Pantami Annoyed Some Persons In Buhari’s Cabinet – Fashola

A former Minister of Works and Housing, Babatunde Raji Fashola has said his ex-colleague, Prof. Isa Ali Pantami, stepped on toes in the Muhammadu Buhari administration.

He said this on Wednesday in Abuja in his keynote, at the public presentation of a 341-page book titled ‘A Scholar’s Journey: Navigating Academia’, written by the former Minister of Communication and Digital Economy.

Fashola said Pantanmi was annoying to some people in the Buhari administration because he was meticulous and his dedication to getting things right at all times.

He said: “I got to know Prof. Pantami as my colleague in the Federal Executive Council (FEC), where he served as Minister for Communication and Digital Economy during 2019 to 2023. His passion and attention to detail are very well known. His desire to have every ‘T’ and ‘I’ crossed and dotted in every document was almost annoying for some people.

“But our memoranda and our cabinet records are undoubtedly better off in terms of accuracy, having been impacted by what I call the Pantami effect. He was essentially our ‘Mr. Compliance’. Either your memo, if it was a tech memo that did not have a NITDA certificate, he would be the first one to see it, and he won’t keep quiet.

“And if your vision and missions did not align, he would let you know very clearly. But he was Mr. Compliance to a good cause. As I said, our records are better off for the ‘Pantami effect’. At a time when the truth is endangered by fake news when history is threatened by revisionists, books that profess a factual basis, which report history and events accurately, become all the more important to preserve the foundations of our civilization.”

The event was also attended by Borno State Governor, Prof. Babagana Umara Zulum; Gombe State Governor, Alhaji Muhammad Inuwa Yahaya; Nasarawa State Governor, Engr. Abdullahi Sule; and former Gombe State Governor, Alhaji Danjuma Goje.

Others are former Ekiti State Governor, Dr Kayode Fayemi; former Aviation Minister, Femi Fani-Kayode; and former Executive Secretary of the National Universities Commission (NUC), Prof. Abubakar Adamu Rasheed, among others.