Osinbajo/Shettima: between ice cream vendor and ghost worker

By UGO ONUOHA ALHAJI Mohammed Kashim Shettima is the nominal vice president of Nigeria. He is one pair of the retrogressive Muslim – Muslim ticket that was awarded the Nigerian presidency two years ago, last March. It will be material to explain my use of ‘nominal’ for the current vice president. In this context, I really mean the everyday usage of the word. Nominal here means that Shettima as vice president is small and insignificant in amount and degree. He’s a token and a symbol, neither substantial nor significant in the scheme of things in the regime of Alhaji Bola Ahmed Tinubu and a section of the Yoruba nation. Shettima speaks well in the context of the low bar set for public speaking in our country. The bar is stunningly and embarrassingly low. He is said to be intelligent and possibly a public intellectual. He was a bank executive in his earlier incarnation and later became a two – term governor of Borno state. He has some legacies to his credit. Many of them are not ennobling. And one of his legacies is that he was the sitting governor when Boko Haram, a violent and murderous Islamist group, drove thousands of kilometres into Chibok in the heart of Borno state, abducted about 300 mostly Christian female students, and vanished into thin air. Shettima was alleged to have been warned to relocate the students who were preparing for the West African School Certificate Examinations (WASCE) following intelligence reports about the activities of the insurgents. He ignored the intelligence and the girls were plucked off. This was in April 2014, eleven years ago. Almost 100 of the stolen girls are still not accounted for after a decade and one year. On the score of security of life, Shettima failed as a governor, and the punishment for his failure to secure his people whilst he was governor was to promote him to the position of vice president of the country. Indeed, one of the credentials he flaunted while campaigning for the vice presidential ticket was that he was battle-hardened because he had been in the theatre of war for years. We will come back to this shortly. He was not remarkable as a surrogate to the then presidential candidate, Alhaji Tinubu, in the run up to the 2023 election. But he stood out like a sore thumb on at least three occasions. Maybe four. One such occasion was through his spoken words when he deprecated the incumbent vice president, Yemi Osinbajo, who is a professor of law. He said that Osinbajo would have been more successful as an ice cream vendor than seeking to be the president of Nigeria. The other remarkable occasion was when he represented Tinubu, his running mate, during the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) annual conference prior to the election. His sartorial inelegance was striking and befuddling. Ribs were cracked. He cut the image of a cartoon caricature in his ill-fitting off colour pair of trousers, a tieless shirt, a shriveled jacket, and a pair of trainers. He was probably not properly briefed that lawyers are generally conservative in their dress codes. But it should be a given that a man of Shettima’s assumed standing should know that. If he forgot the requirements of the occasion his handlers should have known better. They didn’t or they didn’t care. Well, Shettima had a soulmate in an inappropriate register on Saturday when the President of the United States, Donald Trump, appeared at the funeral of Pope Francis in Rome in a blue suit as against the dress code of black suits worn by other world leaders at the occasion. The third event was at his public presentation to Nigerians as the vice presidential candidate. He also cut a sorry picture in the midst of emergency bishops’ and sundry ‘priests’ created overnight by the All Progressives Congress (APC) to reassure skeptical citizens, especially Christians, that the Muslim – Muslim (some referenced it as MuMu) ticket was not a prelude to something more sinister for the country by the pair, the so-called planned Islamisation of Nigeria. The APC bishops were handed their regalia at the precincts of the venue of the event, and their cash reward was paid immediately after the ceremony, also outside the venue of the unveiling. The perpetrators were captured on camera in spite of the best efforts of the schemers and scammers to blindside journalists and cameramen. The likelihood was that many of the APC bishops were not born when the inimitable Afrobeat legend, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, sang the prophetic and provocative “Uniform na cloth na tailor dey sew am” in 1973  or thereabouts. I believe the album was titled Alagbon Close, a notorious government security complex in the heart of Lagos island. If only Fela were to be alive to witness that desperation and charade in 2023, 50 years after the track was released. And the quest to capture political power by hook or crook. While we are at it Shettima, also in 2023, promised to lead the war on insecurity in the country from the front if their ticket was awarded the presidency. He said he had been baked in the furnace and oven of battling insurgency for years as Borno state governor, and that nobody was better suited and equipped for the job. He said his running mate or principal was a thoroughbred economist who would be saddled with reviving the national economy which had been run aground by their party, the APC and Tinubu’s man, Buhari. When Shettima appropriated the role of the head of the security arm, he apparently did not factor in the fact that the vice president is not the commander-in-chief of the armed forces nor in-charge of the national security agencies and architecture. Two years on, next month, none of the self assigned roles have been delivered. If the truth be told, Nigeria’s security situation has almost completely collapsed. Nigeria has become a killing field, the type we have not witnessed in 65 years

G77+China Summit: Nigeria, Cuba Sign Science, Technology Growth Pact

The Nigeria’s delegation to the G77+China Summit led by Vice President Kashim Shettima, on Saturday signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Republic of Cuba on science and technology growth. Mr Olusola Abiola, the Director of Information, Office of the Vice President, in a statement, said the Minister of Innovation, Science and Technology, Mr Uche Nnaji, signed the MoU for the Government of Nigeria. The signing ceremony, which took place Saturday on the sidelines of the G77+China Summit at Hotel Palco La Habana, was the high point of Nigeria’s participation at the summit. Nnaji said the MoU would further enhance collaboration in the field of innovation, science and technology between the two countries. The minister praised President Bola Tinubu for his visionary leadership which had resulted in the signing of the agreement. Nnaji, who assured that Nigeria would maximise the opportunities provided by the bilateral agreement, emphasised that the implementation of the agreement would commence in earnest. He expressed determination to put in place the appropriate mechanism to work out the modalities for programme of action. Earlier, Shettima averred that Nigeria places high premium on South-South cooperation as a platform for promoting sustainable development of the global South. The bilateral agreement would focus on research and development. Other areas include human resource development which will further deepen partnership between the two countries. The areas of cooperation covered by the bilateral agreement include biotechnology, scientific investigation and innovation, technological development and human resources development. Others are specialist exchange in the area of science and technology, and technologies transfer for development areas. The historic event was witnessed by the Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Amb. Adamu Lamuwa, Nigeria’s Ambassador to Cuba, Amb. Ben Okoyen and other senior government officials.