Isa Aliyu Pantami, President Muhammadu Buhari’s communications minister, once declared that he was always a happy man towards the massacre of those he considered infidels.

“We are all happy whenever unbelievers are being killed,” Mr Pantami said. “But the Sharia does not allow us to kill them without a reason.”

“Our zeal (hamasa) should not take precedence over our obedience to the sacred law,” he added.

Mr Pantami’s comments were contained in three audio recordings of his teachings in the 2000s, when he took extreme positions in support of the brutal exploits of Al Qaeda and Taliban elements who were on a campaign to obliterate the West and conquer other parts of the world.

He made the remarks while responding to audience questions about his views on Osama Bin Laden during a lecture about the Taliban. Mr Pantami said of Mr Bin Laden, the late Al Qaeda leader responsible for bringing down the World Trade Centre in an attack that claimed over 3,000 lives in 2001: “I still consider him as a better Muslim than myself.”

Mr Pantami’s comments were translated by Professor Andrea Brigaglia, an African expert at Naples University in Italy. Nigerian scholar Musa Ibrahim of University of Florida in the United States contributed to the paper that explored the onset of Boko Haram in Nigeria.

Top journal publisher academia.edu published the research in March 2019, several months before Mr Buhari tapped Mr Pantami as a minister. Mr Pantami’s violent preachings, which he rendered in Hausa and Arabic throughout the late 1990s and early to mid-2000s, had gone largely unreported in the Nigerian mainstream media.

Mr Pantami did not return a request seeking comments from Peoples Gazette about whether or not he has eschewed his violent Salafist views.



How many people have been radicalised by Mr Pantami remained unclear. Messrs Brigaglia and Ibahim said Mr Pantami’s views were rare amongst Islamic preachers across Africa at the time they were made, even though they were common amongst Nigerian Muslims at the time.

“It was ordinary for Nigeria’s mainstream Salafis to endorse Al-Qaeda publicly in their speeches and lectures,” the scholars said. “In this respect, Nigeria was probably a unique case in the Muslim world.”

Mr Pantami, 48, was widely known as a hate preacher across universities and other public institutions in northern parts of Nigeria before Mr Buhari brought him into mainstream Nigerian politics by appointing him as the head of the public information technology department NITDA in 2016.

Mr Buhari further elevated Mr Pantami following his reelection as president in 2019, tapping him to lead the communications and digital economy ministry of the federal government. Mr Pantami has been accused of using his position to further his agenda as a fundamentalist.

His decision to shut down the registration of new telephone lines in Nigeria has been perhaps his most controversial policy pronouncement to date. The move has blocked millions of Nigerians from being able to register new lines on the purported grounds that everyone has to obtain a government-issued national identity number.

Mr Pantami’s vicious comments surfaced following reports that he was placed travel restrictions by the United States for purported ties to Boko Haram. The minister quickly moved to debunk the salacious and grossly uncorroborated claim first published by Daily Independent, a Lagos-based daily.

While debunking the report, however, Mr Pantami took to Twitter to claim he has always preached against Boko Haram. He also retweeted several handles that described him as a peaceful Islamic scholar, an attempt at image laundering that has now been punctured by Italian and African scholars.

“It is unbelievable that President Buhari will appoint a man like Isa Pantami to be a minister in a secular country like Nigeria,” political analyst Mohammed Tukura told The Gazette. “A president that believes in national cohesion will not appoint a fundamentalist who shares the same views as leaders of Boko Haram and Taliban.”



Mr Tukura said Mr Pantami’s nomination should have been rejected on the basis of his appearance in the WikiLeaks file in which he said to have been dismissed from Ahmadu Bello University for constantly espousing dangerous views.

“We saw on the Internet that the U.S. government accused him of making dangerous comments for which he was expelled from Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University,” Mr Tukura said. “His appointment as a minister has now further exposed Buhari’s sectional and divisive way of life.”

Source: https://gazettengr.com/we-are-all-happy-whenever-unbelievers-are-being-killed-minister-pantami/?utm_source=ReviveOldPost&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=ReviveOldPost

OP

Ok

There is no smoke without fire. Mr pantanmi knows who he is. He knows he is being exposed. All these hugowash with the media apologizing Na scam.

What else does one call these kind of people making inflammatory statements? Yet they are obsessed with the US classification of Isa Pantami as a terrorist or not.

All you "one nigeria" daft and dumb fools. Terrorists are ruling you idiots. Open your eyes and start supporting Biafra and Oduduwa Rep. before it's too late for you.

Isa pantami is a terrorist like his mentor Buhari

It's time up for Pantami. Even though he has and or will use State power to quell the this exposé, I can assure him the truth had already been told.

May God almighty the creator of heaven and earth pay him just according to what he has done or wish to do to the christians.

Bunch of heartless people. How can one be happy over the death of others simply because they dnt share thesame religion? Still wondering.....

This won't get to front page....NORTHERNS WILL RUN AWAY FROM IT

This post will read 2000views 12 comments

All these blackmail because the man wants to link Sim to NIN.
Criminals too get upper hand for this country and educated illiterates we call youths in this country are their main target audience.

In

we all know that the North is full of jihadists, terrorists, drug abusers, whores, and pedophiles.... Nothing anybody wan tell me...How the South allows the North to rule and oppress them amazes me all due to Anti Igbo Hate....Nigerians are evil sets of people, all they need to do if they are to drop their petty sentiments is to , First reconcile deeply with Igbos and Secondly Start strategizing with Igbos and others on how to make sure No Northerner ever smells presidency ever again, ...If they decide to break out it is a Win Win for the South...Use your senses for once, shun all these petty anti-Igbo sentiments, you all have ISIS apologists and Al-Queada members in your NATIONAL MINISTRIES ...Think God!!!

Terrorist

the problem with the south is that they believe to be liberals therefore know better than the nortoh but let me tell you something, if you want to catch a criminal behave like the criminal. This why to some extent ii. like my Igbo brothers, I want to say that I am very proud of you guys for without you ik dont know wha these terrorists would have done, they would have taken over Nigeria for a long time ago. These Muslims need another extremists like them to counter every of their move and these are the things northern Christians lack, they believe they are liberals and should know more than the Muslim illitrates as they are called but it is still

duro4chang:
May God almighty the creator of heaven and earth pay him just according to what he has done or wish to do to the christians.

the problem with the south is that they believe to be liberals therefore know better than the nortoh but let me tell you something, if you want to catch a criminal behave like the criminal. This why to some extent ii. like my Igbo brothers, I want to say that I am very proud of you guys for without you ik dont know wha these terrorists would have done, they would have taken over Nigeria for a long time ago. These Muslims need another extremists like them to counter every of their move and these are the things northern Christians lack, they believe they are liberals and should know more than the Muslim illitrates as they are called but it is still the same illitrates that rules and murders them every chance they get.

chrismastre5:
the problem with the south is that they believe to be liberals therefore know better than the nortoh but let me tell you something, if you want to catch a criminal behave like the criminal. This why to some extent ii. like my Igbo brothers, I want to say that I am very proud of you guys for without you ik dont know wha these terrorists would have done, they would have taken over Nigeria for a long time ago. These Muslims need another extremists like them to counter every of their move and these are the things northern Christians lack, they believe they are liberals and should know more than the Muslim illitrates as they are called but it is stillthe problem with the south is that they believe to be liberals therefore know better than the nortoh but let me tell you something, if you want to catch a criminal behave like the criminal. This why to some extent ii. like my Igbo brothers, I want to say that I am very proud of you guys for without you ik dont know wha these terrorists would have done, they would have taken over Nigeria for a long time ago. These Muslims need another extremists like them to counter every of their move and these are the things northern Christians lack, they believe they are liberals and should know more than the Muslim illitrates as they are called but it is still the same illitrates that rules and murders them every chance they get.

God will reward everyone according to what he or she does. It is just a matter of time.

For Nigeria to move forward, we must eschew religious supremacy and support mutual relationship.
If not, let the balkanization of the country begin