The Making And Unmaking Of A Vice-President

I read Dr Reuben Abati’s recent article in ThisDay titled “The Importance of Kashim Shettima” and found it troubling and problematic. The article is troubling and problematic in its presumption and motive, and it is entirely unnecessary.

Three years into the Tinubu Presidency, Reuben Abati, one of Nigeria’s most celebrated journalists and public intellectuals, and an oracle of Aso Rock, has to sound the gong to announce, “The Importance of Kashim Shettima”, which should be self-evident. Something somewhere is wrong. Disturbingly wrong.

If Dr Abati’s motive is to coerce President Bola Ahmed Tinubu into prematurely reappointing the VP, through coercive public opinion and the mass media’s hypnotism, in favour of Kashim Shettima, then the article does more damage. It reads like a manifesto for stupefying both the President and APC voters.

The article portrays Kashim Shettima’s “Importance” as an omnipotent, mechanised force, while the President and somnambulant APC voters are the “Unimportant” who must obediently acquiesce to the dictates of powerful media spin doctors.

Abati justifies his article as a response to people flying kites bearing the names of pretenders to “Kashim Shettima’s job,” which he says makes Shettima uncomfortable. He names Yakubu Dogara, Dr Rabiu Kwankwaso, Professor Bala Gana Zulum, Caleb Mutfwang, General Christopher Musa, and even the Most Rev. Matthew Hassan Kukah, the Catholic Bishop of Sokoto. These, Abati reminds us, are merely childish, because none of them, in Abati’s eyes, has anything to offer President Tinubu. Rather than fly a childish kite, Abati seems ready to enter the political conversation, like the youth of Borno who shouted “No Shettima, No Borno votes.” Abati is ready to take his own chair and hurl it at anyone who opposes his journalistic will. And hurl he did. Poor Donald Trump is hit by Abati’s missile twice. He calls Donald Trump, the US President, the “Self-appointed defender of Christians” in Nigeria and the “Self-styled Commander of the World”.

Abati attributes to President Trump one of the reasons the “Important Kashim Shettima” might not return as Vice-President, concluding that Donald Trump might resist the Muslim-Muslim ticket. Abati adds complexity to his spin by calling on those who birthed the Muslim-Muslim ticket to rise up and defend Nigeria’s sovereignty against Trump, because nobody should use Shettima’s religion against him. It violates his human rights.

But Abati’s sights on “The Importance of Shettima” become deadly. He scoffs at the Christian community in the North, describing them as “Wallowing in triumphalism” because of the misguided U.S. President’s favour and his unjustified attack against the Caliphate! How can the grieving, impoverished, and erased Christians in the North be blamed by Abati for wanting his Shettima’s job, when all they are praying for is the freedom to return from the exile of IDP camps to their ancestral lands, freedom to be alive, to feed themselves, and to educate their children? Abati is cruelly blaming the victims whose lives are structured by rhythms of fear, poverty, and death. This is simply beyond the pale.

Abati calls on the people who birthed the Muslim-Muslim ticket to rise up and defend Nigeria’s sovereignty, which presumably is the Muslim-Muslim ticket.

The most damaging fallout from Abati’s article is that, after disbanding the Christian and Muslim pretenders to the throne (Shettima’s job) and “flying childish kites”, Abati jumps into the ring, gloves and all, and aims at Nigeria’s President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. He taunts the president, “Nigerian politics is far more complex and different from the containerised, localised politics of Lagos State”. The simple implication is that, if, as Governor of Lagos State, Tinubu got away with changing his deputies after his first term in office, he should not dare repeat that feat on the “Important Kashim Shettima”, who, according to Abati, “Tinubu should rescue his Vice-President from the harassment and mental torture of having to hear every day that other persons want his job.”

I hope neither the Vice-President nor Dr Abati will be angry with me for pointing out the article’s inherent weakness and its potential to cause harm. Vice President Kassim Shettima is a good man. He was an excellent two-term governor of Borno State and a Senator. But the job of VP does not belong to him; it belongs to the Nigerians. “We the people” hired him and his principal to these jobs. Furthermore, Abati should never disparage or humiliate other high-ranking Nigerians who might aspire to that office. It is within their right to aspire.

Finally, I wish to conclude by highlighting the immense difficulty Nigerians have in coming to terms with the truth about us. In 2019, I aspired to be president on the SDP ticket. Our party was tied up in acrimonious litigation and failed to present a candidate for that election. A friend gloating over my fate told me that no Nigerian from the North Central or the political Middle Belt should ever aspire to the offices of president or vice president. Southern presidents, usually Christians, skip the North Central Zone of the North to choose a Muslim vice-president in the North. Sadly, Muslim presidents from the South also prefer Muslim vice-presidents from the North. This is why Reuben Abati cleverly ignores names from the North Central Zone, a major APC voting population. His kite flyers do not bear the names of Senator Simon Lalong, nor the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Senator George Akume.

We have always heard rumours of many other people who claim to be eminently better qualified than Akume. We often hear that Akume was to be replaced. And very many people are jostling to become the SGF during President Tinubu’s second term. Akume is never perturbed. He does not anguish nor hire spin doctors to tout his loyalty and qualifications. The job of SGF does not belong to him, and he knows that a thousand journalists sounding gongs in the president’s ears to reappoint him now would not matter.

Was Abati’s omission of Senator Akume’s name from the kites flown at Shettima’s job an honest oversight or a strategic one? It is difficult for any Nigerian to belittle the political oracle of Benue State, who has been a key ally, friend and battle-tested commander alongside the president: a two-term governor, three-term senator, an honourable minister and now the SGF. Furthermore, Akume has never lost any political fight. Like Tinubu, he anointed the three successive governors of Benue State. He is the most dominant and visible person in North Central State and the APC leader. He is poised for more political victories. Perhaps Abati honestly did not consider Akume’s high-flying kite. Senator Akume is shy, humble, respectful and not corrupt. He built his distinguished, cerebral public life by recognising the value of teamwork. He obviously does not want Shettima’s job. His own is a handful, keeping the nation working for Mr President.

After all is said and done, there is nothing further to say or do about this VP matter. The appointment and removal of the vice-president are the President’s sole prerogative. When the President’s spokesperson, Bayo Onanuga, dismisses this VP matter as a “non-issue”, it should rest.

~ Prof. Hagher wrote from Dayton, Ohio.