The Country and Its Shadows

KASHIM SHETTIMA

A nation is held together by the stories it is brave enough to tell about itself, and no democracy grows by hiding its shadows from the light. It has often been said that leadership is a practice and not a title, and | believe the same is true of journalism and literature. They are not ornaments of society. They are practices of memory, of conscience, of correction, and of renewal.

I am delighted to be here for the public presentation of Shadows: Protest Essays on Africa’s Most Consequential Country (1999-2023). | thank the management of THISDAY Newspapers, especially the Managing Director, Mr Eniola Bello, for this invitation, and | commend the courage, the discipline, and the public spirit that have gone into producing this two-volume work. A book of this nature does more than arrange essays between covers. It preserves the arguments of an era, the fears of citizens, the choices of leaders, and the unfinished questions of our democratic journey.

Nigeria’s Fourth Republic has been a long conversation between hope and disappointment, between protest and patience, between the promises of power and the expectations of citizens. Every administration has faced the judgement of history, and every generation has had to decide whether to treat criticism as hostility or as an instrument of democratic improvement. The media has been central to that process. When it is responsible, courageous, and fair, it does not weaken the state. It strengthens the state by compelling public officials to remember that power is held in trust.

This is why President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has remained firm in his belief that democracy must accommodate disagreement. He understands, from personal experience, that the press, civil society, activists, writers, and citizens who ask hard questions belong to the architecture of a free society. A government that cannot listen will eventually lose the confidence of the people, because trust is not built by authority alone. Trust grows when citizens feel seen, heard, valued, and protected.

Our administration came into office at a difficult time, when Nigeria had to confront hard economic truths that had been postponed for too long. The removal of the petrol subsidy and the unification of the foreign exchange system were not easy decisions, and we have never pretended that they carried no pain. But leadership, at its most serious level, is the courage to choose repair over applause, and to do today what prevents a deeper crisis tomorrow.

We are beginning to see the foundations of that difficult repair. Nigeria’s Gross Domestic Product grew by 3.89 per cent in the first quarter of 2026, after a growth of 3.4 per cent in 2024 and an expansion of 4.6 per cent in the fourth quarter of that year. Oil production has rebounded to about 1.5 million barrels per day, while debt servicing has declined from 96 per cent to below 65 per cent of revenue. These figures do not mean that all hardship has disappeared, but they show that the economy is finding firmer ground.

Today, more than 100,000 Nigerians have accessed the national consumer credit scheme, with hundreds of thousands more in the pipeline. The student loan programme is opening the door of higher education to children who might otherwise have been locked out by poverty.

In infrastructure, the administration is pushing major arteries such as the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway, the Sokoto-Badagry Superhighway, and the Abuja-Kaduna-Kano Road, while hundreds of road projects and rural road interventions are being pursued to connect communities, markets, farms, and industries. In the 2026 budget, capital expenditure is projected at N26.08 trillion, which is a firm statement that this government is investing in the physical foundations of growth.

Yet figures alone do not tell the full story of a nation. That is why books like Shadows matter. They remind us that policy must be understood through people, that reform must be explained with honesty, and that democracy must never become a conversation among politicians alone. Writers and journalists help us to connect statistics to suffering, policy to memory, and governance to the human condition.

To THISDAY, | say thank you for continuing to create platforms for national reflection. To the author and to all who contributed to this work, | congratulate you for documenting the struggles, the contradictions, the protests, and the possibilities of our republic. The duty of the writer is not to flatter power, and the duty of power is not to fear the writer. Both must serve the larger truth that Nigeria is worth correcting, worth defending, and worth building.

May this book provoke deeper thought, better leadership, and a renewed commitment to the democratic ideals that hold us as one people. May we continue to disagree without destroying one another, to criticise without hatred, to reform without arrogance, and to govern with the humility that every public office is temporary, while the consequences of leadership endure.

•Excerpts from the speech of Vice President Kashim Shettima, represented by the Special Adviser to the President on General Duties (Office of the Vice President), Dr Aliyu Modibbo, at the public presentation of SHADOWS: Protest Essays on Africa’s Most Consequential Country (19992023), at the Shehu Musa Yar’Adua Centre, Abuja, on Thursday, 23 July 2026.