Inside the Storm: How Vice President’s Silence Sparked Political Tempest  

The script was supposed to be simple: praise the president, signal continuity, and wrap the North-east APC summit in Gombe with a ribbon of unity. Instead, it unravelled into one of the party’s most unfiltered public family feuds.

It began with a speech. Mustapha Salihu, the North-east Vice Chairman of the APC, stood before his party faithful and gave a rousing endorsement of President Bola Tinubu for 2027. But one name was missing: Vice President KashimShettima. The omission was not lost on the crowd. By the time Salihu finished, chants of “Shettima! Shettima!!” ricocheted off the hall’s walls like political gunfire. Plastic chairs soon followed.

In a nation where symbolism carries the weight of substance, silence, particularly this silence, was deafening. For the North-east bloc, Shettima is not merely a vice president; he is their vice president. His exclusion from the script was seen not as a strategy but betrayal.

Salihu, cornered by outrage and escorted out by security, later offered a constitutional defense. “There’s only one ticket in the primaries,” he explained on national television. “The running mate is picked later. We endorsed Tinubu unconditionally.”

That legalese, however correct, collided with a different truth: Nigerian politics is rarely about procedure alone. It’s about perception. And for Shettima’s supporters, the perception was clear: power might be shifting.

Even more curious was the quiet compliance of others. Governors from Yobe and Gombe, present and prominent, echoed Salihu’s script: no Shettima.