Pantami
Buhari Minister Pantami alleged links with Boko Haram has taken another twist.
NewsOne Nigeria recalls that trouble started when a report monitored on Daily Independent newspaper by NewsOne Nigeria, claimed that the Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Alhaji Isa Ali Ibrahim, also known as Sheikh Pantami, had fallen on the watch list of the America’s Intelligence Service.
The report said Pantami, also the Deputy Secretary General of the Supreme Sharia Council in Nigeria and a former student of Salafist ideologies, was trained in Saudi Arabia and the Middle East with other top Islamic jihadists.
However, the Presidency denied that Minister had been placed on the US watch list. This was even as Daily Independent retracted its story.
Days after the report surfaced and the Presidency denied, what appears to be another twist to the story has emerged with several online news platforms in Nigeria “digging up” old videos of the minister’s statement on government appointments and his stance on terrorism.
In one of the videos, Buhari Minister Pantami was seen castigating Islamic clerics accepting appointments, and vowing not to ever accept such because of his faith as a Muslim.
The 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.
Buhari Minister 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.