By Ishaya Ibrahim, News Editor
In the wake of the unnerving stories of the extremist escapades of the Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Dr. Isa Pantami, a new revelation has emerged of how, as the Chief Imam of the Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University (ATBU) Bauchi mosque, his preaching directly led to the brutal murder of a 400-level student, Sunday Achi, who was leader of the ECWA Student Ministries (ESM) in the campus.
His crime? Distributing a Christian tract which Sheik Pantami said blasphemed Islam and Prophet Mohammed.
That was on December 9, 2004.
The story was that Achi was dragged out from his room by Muslim fundamentalists at the prompting of Pantami, taken to a remote location within the school premises where he was stoned to death.
But in our quest for the truth, TheNiche went to the source.
In an exclusive interview with the martyr’s father, Prof. Samuel Achi, in Kaduna, he gave details of how his son was killed.
He was strangled to death inside the mosque where Pantami held court, not stoned, he said.
He insisted that there was nothing blasphemous in the tract his son and his colleagues shared that should warrant a death sentence.
Prof. Achi narrated how the former governor of Kaduna State helped in retrieving his son’s corpse from Bauchi for burial in Kaduna by liaising with the then governor of Bauchi State, Adamu Muazu.
Prof Achi told TheNiche what he has not told anyone else in the last 17 years.
Keep a date with TheNiche, your favourite online newspaper. It is explosive. It will give you the goose bumps but it is worth reading. Visit www.thenicheng.com
Sampler:
“One thing I know that you people (media) got wrong was that my son was not stoned to death. He was strangled inside the mosque and they threw the corpse outside the university mosque.”
