A retired Assistant Director of the Department of State Services, Dennis Amachree, has said the 2019 appointment of Isa Pantami as Minister of Communications and Digital Economy exposed weaknesses in Nigeria’s security vetting process, revisiting the controversy in his new memoir on his four decades in the intelligence service.

Amachree recalled the 2021 uproar after old sermons in which Pantami had reportedly expressed sympathy for extremist groups, including al Qaeda and Boko Haram, resurfaced online, raising questions about how someone entrusted with the country’s telecommunications infrastructure passed through the standard vetting process. He explained that the security service conducts background checks examining nominees’ past affiliations and public statements before submitting intelligence reports to the president and, where necessary, the Senate, though the agency’s role is ultimately advisory.

Amachree said he could not confirm the specific contents of Pantami’s security file but found it hard to believe his past statements had escaped notice during vetting, suggesting that political considerations such as regional balancing may have overridden security advice. He recalled that a former Senate committee chairman said lawmakers received no adverse report on Pantami before his confirmation, arguing the episode reflects either a sanitized report or one whose findings were simply disregarded, both of which point to systemic weaknesses in how intelligence flows through Nigeria’s institutions.

He said the controversy undermined public confidence in Nigeria’s counterterrorism efforts, since the government was prosecuting extremist groups while defending an official whose past statements had drawn scrutiny, and described the episode as a cautionary tale underscoring the need to insulate security assessments from political interference.