Vice President Kashim Shettima on Tuesday revealed that barely three months after President Bola Tinubu was sworn into office, some people from Borno State visited the President and warned him to stop wearing the traditional attire he had given him during the 2023 campaign.
He said they alleged the garments had been used to charm the President and would lead to his death.
Shettima, however, said Tinubu not only rejected the claim but responded by deliberately wearing the clothing for an entire week as a public rebuke to what he called a story that “did not add up.”
The Vice President disclosed this in his address at the public presentation of the autobiography of the former Head of State, Gen Yakubu Gowon (retd), titled “My Life of Duty and Allegiance,” in Abuja on Tuesday.
Shettima, who represented the President at the event, used the incident to illustrate what he described as the dangerous spread of suspicion in Nigerian public life.
He also compared the rising spate of suspicion with the Sultan of Sokoto’s account of how Gowon would receive gallons of fura sent weekly from the Sultan’s family in Sokoto to Dodan Barracks in Lagos.
He noted that Gowon accepted the gesture without any suspicion, in a spirit of trust that he said has since been eroded.
The VP said, “His Eminence the Sultan of Sokoto had been narrating the story of the family of the Sultan sending gallons of fura every week to Gen Yakubu Gowon in Dodan Barracks, because of the trust and confidence Gen Gowon was willingly receiving it without any suspicion.
“But now the game is different. Suspicion smears our relationships, and it ought not to be. We are essentially one people tied to a common destiny.”
Narrating his personal story involving Tinubu, Shettima recalled that in the lead-up to the 2023 presidential primaries, as the President canvassed support across the North, he sourced traditional Borno attire and a cap for him to wear at campaign events, so the candidate could blend in with the northern crowd.
He said positive feedback from Tinubu’s aides proved that the clothing fitted well, and Tinubu wore it repeatedly in the campaign.
However, the confrontation came just months after the victory.
Shettima said he had travelled to Beijing, China, in October 2023 to represent Tinubu at the 3rd Belt and Road Initiative Forum, held from October 16 to 18, one of his early high-profile foreign assignments as Vice President.
When he returned from China, Tinubu summoned him and delivered a message from a group of people about the clothes.
He narrated, “When I came back from China, where I had represented him at the Belt and Road Initiative Conference, he said: ‘Sit down. Your people came to me and said I should stop wearing those dresses you gave me. They said I must have been charmed, and that I am going to die and you will become the president.’”
Shettima noted that Tinubu dismantled the accusation because it did not add up.
According to Shettima, he responded, “Their story did not add up, because when you gave me those dresses, I was an aspirant. I wasn’t even the candidate. Neither were you the vice presidential candidate.”
However, he said the President proceeded to wear the dresses for a week.
“For one week, to prove to them that he is not a fetish, he wore those dresses.
“These are some of the gimmicks taking place in power circles in Nigeria nowadays,” Shettima told the audience.
Shettima poured encomiums on Gowon, saying his life embodied the opposite of sectarian suspicion.
Shettima cited Gowon’s establishment of the National Youth Service Corps as a reconciliation instrument, his legacy in the Economic Community of West African States, and the urgent need for Nigerians to confront divisive forces that seek to undermine unity.
He referenced Plateau State, whose governor, Caleb Mutfwang, was present, and urged an end to the cycles of violence by highlighting the linguistic, genealogical and historical ties among communities currently divided by bloodshed on the Plateau.
On Gowon, whom he called “the last man standing” among Nigeria’s post-independence military generation, Shettima said the autobiography is “a bottom of memory at a time when our country needs a discipline of remembrance.”
He said, “There are people who are remembered before they leave office.
“There are others whose memory endures because the office became, in their hands, an instrument of national meaning. General Gowon belongs to the second company.”
He also quoted Martin Luther King Jr. in closing, calling on Nigerians to either unite or face collective ruin.
“Let us learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools,” he stated.
Punch