By Abubakar Rajab
A Grave Misstep in the Making – The Irreparable Cost of Marginalizing Vice President Kashim Shettima
Gentlemen,
Permit me to speak without embellishment or restraint, for the matter at hand brooks neither delay nor dilution. At this most delicate juncture in our party’s evolution, when political fault lines are widening and loyalties hang by a thread, the mere whisper of removing Vice President Kashim Shettima as the presumptive running mate in the next general election is not only tactically unsound—it is an act of strategic self-immolation.
To pull the rug from beneath a man who has not been given a proper stage to stand on is both unjust and unwise. You cannot hold a man accountable for a race when his legs were tied. Vice President Shettima has operated within a constrained ecosystem, his role shorn of defined powers, reduced to ceremonial optics—cutting ribbons, condoling the bereaved, or attending social rites. Yet even in these limited frames, he has discharged his duties with admirable decorum, unflinching humility, and rare statesmanship.
His political relevance is not ornamental—it is elemental. He is the linchpin of a delicate coalition that delivered the presidency. He did not arrive empty-handed; he came with legions. It was his painstaking negotiation and spiritual diplomacy that drew the Tijjaniyya movement—a bloc numbering over 60 million adherents—into the APC fold. He likewise extended olive branches to the Izala sect, other Islamic factions, and, notably, to non-Muslim communities. His political influence cuts across theological divides and penetrates gubernatorial circles—both past and present.
To cast him aside now would be tantamount to setting the scaffolding of our electoral edifice ablaze. Such an act would not be perceived as a re-strategizing move but as an unvarnished repudiation of loyalty, a betrayal cloaked in political sophistry. It will fracture the tenuous unity within the party and ignite a whirlwind of dissent.
Let us call a spade what it is—not a garden implement. If Vice President Shettima is removed, it will be read as a tacit admission of internal collapse. It will be interpreted as a vote of no confidence in a man who was never truly empowered. The optics alone will hand ammunition to our adversaries and demoralize the faithful who stood in rain and fire for this party.
You cannot abandon the compass and expect to reach your destination unscathed. You cannot offend the shepherd and expect the flock to remain gathered.
Rather than excommunicate him from relevance, the Vice President should be invigorated, strategically mobilized, and integrated into the core operational mechanisms of the administration. Let his influence be made visible. Let those he persuaded to support us bear witness that he has not been relegated to political obscurity.
We are already nursing internal wounds. To open another fracture—this time at the very heart of our northern coalition—would be a monumental miscalculation. It will sow the seeds of rebellion, not just at the top, but deep into the grassroots that have yet to recover from the shock of past transitions.
Mr. Chairman, members of the NWC, let wisdom prevail. Do not toss aside a man who held the door open when many had shut it in your face. Do not undo with one act what took years of political engineering to construct. The future of our party should not be mortgaged on the altar of ego or vendetta.
This is not merely counsel; it is a solemn warning. The fire you play with may soon engulf the house. Let history not record that when loyalty was tested, you chose treachery over truth.
Retain Shettima. Reinforce his political architecture. Or brace for a wave of consequences that no amount of rhetoric can reverse.
Yours, in the service of truth and posterity,
Abubakar Rajab is a political Analyst,he writes from Abuja.
