With Shettima, APC dodged a bullet

Renomination of Vice President Kashim Shettima as President Bola Tinubu’s running mate for the 2027 presidential election was mysteriously slow in coming. For six weeks since the President was confirmed as the ruling APC’s candidate, mum was the word about running mate, which sent some political actors and media commentators into a frenzy of commentary.

It has been unknown in Nigerian politics since 1983 for a president to change his vice president ahead of reelection. In 1982, as soon as President Shehu Shagari was renominated as NPN’s candidate for the 1983 election, he renominated Vice President Dr. Alex Ekwueme as his running mate. There was no media speculation of a possible change. In 2002, when President Olusegun Obasanjo was to announce that he was seeking reelection, his campaign team put up posters that did not include Vice President Atiku Abubakar’s picture. Atiku’s aides protested, and the posters were pulled down and amended. In 2011, there was no talk of President Goodluck Jonathan changing Vice President Namadi Sambo, and in 2019, there was no speculation that President Muhammadu Buhari would change Vice President Yemi Osinbajo. None at all. 

What  caused the delayed announcement this time? Kashim Shettima has been a very visible VP these past three years. Shettima is seen at numerous ceremonies, party functions, gubernatorial campaigns and inaugurations, receiving decampees into APC, project commissionings, weddings, funerals, condolences, political reconciliations [as in Benue State] and visiting disaster sites, including the 2004 flooding in his home state of Borno, where he waded into waist-high flood waters. He has also done a lot of foreign trips on the president’s behalf, including to AU, World Food Summit, and to UN General Assembly.

At public occasions, the Vice President is well known for constant reassurances about the Tinubu Administration’s economic, social and security policies, often with a straight face in the face of public cynicism. He is also very loyal, always saying “On behalf of my boss” or “I am here to represent my boss.” Indeed, it was Shettima who led a delegation of governors and party officials to hand in Tinubu’s nomination forms to the party secretariat. So why the delay? Apparently because the Presidency was making strategic political and electoral calculations and weighing its options. Whether, in the light of all the problems that it is facing, there is an alteration it could make that will improve its electoral chances next year, APC’s apparent dominance of the political scene notwithstanding.

Sure the Administration is facing many problems with only months to the 2027 elections. The socio-economic atmosphere in the country is very challenging, with high inflation, high transport costs and high food prices, which spiraled into everything else including school fees and hospital bills. This is due mostly to two key policies of the Administration, namely removal of subsidy on petroleum products, announced by President Tinubu right on the inaugural podium, allegedly without planning for the fall out; and the free floating of the naira, which followed shortly thereafter. An even bigger challenge for the Administration is the persistent insecurity, including dramatic kidnap cases and a resurgent Boko Haram. Also politically harmful has been a series of missteps in the amnesty list and ambassadorial nominations and lately, the Adeyemi scandal. Another big challenge is the failure to deliver on the solemn promise to improve power supply, as well as perceptions in the North and South East of ethnic lopsidedness in key appointments.

Sure there were some folks who were quietly angling to replace the VP on the ticket, the main consideration being that after the Tinubu presidency runs its course, they will be the heir apparent. Kano political giant Rabi’u Musa Kwankwaso was widely speculated over the years to be angling for the chance, but when he could not negotiate it through, he left for NDC and is now its presidential running mate. Several state governors were also mentioned as angling to become VP. One would have thought being a governor is prestigious enough, but Architect Namadi Sambo abandoned the governorship of the key Northern state of Kaduna to become VP in 2010. Before him, Goodluck Jonathan relinquished the chance to recontest for governor of Bayelsa in 2007 in favour of nomination to be Umaru Yar’adua’s running mate. And in 1999, Atiku Abubakar abandoned his election victory as governor of Adamawa State, even before his inauguration, to become Chief Obasanjo’s presidential running mate.

Vice Presidency apart, certain things in Nigerian politics appear to be settled. For example, a major party’s presidential ticket must be regionally balanced between North and South. Well, almost settled, because in 1979, there was a shock when UPN candidate Chief Obafemi Awolowo chose as his running mate Chief Phillip Umeadi, a lawyer from the South East. He was accused of presenting an all-Southern front against the North. The other assumption was that a presidential ticket should be religiously balanced between the Christian and Muslim communities. Many people think that Chief MKO Abiola was the first major candidate to breach it when he chose Ambassador Babagana Kingibe of Borno as his running mate in 1993. But that is not correct; in 1979, the great Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe chose the renown Northern academic and medic Prof Ishaya Audu as his running mate, the first major Christian/Christian ticket. Both Awo and Zik corrected the imbalance in 1983, with Awo choosing Alhaji Muhammadu Kura of Bauchi as his running mate while Zik chose Shettima Mustafa of Borno.

But perhaps the biggest calculus that the Tinubu Presidency was making was whether to go on with the Muslim/Muslim ticket. In the 2023 election, this caused the biggest uproar, and probably caused Tinubu’s embarrassing loss of his Lagos home state. But the ticket still won the four-way race, the second and fourth place finishers also being Muslims while the third placed candidate was a Christian. Although many people who opposed the ticket assumed that it will give the Muslim community huge advantages in the sharing of national spoils, within a year of the Tinubu Administration, the narrative turned upside down with many people in the Muslim North deriding the Muslim/Muslim ticket. In the Gombe market last year, some petty traders wrapped roasted groundnuts and kulikuli in nylon bags, put it up for sale and called it Muslim/Muslim ticket!

Yet, the Tinubu Presidency must have calculated that any attempt to change the running mate, on religious or any other grounds, would create untold chaos for it and the ruling party. Retired Group Capt. Sadeeq Shehu wrote that the Muslim/Muslim ticket thing could be likened to a bullet lodged in the head but which doctors said leaving it in place was safer than trying to remove it surgically. President Tinubu must have reached the same conclusion, given the maneuver he commenced in the last two years to transfer some key party and government positions from the far North to the Middle Belt, in preparation for a continuation of the presidential ticket. Replacing APC National Chairman Dr. Abdullahi Umar Ganduje [of Kano] with Dr. Nentawe Yilwatda of Plateau was one clear alteration, shortly followed by replacing Defence Minister Badaru Abubakar of Jigawa with General Chris Musa of southern Kaduna State [who however spent much of his young life in Sokoto and is seen there as a shon of the shoil].

Further appeasement of the Middle Belt included appointment of Lt General Waidi Shaibu as Army Chief, Prof Josh Amupitan as INEC Chairman and Bayo Ojulari of Kwara as NNPC Group Managing Director, though some said his appointment was Yorubanisation, not Middle Belt appeasement. They said it, not me!  

Trying to replace Kashim Shettima had other, much bigger dangers. First of all, the only one of the six North Eastern states that Tinubu won in 2023 was Shettima’s home state of Borno. With North Easterner Atiku Abubakar heading ADC’s ticket into the 2027 elections, the danger of an electoral repeat is real, despite the defection of the PDP governors of Adamawa and Taraba to APC. Borno too will be resoundingly lost without Kashim Shettima; remember that in June last year, Borno State Governor Babagana Zulum and his delegates led the open rebellion at the APC North East Zonal Congress, supported by all other state delegates, because Shettima’s picture was not placed alongside Tinubu’s on the podium. Policemen had to ferret out the party chairman.

Much more seriously than that, the North West too, could be electorally imperiled if the Vice Presidency were to be shifted from the far North to the Middle Belt. Sentiment in the zone is already decidedly against the Administration, despite that all seven North West governors belong to APC. Give them one more reason, and even the governors may not be able to control the voters. Besides, the two top campaigners for a Northern Christian on the APC ticket, namely former SGF Babachir David Lawal and former House of Representatives Speaker Yakubu Dogara, have now diminished in political stature due to a cascade of events. Certainly there are other more viable persons to consider, but almost none that can prevent the potential loss of millions of far Northern votes.

So, the ruling APC has now navigated through all the traps and settled for Kashim Shettima, who has many other qualities apart from preventing a massive exodus of votes. He is relatively young, younger than all the major 2027 presidential candidates and their running mates. He is vigorous, as we see from videos of him entering aircraft and racing up podiums. He is deeply intellectual, a bookworm and former university lecturer. He had a lot of experience as a former top Zenith banker, state commissioner of four different ministries, two term governor and one term senator, not to mention Vice President for four years. Most other political parties will be at their wit’s end to find similar quality.