How Shettima ignited the inferno beneath.

By Ike Abonyi 

“ The struggle of a man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting,” Milan Kundera

Inferno is the title of a novel found on Amazon Books authored by Luna Mason. The book is in the Beneath the Blaze series and talks about being prepared to participate in a decadence game experience where your inhibition, your coyness, and timidity must be left at the gates. In the book, there is a game called 'Decadence' which is a successful chocolate factory, but it’s what lies behind the gates that is so much more. Inside there is a club called Inferno for the elite, an ‘in’ to the most powerful mafia family networks in the world. It’s also a place where all of your dark and sinful dreams come true.

In this game of Decadence, the rules are simple, you must submit to the challenges in five rooms. Only the surviving contestants shall win a gold ticket to lead them to the Master of the Inferno. Before getting to the master of the inferno, you are warned and made to know that you have to be prepared to step into hell to explore both desires and nightmares before going to heaven. Decadence Game is, therefore, a game of survival where pain meets pleasure for the ultimate prize.

Nigeria’s incumbent Vice President, Kanuri-born Kishim Shettima, knowingly or unknowingly indulged himself in the decadence game where he is going to meet the master of the inferno, and he is currently exploring the desires and the nightmares therein. Whether he will go from there to heaven or remain entrenched in the political 'hell' where he seemingly is at the moment is only left for Providence. But what Shettima did last week, whether by mistake or deliberately, is tantamount to pouring fuel into the inferno. Everyone around Shettima held their breath in wait for the reaction of the master of the inferno.

The Vice President, who was the Governor of Borno state during the reign of President Goodluck Jonathan, had at a book Presentation last week in Abuja tactically indicted his boss, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, over his controversial decision in the Rivers state political crisis. The VP did this while explaining his relationship with the author whose book was being presented, Mohammed Bello Adoke, Jonathan’s Minister of Justice and Attorney General, and Senator Aminu Tambuwal, who was then the Speaker of the House of Representatives.

Perhaps opportunity came for Shettima to hit below the belt, and he did it subtly, intelligently, and penetratingly. It was an uppercut on Tinubu’s unilateral and provocative decision to suspend Governor Similaya Fubara and all state House of Assembly legislators.

The VP narrated how a similar and even worse situation presented itself for the then-President Goodluck Jonathan, who was contemplating a state of emergency that would have led to removing him and all the elected officials in Borno state from office, but was blocked by sound guidance from relevant aides.

For saving his job behind his back, Shettima said Tambuwal and Adoke, who are presently in opposition, have remained his eternal friends. Before he could drop the microphone the import of the statement had hit the social media space and was trending like wildfire. First, such remarks showed that he was not consulted, even as the number two citizen, when the Rivers state decision was taken. Secondly, if he had been consulted, he would have advised against it. Thirdly, since Tinubu is still using the same constitution that was applicable under Jonathan, what his boss, Tinubu, did was unilateral and ultra vires and therefore a breach of the Constitution. And fourthly, Jonathan consulted the national assembly and got sound advice from an independent legislature, but Tinubu sought advice from the 10th National Assembly leadership under Godswill Akpabio and got a quick rubber stamping; they were all elected leaders, but the difference was clear.

Shettema’s attempt to try quenching the inferno or at most reduce the flame has been laughable as he tries to play with the word ‘removal’ and ‘suspension’ but could not dismiss the fact that Nigeria constitution as currently in operation did not give the President any power to remove or suspend as the case maybe any elected person even a councillor. That power belongs only to the relevant parliament. 

The relationship between Shettima and his former bosom political friend, PBAT, since assuming office on May 29, 2023, qualifies to be described as a cat and mouse game, each chasing the other with the mouse trying to evade capture. It has been a prolonged chase, one trying to outwit the other, often deploying deception and trickery.

When Shettima set out to be at the forefront of campaigning for PBAT to be the APC flag bearer in the 2023 Presidential poll, it was not very convenient to do that. Tinubu was a formidable party leader but few rated him high for President. Shettima was among those few who believed, possibly from his marabout's prediction, that Tinubu would be the next President after Muhammadu Buhari. He campaigned vigorously against all odds for Tinubu and even bought a nomination form along with others and delivered it to Tinubu.

Tinubu, being a politician who rewards loyalty, did not find it difficult to push aside later-day supporters like Nasir El Rufai and other APC governors to pick Shettima as his running mate. El Rufai, who had designed the Muslim/Muslim model to suit himself, found out that his efforts were for Shettima, a former Governor.

The choice of Shettima did not go down well with other Northern close allies of Tinubu like then Kano state Governor Abdullahi Ganduje, Nuhu Ribadu, George Akume, then Governor Solomon Lalong, and other APC Governors but they were all to be compensated but the likes of Ganduje and Ribadu continued to envy Shettima and work towards helping to build a wedge between him and Tinubu with 2027 in mind.

The opportunity came in handy with the fathom marabout story, the same Islamic hermits who possibly predicted Tinubu’s Presidency predicting Shettima’s Presidency sooner rather than later. With Yoruba superstition and Kanuri diabolism clashing, it then became difficult to mend the crack.

But both of them decided to manage their feud; only their aides tried to aggravate it occasionally, even as they continued to put on a good show to the public. When overzealous security operatives allegedly tried to harass the number two man in the Villa as a way of showing him he is not wanted, Shettima’s men denied it, not the security authorities. When the report filtered that aides of the Vice President sleep on duty for want of a job to do they also denied it When some reports suggested that Shettima was feeling sidelined, with Seyi, Tinubu’s son taking over his role, the Presidency, through Shettima’s Spokesman Senior Special Assistant on Media and Communications, Stanley Nkwocha, quashed the reports of any rift between Tinubu and Shettima, citing their excellent working relationship. Nkwocha also stated that the Vice President has consistently demonstrated his commitment to the President's initiatives and vision for Nigeria. Not until the VP’s Political Adviser, Hakeem Baba-Ahmad, got fed up and resigned did the picture begin to show. Since Baba-Ahmed left he has been behaving like a house boy who liberated himself from his wicked master and telling anybody not to go near the house that it's not habitable.

When you watch the Vice President on camera at a public function, you will see a man in pain, always struggling to smile when others are doing so. A government like Tinubu’s that is ‘Yorubanized’ will even worsen his case in their unprecedented nepotism model, the kind never seen in Nigeria's history, even though inherited from Buhari’s regime. When the President and the Vice President sit at a function, you will not see the expected camaraderie between them.

In all the situations, they have continued to manage themselves, trying not to blow up. Even when Ganduje went to Bauchi state for the provocative APC endorsement of Tinubu without Shettima, who is from that zone for 2027, only the supporters reacted angrily. Shettima kept mum, pretending that all was well when signs were all over the place showing that the gap between number two and number one was widening and becoming a gulf.

Expectedly, the heat of the outburst came on the VP even when the President was away, ‘missing’, while transiting between Brazil and Nigeria, where he attended the BRICS summit after the St. Lucia leisure trip. The VP tried to apply a clever by half model, that since he used the word remove and Tinubu used the word suspended, he now said the Borno situation and Rivers are not the same.

But his defence didn't say whether the constitution that did not allow a President to remove an elected Governor gives him the power to suspend an elected Governor. But even at that, there is no fundamental grammatical difference between the two words because, in all, there is removal. If you are suspended from office, you leave the place, that means removal, it may be temporary or indefinite, but what is clear is that you have been removed. Same with removal, it may be permanent, but could also be temporary depending on the circumstances. A husband who suspends his wife and she leaves the matrimonial home, has removed the wife from the house. It does not require any further interpretation.

What Shetima’s aides are doing is just out of panic, having rightly ignited the inferno and waiting for the master’s nightmare. But whatever way it goes, as we await the outcome, Shettima’s remarks have helped greatly in enriching and deepening our democracy as it relates to the powers and limitations of the President in our polity. And may God bless him.