Vice President Kashim Shettima is fast becoming the government’s chief evangelist of practical hope. In an administration often saddled with the burden of justifying tough reforms, Shettima has taken the podium not to spin illusions, but to sell possibilities – of farms feeding factories, of bioethanol fuelling prosperity, of a diesel-free Nigeria, and of the small entrepreneur no longer being stranded at the gate of a bank.
From cassava to climate, credit to carbon, the Vice President’s recent string of engagements reveals a governing philosophy shaped less by abstract policy papers and more by the urgent need to connect Nigeria’s forgotten majority to the promise of growth.
If the President’s signature reforms are laying the fiscal foundation for long-term development, Shettima is offering a human face -and local texture – to what those reforms must mean in the life of the average Nigerian.
Let’s start with cassava. At the 2025 World Cassava Day celebration, the Vice President declared that Nigeria must stop treating the root crop as merely food for the poor and start seeing it as fuel for the nation’s future. It was both metaphor and mission.
Cassava, he argued, has outgrown its subsistence past. With applications across food, pharmaceuticals, textiles, and even construction, cassava is no longer just a staple – it’s a strategy.
And in the Tinubu administration’s playbook, that strategy now includes the Cassava Bioethanol Project, expected to save Nigeria over ₦3 trillion annually by reducing our reliance on imported fuel additives. That’s not just subsidy removal in reverse — that’s import substitution with local flavour.
But Shettima’s cassava gospel is not merely about science and savings. It’s about what he calls “a circular economy in agriculture” — one in which farm waste becomes industrial wealth. One in which rural Nigeria is not a charity case, but a production hub. One in which young Nigerians see agribusiness not as a punishment, but as a passport to profit.
It’s a powerful message. But talk is cheap — and cassava, for all its potential, is still constrained by the usual suspects: access to finance, infrastructure deficits, policy inconsistencies, which is why it matters that the Vice President isn’t preaching reform from an ivory tower. He is stitching the threads between ideas and institutions.
In that same week, Shettima inaugurated the board of the National Credit Guarantee Company (NCGC), a long-overdue intervention to solve a problem older than democracy itself: Nigerian MSMEs can’t access credit. And when they do, it often comes at the cost of their sanity.
What NCGC proposes is radical in its simplicity: the state will not hand out loans. But it will stand behind the small businessperson, farmer, artisan or tech entrepreneur and say to banks: this person is worth the risk. It’s not a bailout. It’s a handshake. It’s a bet on the Nigerian dreamer.
As Shettima put it, the new agency is a bridge. “When a cocoa farmer in Ibadan needs a loan… when a leather artisan in Kano seeks to mechanise his craft… the system will no longer fail them.” It was one of the few times in recent political memory that the Vice President sounded not like a government official, but like a venture capitalist with a conscience.
To be clear, this is not the first time Nigeria is attempting to fix MSME financing. But perhaps what’s different is that Shettima — and by extension, the Tinubu administration — is approaching it with a blend of realism and urgency. There’s no magic wand here. But there is intention.
And it’s this same blend of urgency and realism that marked the Vice President’s remarks at the Decarbonising Infrastructure Summit. Nigeria, he warned, cannot build yesterday’s infrastructure for tomorrow’s economy. Diesel dependency, high emissions, fragile grids — these are not just technical issues. They are existential risks. And if Nigeria is serious about climate finance and energy transition, then we must decarbonise not just our buildings but our bureaucracy.
Again, the numbers are sobering: 75% of Nigeria’s greenhouse gas emissions come from sectors such as energy, transport, and agriculture – the very arteries of our economy. But rather than despair, Shettima offers a vision: a Nigeria where Onne Port becomes the country’s first green port, powered by private investment and hybrid energy. A Nigeria where climate-smart agriculture becomes an export strategy, and not just a donor buzzword.
The most striking part of his speech was the tone. “We are not here to fantasise,” he said. “We are here to finance. To mobilise. To de-risk. To build.” It was a rare political speech that treated development not as a slogan, but as a logistics challenge.
Still, as with all good intentions, the devil is in the delivery. Cassava won’t turn to ethanol overnight. MSMEs won’t magically find trust from banks just because a new agency was launched. And Nigeria’s energy transition will remain a PowerPoint dream unless translated into concrete investment and legal reform.
Yet, in Shettima’s policy language – and his growing political voice – there’s a blueprint forming. One that doesn’t romanticise hardship. One that sees the private sector as a partner, not an opponent. One that speaks to rural farmers, fintech founders, and climate activists in the same breath.
It is an economics of inclusion. Not perfect. Not finished. But finally, perhaps, heading in the right direction.
If this is what the “Renewed Hope” agenda means in practice – not just numbers but narratives, not just reforms but reach – then Nigeria may indeed be closer to takeoff than we think. Not on imported jet fuel, but maybe – just maybe – on cassava.
