Adeosun’s Certificate Forgery Different From Pantami’s Past Extremism —Presidency

Posted by African Examiner Featured, Latest Headlines, News Across Nigeria Friday, April 23rd, 2021

(AFRICAN EXAMINER) – Garba Shehu, presidential spokesman, says that the certificate forgery by Kemi Adeosun, ex-minister of finance, is a criminal offence rather than the earlier support for terror groups expressed by Isa Pantami, minister of communications and digital economy.

Shehu disclosed this when he appeared on Channels TV programme on Friday, saying that the response of the presidency “would have been different” if Pantami had forged his certificate like Adeosun did.

It will be recalled that Adeosun resigned her position as minister in September 2018 after it was reported that her National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) exemption certificate was fake.

Pantami, on his part, had expressed extremist views supporting the ideologies of terror groups such as Al-Qaeda and Taliban in his lectures as an Islamic scholar in the 2000s.

Although he has since recanted the views and apologized, there have been calls for his dismissal, with some Nigerians stressing that his position as minister of communications is a sensitive one.

The presidency on Thursday defended him on Thursday from the enemies of the minister and some information and communications technology (ICT) companies of orchestrating the smear campaign against him.

Responding to a question on why the presidency let Adeosun go but is quick to defend Pantami, Shehu stated that the latter’s case only concerned people probing his thoughts during the said lectures.

“In the second case which is that of Pantami, you are probing the thoughts, what is called ‘McCarthyism’; you search the inner recesses of the minds of individuals, bring out things they have said or they are about to say or you think they would say and use that against them,” he said.

“If Pantami had forged a certificate before coming into office, the attitude would have been different.”