Sheikh Ahmad Gumi, a controversial Islamic cleric, last week, warned against the removal or sack of the embattled Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Dr. Isa Pantami. Gumi in an interview with Roots TV, said the allegations against the minister were not true and should be discarded, warning that if he was removed, the country would regret it.
With the current state of the nation and the allegations of involvement with terrorists against Pantami, Gumi’s unsolicited advice was just another “insult upon injury”. Whatever, in Gumi’s estimation, makes Pantami indispensable also explains away the evident ineptitude of the Muhammadu Buhari administration, particularly its failure to the secure lives and property of the citizenry.
There’s no doubting the fact that as a retired soldier, Gumi himself is a product of a school that is without integrity and honour otherwise it is without telling that a character like Pantami cannot continue to sit tight in any decent society, where self-preservation and the collective interest of the people is above everything else, crucial. But here, it’s the other way round and therefore no surprise that the country is on a free fall on the watch of a general.
Gumi can save his advice and pass it on to their ilk, who still sympathise with the killers of their people. Going public with such without any restraint is to say the least, disturbing and nauseating. Pantami can stay in government till the end of the Muhammadu Buhari administration because he enjoys official privileges, it wouldn’t change the fact of who he is and how posterity has recorded him.
