I once witnessed a macabre execution – early 2000s. It was a quotidian day in Onitsha – except for a sudden alarm jarring everyone grinding away in the day’s humdrum. Thief! Thief! Swiftly, commuters, traders and idlers became vigilantes. They encircled a young man and bludgeoned him until he was lifeless. No questions asked. No trial. No justice – but jungle injustice. 

There is a ‘’SARS’’ in some Nigerians; reservoirs of cynicism, misanthropy and bigotry.  These ones see other people through the bifocals of their own vile existence. Just like SARS, the notorious but disbanded police unit, profiles young Nigerians with tattoo branding and dreadlocks, this category of Nigerians reduces every individual to an offender. You are guilty without charges, convicted and summarily sentenced – by the self-appointed rogue jury!

That predilection for exacting jungle (in)justice on alleged offenders in the streets is very much the same on Nigeria’s social media platforms – where you expect to find refined people above the stratum of ‘’agberos’’. It is all the same – in the streets and on social media district. Nigerian Twitter, in particular, is a toxic locale – defiant to order and devoid of joy. There is that proclivity for ‘’gotcha gotcha’’. It is always about ‘’dragging this person or that person’’. I must say, very angry creatures take residence there. 

It may be fun and games until you are a victim of this ferocious social media mob. I recall when Segun Adeniyi, senior journalist and author, was a casualty of this ruthless horde over a book he wrote. He was tyrannised until he apologised and withdrew copies of the book. There have been many other victims but some felt so overwhelmed that they took an exit from humanity. 

I recall the story of Ariyo Olanrewaju Taiwo – a man who suffered depression – in 2017. He expressed suicidal thoughts on Facebook but was bullied and taunted. He committed suicide afterwards. Social media, which ordinarily should be a crucible for ideas, conviviality, networking, and seminal exchanges, has become a belvedere where some people exhibit their hate, bigotry, insecurities, and prejudices with disinhibition. 

A few days ago, Japheth Omojuwa, the digital media entrepreneur, was the whipping boy of these internet infestations. They clobbered, scratched and gored him with pitchforks and daggers, even throwing dynamites into the mix. Much of their grouse with the gentleman was the side he chose to support in the 2015 election. They seized a moment to creep out of their crevices and forgotten neck of the woods to extract a toll. I have never seen such virulence and turpitude on social media before. 

I have been a casualty of this brood of calumniators myself. I am unfazed by the trolling on social media. I have developed impermeability to ‘’praises and curses’’ on social media. I am comatose to what happens there.  But somehow, these maligners find my mobile phone number and keep me under siege for hours and days with a fusillade of attacks and curses. This bothers me because it is an intrusion of my personal space. I wake up at 4am deleting hate messages.

We are a nation of extremists.  A violent people. When you stray from the single narrative promoted by some compromised persons, you become an enemy pencilled down for demolition. Is this not a tyranny of opinion? How did we become so vile, unfeeling, and sadistic? The beauty of intellection is in the variety and robustness of opinions. Why must everyone submit to a lone account – even if it is falsehood? Why should everyone hold the same opinion? 

What is happening on Nigerian social media is akin to the Dark Ages where people were hanged for having contrary opinions. And the Dark Ages was a blot on humanity – because knowledge was forbidden.  We are in an era of intellectual darkness in Nigeria where all opinions must be unitary and must conform to certain ethnic and religious prejudices. 

Some of the loudest voices accusing others of extremism are themselves extremists, who ambush and savage contrary opinions. It must be their way or the Milky Way to assaults and threats. 

How did we become so pugnacious that we will tear anyone and anything that does not agree with us? 

I think we need to be having conservations on ways of mitigating the perils of this Frankenstein technology. Opinions on social media can be bought and ammunitioned against anyone. We cannot discount the veritable place of social media but the evolving trend of sponsored prejudiced opinions is leading to a dictatorship of narratives. 

We are all potential victims of mob (in)justice. The mob runs Nigeria’s social media. You either fall in line with the governing narrative or risk violence. This mob rule has to end. 

Twitter @FredrickNwabufo

By Tunde Olusunle

Isa Ali Ibrahim, equally referred to as “Sheikh Pantami” comes to you as what the “soro soke” generation will call a “fresh boy.” From what you see in his most frequently used media photograph, he is fair complexioned, has chubby cheeks, wears a smile and adorns a thin-rimmed pair of glasses. He is a young man as well, having been born in 1972.

His profile would also, most probably impress you. He obtained a university degree in the much sought-after Computer Science course in 2003, before adding a masters in the same institution and capping these with a doctorate from Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen, Scotland. He subsequently attended short courses in a number of universities and institutes in the United States of America, USA; Switzerland and the United Kingdom, UK.

Relatively unknown, he stepped on the national political stage, when he was appointed Director-General and Chief Executive of the National Information Technology Development Agency, NITDA, September 26, 2016. Just about three years after cutting his teeth in public service, he was appointed a Member of the Federal Executive Council, FEC, following his call-up as Minister in the reconfigured Federal Ministry of Communications and Digital Economy.

If Pantami was previously anonymous in the crowd of public servants jostling for media attention in Nigeria, however, he has been a more visible subject of public discourse in recent weeks, for the wrong reasons. The fossils of his ideological constitution as a longstanding bigot, an unconscionable religious demagogue, an irredeemable dogmatist, are in the public space for discussion and dilation.

A publication by an online media, associated Pantami with the erstwhile leader of Boko Haram, Mohammed Yusuf. The terrorist organisation has held Nigeria by the jugular in the last decade, upstaging peace in the North East, precipitating random lethal attacks in the region, engendering civilian and military casualties and causing severe dislocations and refugee crisis in the zone. The online publication under discussion, also insinuated that Pantami had been placed on the terror watch-list of the USA.

The allegation by the online medium, opens a pandora box, with allusions to audio reports of Pantami delivering lectures sympathetic to Boko Haram, and archival tapes of the young minister expressing support to the Taliban and Al-Qaeda back in 2004. Pantami in a 2006 speech, also mourned the death of the Al-Qaeda leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. There are indeed, viral videos of his virulent speeches and engagements.

Pantami has attempted to pour cold water on these allegations. He claims he harbours no hatred for Christians, as evidenced by the fact that some of his staff are of the Christian faith. On April 17, 2021 in what seemed like a recant, Pantami proferred that: “Some of the comments I made 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.” In a manner of speaking, Pantami wants us to understand and accept that he is “born again.”

Pantami has forgotten, however, that there is blood on his hands. Back in 2004 when he was Chief Imam of the mosque of the Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University, ATBU, Pantami issued a virtual fatwa on 17 year old Sunday Nache Achi, a leader of the student ministry of the Evangelical Church Winning All, ECWA, in the institution. The young Achi’s father, Prof Samuel Achi in an interview, volunteered that in response to preachments by Pantami during a service in the mosque, his late son was dragged from his room on the campus and taken to the university mosque where Pantami was presiding. He was strangled to death and his body thrown outside the mosque. He was alleged to have distributed religious tracts which content allegedly defamed Prophet Muhammad, a proposition punctured by the older Achi.

Sunday Achi’s parents had to go through the tortuous motions of reaching out to Ahmed Makarfi, governor of Kaduna State at the time, to admonish his counterpart in Bauchi State, Adamu Muazu, to facilitate the release of the body of the young Achi to his family for internment. Pantami has forgotten, time has not. If the young Sunday Achi hadn’t been so wickedly murdered, he would have been 34 years of age this year, contributing his quota to national, nay global development.

Pantami has been sighted elsewhere on the internet, leading prayers and describing the opposition, the Peoples’ Democratic Party, PDP, as an agglomeration of infidels. Should he have the powers, Pantami would most probably subject such “infidels”, most probably to the Sunday Achi treatment.

March 20, 2020, the same Pantami at the commissioning of the annex of the Nigeria Communications Commission, NBC, in Jabi, Abuja, ejected reporters from the African Independent Television, AIT; Raypower radio and Punch newspapers, before the start of the event. He labelled them unfriendly to the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari who was scheduled to commission the project. That other media houses did not walk out of the ceremony in solidarity with their colleagues who were so humiliated and boycott its coverage, continues to amaze me. They needed to make a serious point and vindicate the saying of the legendary Afrobeat musician, Fela Anikulapo Kuti, who sang “Everybody get im power.”

The minister’s spin doctors who initially alleged that their boss was being harangued by those opposed to the ongoing registration of telephone lines against national identification numbers by Pantami’s ministry, have since taken a few steps back in recent days.

That Isa Pantami had such a controversial past, calls to question, the thoroughness, the rigour which characterises the screening of nominees for political appointment. The security services by the way, characteristically, make heavy metal of the process of “checking out” nominees for appointive offices. So how come an Isa Ali Pantami was not found out for who he is, first when he was appointed DG of NITDA in 2016, and subsequently, when he was nominated Minister in 2019?

We recall for instance that back in 2015, four years before Pantami was appointed into the federal executive council, it was a long waiting game for Nigerians as they eagerly awaited the constitution of government’s apparachik by Buhari. The famous alibi at the time as propounded by defenders of the administration was that the nominees were being subjected to rigorous security search-light. When the cabinet was eventually constituted six months into the life of the regime, however, there were no surprises whatsoever.

And just in case screening is usually truly thorough and forensic, how come the results did not turn out an overtly extremist, dangerously radicalised and latently bigoted Pantami in the interrogation process? To make assurance doubly sure, Pantami was actually dismissed from his job as a cleric, by the authorities of ATBU, for incendiary preachments and religious incitement capable of breaching public peace, which is a major blot on his curriculum vitae.

Dennis Amachree a retired Assistant Director with the Department of State Services, SSS, has opined in an interview with Punch newspapers, that much as Pantami was screened following the submission of his name for appointment as minister by the President, the final decision on his eventual appointment, resides in the appointing authority.

Pantami’s resume includes the facts that he was educated by scholars who included Muhammad Umar Fallatah, Muhammad Ibn Al Uthaymeen and Abdulmuhsin Ibn Abbad. Who are they? What was the course content of his engagements with these intellectuals? With the race to succeed Buhari hotting up ahead of 2023, have we envisioned the possibility of having a president in the mould of Pantami?

Elsewhere, Pantami will simply tow the path of honour, file in his letter of resignation and move on. People like him have no place as public officials and policy makers, especially at the level which impacts the collective wellbeing of citizens of a secular society. It is indeed immoral for him to continue being remunerated remuneration, from the taxes of Nigerians, many of whom are of the religion he loathes so bitterly.

Should he fail to throw in the towel, like the archetypal Nigerian public servant who has no scruples about anything, he should be booted out through the window, like a bad habit.

The point has been repeatedly made of the imperative for a more painstaking process leadership recruitment process in Nigeria, against the backdrop of the recurring emergence of motley characters, whose lack of substance, aptitude and capacity, continues to drag the nation down. Pantami’s trajectory is a huge lesson for those who think their past can be buried in the sands of time. Time, indeed never loses its sense of memory.

• Dr Tunde Olusunle writes from Abuja.