I don’t know when the whispers started that President Bola Tinubu was contemplating dropping Kashim Shettima as his running mate for the second term. As far as relationships between Numbers One and Two go in Nigeria, theirs has been relatively drama free. So, what could prompt the president to dump a man who had kept his nose scrupulously clean?
It was a measure of the seriousness with which some were taking the tales that a rally held by the Northeast Zone All Progressives Congress (APC) sometime last year dissolved into chaos after a motion to endorse to Tinubu for a second term was moved without a mention of Shettima.
An explanation that the party was primarily concerned with the top of the ticket and that the choice of running mate was the prerogative of APC’s flag bearer, left many cold.
At some point the president must have picked up on the controversy rumbling ominously in the background within his party and in the larger polity. That perhaps explains the fulsome praise he showered on his deputy on the occasion of his birthday last September.
Among other things, he said: “I deeply appreciate your vibrancy, loyalty, partnership, and support as my deputy. In choosing you then as a partner, I selected competence and other qualities that Nigeria could depend on.”
“Every day, as Vice President, you have justified that choice by strengthening our work, bringing fresh perspectives, and upholding our commitment to Nigerians. Your dedication reassures me that I did not make a mistake in choosing you as my deputy.”
In that one message he felicitated a close associate on his special day and also sent a clear political message to those who thought Shettima’s position was threatened. Clearly, not everyone got the message because in the last few weeks a number of reports in the mainstream media have sought to revive what was thought to be a dead horse.
One of those suggested that some unnamed ‘forces’ in the United States were pushing for a return to religious balancing in the ruling party’s ticket that would see a Northern Christian being picked to replace Shettima as running mate. Among those touted to be in consideration are the Catholic Bishop of Sokoto Diocese, Rev. Mathew Kukah, former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara and Minister of Defence, Christopher Musa.
That was one end of the tales by moonlight. At the other extreme were speculations that rather than return to religious balancing, the president was minded to retain the same Muslim-Muslim formula, but effect a change in personalities with one-time Defence Minister and former Kano State Governor, Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, said to be preferred.
This ruthless step would be justified by the fact that, supposedly, Kwankwaso brings to the table political heft that would guarantee Tinubu’s victory in the electorally pivotal Kano. The unconvinced argue that without the former governor’s support, APC didn’t do too badly in the state in 2023.
Matters haven’t been helped by Kwankwaso’s blunt declaration that he wasn’t averse to abandoning his Nigerian National Peoples Party (NNPP) and joining any of its larger rivals, provided he was made presidential candidate or running mate. So, there was room for give and take where there was sufficient desperation.
To the first scenario which suggests that Tinubu at this point in his political journey has a desperate need to appease advocates of faith balancing, let it be said that in our overheated political environment, speculation often acquires a life of its own. But subjected to cold logic, the idea that he would, or should jettison, Shettima collapses under its own weight.
For one thing, the influential pressure groups like the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria (PFN) and notable clerics that made religion front and centre of the 2023 haven’t been agitating for a return to the status quo. Instead, they have largely been mollified by what they’ve seen of Tinubu in government. Some of his most powerful appointees are Christians as are the heads of key arms of the military and security establishment.
More importantly, the president made a strategic choice three years ago to pair with someone from the majority faith up North, himself being from the minority religion down South. There’s no evidence that his thinking has changed in any way to warrant shackling himself to an array of political paperweights just to please the gods of correctness.
More importantly, Northern Christian voters do not constitute a single, transferable bloc waiting to be activated by name recognition. Their voting behaviour is fragmented – shaped by ethnicity, local dynamics, party structures, and performance, not merely by faith affinity. Nigeria’s electoral history offers little evidence that elevating a Northern Christian to the vice-presidency automatically unlocks a decisive reservoir of votes.
Running mates are not ornamental. They are strategic calculations and products of electoral arithmetic. Tinubu’s choice of Shettima in 2023 was not accidental or sentimental. It was a carefully calibrated decision rooted in the realities of power, geography, party cohesion, and electoral survival. Those realities have not vanished. If anything, they have hardened.
Start with the Northeast. It is often lazily dismissed as electorally marginal compared to the Northwest, but that is a misreading of Nigerian politics. In any election the Northeast can be decisive. Shettima brought not just votes in 2023, but legitimacy. He faced a herculean task given that the Peoples Democratic Party’s (PDP) candidate, Atiku Abubakar, also hailed from the same zone.
As a former governor, senator, and political actor with deep roots across the region’s elite networks, he gave Tinubu’s ticket credibility acceptability and the electorate an attractive alternative to whatever Atiku had to sell.
Dropping Shettima would send a profoundly unsettling signal to the Northeast: that its loyalty is expendable. In a country where political grievances are easily stored and endlessly recycled, that would be an act of recklessness. Tinubu who’s a strategic politician understands this instinctively.
Then there is the internal arithmetic of APC. The party is already a broad and often uneasy coalition, held together less by ideology than by power-sharing expectations. Removing a sitting vice-president without an overwhelming, existential justification would reopen old wounds and manufacture new enemies.
The Northeast bloc within APC – governors past and present, legislators, financiers, and party organisers – would not quietly accept such a demotion. The backlash might not always be loud, but it would be effective: withdrawn enthusiasm, fractured mobilisation, and selective indifference on Election Day. No incumbent president seeking re-election courts that kind of avoidable instability.
Let’s not forget that for all the success of the incumbent in the Northwest in 2023, in the many places he placed second to Atiku who unashamedly ran a campaign that appealed to ethnic and regional sentiments.
Beyond electoral calculus lies Tinubu’s governing temperament. He does not reward noise but loyalty and utility. By all available evidence, Shettima has been a disciplined and dependable deputy – visible when required, restrained when silence was wiser. Those who mistake this restraint for weakness fundamentally misunderstand the president’s political DNA. From Lagos to Abuja, he has consistently preferred deputies who stabilise power rather than compete for it.
There is also a stubborn truth Nigerian politics sometimes pretends does not matter: loyalty still counts at the very top. Tinubu is not known for casually discarding allies, especially those who stood with him through difficult moments. Shettima did not merely share a ticket; he defended unpopular choices, absorbed blows, and helped steady the campaign during one of the most polarising elections in Nigeria’s recent history. That kind of political capital is not easily replaced – and certainly not for cosmetic balance.
Speculation will persist till voting day in 2027. But stripped of sentiment and examined through realistic lens, much of the permutations would be exposed for what they are – idle scenario building. Dropping Shettima may excite commentators and satisfy theoretical arguments, but in the real world it makes no political sense at all.
