My people, my people. Have you heard the latest song ringing in the market square? It is a lamentation, but one sung with the high-pitched glee of political gossip. They say our very own Vice President, Senator Kashim Shettima, has been given a new assignment: to join the highly-esteemed Professor Yemi Osinbajo at the 'Ice-Cream Spot.'
Before you ask your brother’s son to explain what a grown man is doing with ice-cream when the economy is melting, understand the political allegory. The 'Ice-Cream Spot' is a coded phrase. It is where you go when your relevance on the ticket has expired like a sachet of water left in the sun; a beautiful, high-sounding place where you wear fine suits and wait, but your name is missing from the real guest list for 2027. It is the political Siberia reserved for deputies whose utility has been fully expended.
Now, the APC has come out with their chest beating, declaring this rumour of a replacement 'speculative, untrue, and utterly baseless.' Ehen? But in our land, a rumour is only 'baseless' until the day it wears shoes and walks into the villa. The kabuki theatre is in full swing. The speculation itself, naming Northern Christians and other big men as his potential substitute has been thick in the air since before the dust of the last election even settled.
Let us not forget the foundation of this matter: the audacious Muslim-Muslim ticket. Shettima was the anchor, the necessary evil, the balancing scale to appease a powerful Northern bloc that felt disenfranchised by the dynamics of the day. He was chosen to secure the homeland, yet the very North-East, his own ancestral hunting ground, did not deliver a clean sweep as planned! Now the political strategists, who believe a ticket must be as balanced as a Fulani milkmaid’s head tray, are whispering about a Northern Christian replacement.
It is the eternal tragedy of the Nigerian Vice President, a position of ‘Number Two’ that is perpetually under the shadow of 'Number One.' Shettima has been visibly loyal, industrious, and sharp; a true banker-turned-politician who delivers the 'Kashim the Brave' speeches with gusto. Yet, loyalty in politics is a currency that devalues faster than the Naira. His fate is not about his performance but about the cold, hard mathematics of the next election and the religious calculus that holds our nation hostage.
Whether he is dropped or retained, the political sermon remains the same: In this game of power, a deputy must always remember that his position is less a throne and more a fancy footstool, removable at the pleasure of the King. May God save us from all this politics of speculation, and may He grant Shettima the grace to truly enjoy that ice-cream if he is indeed sent there.