Nigerians are expressing strong criticism towards the former Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Isa Pantami, for his role in mobilizing friends to contribute N50 million towards the ransom for the release of the remaining five kidnapped Mansoor Al-Kadriyar sisters in Abuja.<\/p>\n
Pantami made the announcement on Sunday through his social media account, revealing that an undisclosed friend had volunteered to raise the specified amount following the tragic murder of one of the sisters, Nabeeha, by bandits. Abuja has been grappling with bandit attacks, leading to the abduction of citizens and demands for ransom from their families.<\/p>\n
In a surprising turn of events, Pantami, who had previously emphasized using the National Identification Number (NIN) and Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) linkage to track bandits and terrorists, stated that he did not favor the idea of paying ransom. However, he acknowledged that, for the sake of the remaining sisters’ freedom, he consulted a friend to raise the ransom.<\/p>\n
Netizens on social media platforms swiftly called out Pantami, pointing out the apparent failure of the NIN-SIM data policy he championed to curb bandit activities. Many criticized him for his perceived contradiction as an ex-government official now endorsing the payment of ransom.<\/p>\n
Reacting to Pantami’s announcement, @FS_Yusuf_ questioned why the NIN data was not utilized to track the kidnappers, stating, “This is how these propagandists and sweet talkers were deceiving Nigerians (especially the north) while terrorists were spreading around the country.”<\/p>\n
@firstladyship highlighted various shortcomings and failures in governance, including Pantami’s NIN project, expressing disappointment in the former minister’s actions.<\/p>\n
@hotline_topic expressed dismay, stating, “It\u2019s a shame that the former Minister of Communications, Prof. Ali Pantami, who threatened us with NIN, was the first person to mobilize N50 million ransom for Kidnappers. Now they have raised the ransom To N700 Million after killing 2 more victims.”<\/p>\n
@DemolaRewaju suggested that Pantami should be invited for questioning, accusing him of jeopardizing national security with a reckless statement about ransom donations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Nigerians are expressing strong criticism towards the former Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Isa Pantami, for his role in mobilizing friends to contribute N50 million towards the ransom for the release of the remaining five kidnapped Mansoor Al-Kadriyar sisters in Abuja. Pantami made the announcement on Sunday through his social media account, revealing that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":14872,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[172],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14868","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14868","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14868"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14868\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14884,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14868\/revisions\/14884"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14872"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}