who want him removed on the strength of those sentiments and views he held and propagated in his 20s may not succeed in forcing him out, it is clear that if Dr Pantami has a wider political ambition, he would have a hard time selling himself to these peeved Nigerians.

Muhammadu Buhari who only endorsed sharia law needed the miracle of President Goodluck Jonathan’s failings, a mega alliance and some help from US PR firms to turn the tide in 2015.

Pantami, with his fervent and naive endorsement of terror groups, might even be a harder sell than Buhari was before 2015, before David Axelrod, AKPD Message and Media.

Leave or stay, this is a damaging blow for Pantami and a veritable lesson for Nigeria’s many hotheaded youths.