First Lady, Aisha Buhari said her Sunday Instagram post showing the Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Isa Ali Pantami, shedding tears during one of his sermons was about fearing God and not man.
Just as she countered the stance of a popular Islamic cleric, Sheikh Ahmad Gumi, who stated that killing bandits would only worsen the security situation in the country.
The first lady says security agents must go after bandits in the Northern states and kill them.
Aisha had earlier shared a video showing Pantami crying after his reciter read a verse of the Holy Quran.
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“That is the Garden we shall give as their own to those of Our servants who were devout,” read the reciter from Surah Maryam, Verse 63.
In response, Pantami sobbed, “O Allah! Make me one of them. O, Allah! Make me one of them!”
Clarifying why she posted the video in another post on Instagram on Monday, the First Lady said in Hausa, “Tafsir na Malam kan tsoron Allah ba tsoron mutum ba! Da aka cire tsoro da son Kai aka shiga Jihar Zamfara, abubuwa sun fara kyau. Sai a dage a shigo sauran wurare da ke bukatan haka. This can be interpreted as “Malam’s Tafsir was about fearing God and not man! When fear and selfishness were removed and Zamfara State was entered, things started to go well. We need to move on to other areas that need it.”
Her post is coming amidst a heightened offensive by the military in Zamfara state.
Many of the bandits’ leaders and their foot soldiers were said to have been killed since the blockage of communication and restriction of movement in the state.
The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) had last week mandated all telecommunication operators in the country to stop extending services to Zamfara and its environs, effective Friday, September 3, 2021.
This was barely six months after the Nigerian government declared Zamfara State a ‘no-fly zone’ in a renewed effort to fight banditry and other forms of insecurity in the state.
Sheikh Gumi who has been visiting bandits in the forest in an attempt to negotiate a peace deal with them had urged the Federal Government to create a Ministry of Nomadic Affairs.