Lai Mohammed, minister of information and culture, says
Pamtami’s views on Al-Qaeda were not discussed at the federal executive council
(FEC) meeting.
The FEC held its 42nd virtual meeting on Wednesday presided
over by President Muhammadu Buhari at the presidential villa, Abuja.
Pantami attended the virtual council meeting, remotely from
his office.
Responding to a question as to whether the issue of
Pantimi’s pro-Al-Qaeda views was brought up, Mohammed said the matter did not
come up for discussion.
“I’m not going to go into the issue of whether government is
comfortable or not. I will answer your questioned directly. It was not
discussed at the council meeting,” he said.
In videos from the 2000s, Pantami, who is a known Islamic
scholar, was reported to have said while he was against the extremist
anti-western ideologies of Boko Haram, he supports some of what Al-Qaeda and
Taliban had preached.
But he recanted the views at a recent lecture in Abuja,
saying that his position at the time was based on his understanding as a
teenager.
“Some of the comments I made some 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,” he had said.
“I was young when I made some of the comments; I was in
university, some of the comments were made when I was a teenager. I started
preaching when I was 13, many scholars and individuals did not understand some
of the international events and therefore took some positions based on their
understanding, some have come to change their positions later.”
Despite publicly recanting his comments, there have been
numerous calls for his resignation with some Nigerians also asking the
Department of State Services (DSS) to probe him.
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