Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Dr. Isa Ali Ibrahim Pantami is the proverbial chameleon with one eye on the past and one eye on the future. Depending on the situation or who is involved in it, he sometimes comes across as a cosmopolitan technocrat with a strong academic background. At other times, he transforms into a knuckle-dragging troglodyte spewing forth parochial religious and micro-ethnic sentiments.
Perhaps because of the sheer disconnect between the different Isa Pantamis known to different people, it has always been difficult to conclusively nail him down to a singular identity. To those who work around him or watch him on television delivering speeches about Nigeria’s broadband masterplan in his trademark reedy voice, it can be very disorienting to process the idea that this slightly built man with the gold-rimmed prescription glasses could be on of the most dangerous men in Nigeria right now.
Even after extensively-researched exposes about the furious and unrepentant religious extremist that resides somewhere within Isa Pantami’s polite exterior, it is simply difficult for many to accept. How is it possible that this man with a PhD from Aberdeen and several certificate programs at the world’s most prestigious institutions is also a supporter of Al-Qaeda and the Taliban, as well as an instigator of deadly religious crises in Northern Nigeria?
After reading Sheikh Pantami’s mealy-mouthed attempt to distance himself from his own utterances during a Ramadan service on Saturday April 17, 2021, I decided that the best way to break through his manufactured genteel posturing and lift the veil of denial is not to write another extensively-sourced 2,000-word deep dive, but rather to let Pantami himself do the work for us.
Pro-Terrorist Rhetoric and a Buhari Cameo
The man who would later become “Sheikh,” “Imam,” “Mallam” and “Dr” Isa Pantami was born on October 20, 1972 in the Pantami Ward of Gombe State. Pantami Ward is noted for being the last holdout of the infamous Maitatsine Islamic uprisings of the 1980s. Some have argued that these uprisings were in fact precursors to the Boko Haram crisis that would follow 2 decades later.
It is impossible to verify whether the adolescent Pantami was ideologically influenced by the Maitatsine-type Islamic cult which grew in Pantami Ward and culminated in a bloody showdown with authorities on April 29, 1985. What we do know for sure about Pantami is that after graduating in 2003 from the Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University (ATBU) in Bauchi with a BTech in Computer Science, he became the Chief Imam at ATBU and an influential public figure in Bauchi.
On September 12, 2006, roughly one month shy of his 34th birthday, Pantami delivered a now-infamous public lecture in Bauchi titled “Suwaye Yan Taliban” (“Who Are The Taliban?). This was just one several incendiary sermons and public lectures that Imam Pantami delivered over the course of nearly a decade in Bauchi, but the reason it has now become infamous is because it found its way onto the internet. First Italian academic Dr. Andrea Brigaglia of the University of Cape Town Centre for Contemporary Islam published a paper in 2019 with a translation of the question-and-answer segment of ‘Suwaye Yan Taliban.’ Then a 54-minute audio recording of the lecture mysteriously turned up on a Nigerian Islamic community website.
By luck or by design, ‘Suwaye Yan Taliban’ has now become the proverbial bone stuck in Isa Pantami’s throat. At first he denied making such pronouncements outright. Then when the audio recording with his unmistakable voice showed up, he claimed that Dr. Brigaglia’s translation was inaccurate, suggesting that whoever translated it either did not understand Hausa properly, or simply did not like him. Several influential friends of the house eagerly went to work with this narrative, attempting to take advantage of the fact that most Nigerians who have a keen interest in this story are not (native) Hausa speakers.
Credit:newsdirect
