[4][5][6][7] However, this promotion continues to generate controversy, and has been strongly questioned by some intellectuals on allegations that it did not follow the extant due process in professorship appointments in Nigeria academia.

[12] Due to this, on 13 Feb 2020, Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau openly threatened Pantami and condemned the new policy to restrict the number of mobile SIM cards a subscriber can legally own to three.

It was a heated debate which has now formed the basis for scholarly research on the ideology of Boko Haram" but could not confirm if Pantami was placed on the terrorist watchlist of the United States of America government as the latter does not disclose those on the list.

These speeches along with other speeches like one from 2006 where Pantami mourned the death of the leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (“May God have mercy on Ahmad Fadeel al-Khalayleh [al-Zarqawi's birth name]) were included in a 2019 academic monograph Debating Boko Haram published by the Centre for Contemporary Islam at the University of Cape Town, South Africa,[21] that went mainly unreported in Nigeria.

He also said that he had "long preached peaceful coexistence amongst people of every faith and ethnicity" along with claiming that the authors of Debating Boko Haram erred in failing to reach out to him and may have used a poor or biased translation of Hausa.

"[29] Despite the recantation, the opposition Peoples Democratic Party joined calls for Pantami's resignation and also asked the Department of State Services to investigate him.

[34][35][36] Senator Ajibola Basiru, Chairman of the Senate Committee on Media and Public Affairs, later stated that for Pantami's confirmation as Minister, "no security agency approached us to give us any information that could indict him, both at the time of his appointment and even now...we did our job based on facts available to us" and disagreed with calls for the sacking of Pantami saying there is a "difference between legality and political consideration which is not in the purview of the National Assembly...the Constitution stipulates requirements to be a Minister and he hasn’t run foul of any as far as we are concerned.