The ‘unholy’ trinity in Pantami’s saga

Isa Pantami, minister of communications and digital economy, is not to blame for the post he holds despite the swelling evidences of his dangerous past (?).

People do not just assume ministerial roles. They are appointed. The Nigerian constitution prescribed how this is done. The nominations are done by the President (executive); the names are sent to the Department of State Services (DSS) for them to probe the past and present activities of the nominee and advise relevant authorities whether or not the individual should or should not be so appointed. Then the Senate of the National Assembly invites the nominee for an interview/screening session.

If the above-listed processes were truly and properly carried out, the hullaballoo over Pantami would not have arisen in the first place.

The problem with Nigeria is that there is no system. Rules are not followed and the rule of law is not being respected. Rules are only applied whenever government wants to deal with unwanted individual or people.

That nobody among the DSS (a secret police) remembered who Pantami was before his name was sent to them for investigation is a clear evidence that all is not well with Nigeria. Or if there was any investigation on him, why was his ugly past not excavated?

There is this interview making the rounds on social media, where the father of a 400-level student of ABU was giving account of how Pantami’s radicalised group strangled the young man because he was sharing Christian tracts.

The father also mentioned that the incident which took place in 2004, drew the attention of the then President Olusegun Obasanjo.

Again, when Pantami got to the Senate for screening, of the 109 members, including members of the opposition, nobody remembered anything? Or were they under some form of spell or was it part of the Executive-Senate agreement to approve everything that comes from the Villa?

What the Pantami issue has brought to the fore is that in Nigeria, anything is possible.

The DSS, it could be recalled, insisted that Ibrahim Magu was not qualified to be confirmed as EFCC chairman. They claimed he had incriminating records and on that basis Magu was never confirmed. But the same DSS has no record on Pantami.

It was pathetic that a member of the House of Representatives, while addressing journalists in Abuja Thursday blamed the Nigerian masses for not availing the Senate of sensitive information on Pantami.

This culture of always shifting blame on Nigerians who have been at the receiving end of everything wrong in this country will not help government. Government must be alive to its responsibility and stop behaving like an ostrich all the time.

Presidents of some countries have had to resign over allegations that had not been proven to be true. Ministers have also resigned on mere criticism arising from the performance of their ministries.

But here is a situation where the main character has owned up to his crime and the government that should tender unreserved apology for engaging the man in the first place, is grandstanding and insisting he was innocent.

The current administration appears to have given governance a new meaning and a bad name.

Here is a government claiming to be fighting insurgency but promoting it by its actions and inactions.

Samuel Ortom, governor of Benue State said this much Thursday when he insisted that the Federal Government was complicit in the level of insecurity in the country.

Why would a government be defending someone who had owned up to his misdeeds if it does not have an agenda?

The Department of State Services, a highly rated institution that Nigerians had expected would have saved the country this trouble, had the right thing been done in Pantami’s case, is now raising its voice rather than allowing the sleeping dog lie.

Denise Amachree, a former assistant director with DSS, had tried to rescue the Service by saying that the necessary intelligence was gotten on Pantami and that relevant authorities were duly informed.

Amachree had claimed that the secret police informed the Federal Government and the National Assembly of the past radical pro-Taliban views of Pantami before his confirmation as minister in 2019.
“There is no information that escapes the DSS. We have all of it, all. When I was working there, we keep a catalogue of anybody of interest that comes up to limelight in this country,” Amachree said. “During the vetting process for anybody to be appointed a minister or commissioner or anything, your name is sent to the DSS for vetting. They check your background up to the extent of your grandmother.

‘’They check your schools up to the extent of your primary school. And of course, they keep a tab on you online and offline. We get a lot from open source intelligence and I can tell you that in Pantami’s case, we have it.”

But the DSS Office saying that Amachree lied is quite confusing. Is it that the secret police never ran a check on Pantami, or that it escaped them to do so? Or that the claim by Amachree that the DSS has a dossier on important personalities in Nigeria is not true?

In what also sounded unbelievable, a member of the House of Representatives, Yusuf Gagdi blamed Nigerians for contributing to the legislative oversight that led to the appointment of Isa Pantami as the Minister of Communications and Digital Economy.
Gagdi said that ordinary citizens themselves should accept some of the blame for not bringing the attention of authorities to Pantami’s past, much of which has been public for years.

The lawmaker said the National Assembly and the Department of State Services (DSS) cannot possibly have every information, and should have been assisted by the public.

“No individual out of 180 million Nigerians was able to remember that comment made, to write petition to the National Assembly for them to act or not to act,” the Chairman of House Committee on Navy said.

It was gathered that when in July 2019, he faced a full plenary of senators for his confirmation hearing; Pantami had answered questions for only 11 minutes.

Attempts to ask him more questions to test his competence were shut down by other lawmakers that wanted to rush his confirmation through.

The Presidency, also in a statement on Thursday said Pantami’s ordeal in the hands of those calling for his sacking was not about his past utterances but about his current job as a minister.

“The Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Dr. Isa Ali Ibrahim Pantami, is currently subject to a ‘cancel campaign’ instigated by those who seek his removal,” a statement by Garba Shehu, spokesperson to President Muhammadu Buhari, said.

According to Shehu, “They do not really care what he may or may not have said some 20 years ago; that is merely the instrument they are using to attempt to ‘cancel’ him. But they will profit should he be stopped from making decisions that improve the lives of everyday Nigerians.

“The minister has, rightly, apologised for what he said in the early 2000s. The views were absolutely unacceptable then, and would be equally unacceptable today, were he to repeat them. But he will not repeat them – for he has publicly and permanently condemned his earlier utterances as wrong.”

Nigeria is indeed, in a desperate moment.