As his running mate for the 2023 presidential election, Kashim Shettima, a former governor of Borno State, has been announced by Bola Tinubu, the party’s incumbent president.
After a one-hour private meeting with the president at his home, Tinubu made the announcement on Sunday in Daura, the president’s home state.
Ibrahim Masari, the APC presidential candidate’s temporary running mate, resigned from his previous position as a result of this development.
Shettima the person
Kashim was born on September 2, 1966, into the illustrious Shettima Mustafa Kuttayibe family in Maiduguri, the capital of Borno State.
From 1972 to 1978, he attended the Lamisula Primary School in Maiduguri. From 1979 to 1980, he transferred to the Government Science Secondary School in Potiskum (now in the neighboring Yobe State), where he finished his secondary education in 1983.
Shetima graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Agricultural Economics from the University of Maiduguri in 1989. From 1989 to 1990, he completed his one-year National Youths Service Corps (NYSC) requirement at the now-defunct Nigerian Agricultural Cooperative Bank in Calabar, the state capital of Cross River State in South-South Nigeria. At the University of Ibadan in Southwest Nigeria, he later earned a master’s degree (MSc) in agricultural economics.
Career
Shettima worked in academia from 1991 to 1993 after joining the University of Maiduguri as a lecturer in the Department of Agricultural Economics.
He entered the banking industry in 1993, working as head of the accounts unit for the (now-defunct) Commercial Bank of Africa Limited in Ikeja, Lagos State, Southwest Nigeria. Shettima served there between 1993 and 1997. Shettima transferred to the African International Bank Limited in the same year as a Deputy Manager and advanced to the position of Manager in 2001.
He transferred to the Zenith Bank in 2001 and is now the manager of Maiduguri’s main branch. Prior to leaving the Zenith Bank in 2007 as a General Manager after being appointed Commissioner for Finance in Borno State, he rose through the ranks at the bank to Senior Manager/Branch Head, Assistant General Manager (AGM)/Zonal Head (North-East), and Deputy General Manager/Zonal Head (North-East).
Electoral Life
The agricultural economist from Borno State entered politics for the first time in 2007 after being appointed as the state’s commissioner for finance. He worked as a Commissioner in five Ministries from that year until 2011.
He had previously held positions in the Ministry of Health, where he ran for governor in 2011, as commissioner of local governments and chieftaincy affairs in 2008, education in 2009, agriculture and natural resources in 2010, and finally in the ministry of education in 2009.
Shettima was chosen in January 2011 to represent the disbanded All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) as a candidate for governor. In the general election held in April 2011, he defeated PDP candidate Muhammad Goni with 531,147 votes.
Shettima was chosen as Chairman of the Northern States Governors’ Forum, an umbrella group of Governors in the 19 States in northern Nigeria, and was re-elected as governor of Borno State in 2015 under the newly formed (APC).
Shetima was elected to the Senate to represent Borno Central Senatorial District at the end of his second term as governor. He will hold this position until he is nominated as the APC’s vice presidential candidate.
Despite some rumours about maintaining power in the region, Shettima had been the strongest advocate for Tinubu’s ascent to the position of APC’s presidential candidate from the north.
He was the first to advise APC leaders and members to view the former governor of Lagos State’s presidential aspirations as payback for what he did to help the party win power in 2015.
Shettima claimed that the Asiwaju of Lagos was responsible for ensuring the selection of Buhari as the APC’s presidential candidate in 2023 at a conference held by the Support Groups Management Council (SGMC) for Tinubu in Abuja in January of this year.
Asiwaju and his progressive team, he said, “stood firmly behind the candidacy of Presidency Muhammadu Buhari in 2015, when some aspirants with very huge war chests were itching to clinch the ticket of the APC.”
In 2015, the senator representing Borno Central in the Senate questioned the whereabouts of the newly joined congregation of what he referred to as “The Buhari’s Church of Later Days Saints,” claiming that they had not pledged their allegiance to the President during that particular convention.
For the sake of equity, justice, and fairness, he claimed that power should move to the South in 2023, and Tinubu should be given the first option because, more than anyone else, he had made the greatest sacrifices on behalf of the APC.
We are not here to prepare for the Olympics, but rather an institution that depends on the superiority of ideas to thrive. Shettima also dismissed what he called the “mischievous fixation” on Tinubu’s age and the “wild conclusions” that he is physically unfit for the Office of the President.
In the run-up to the APC presidential primary election, he appeared on Channels Television to criticize some candidates for not having the brand name as his principal and to express his strong admiration for Tinubu and his leadership abilities.
Vice President Yemi Osinbajo is a nice man, but Shettima, who later apologized profusely, said that nice people should be “selling ice cream and popcorn.”
Additionally, he claimed that Lawan lacks the brand recognition necessary to be successful, citing the fact that “when one mentions Lawan in Ohafia, they will think he’s a tomato dealer.”
The Borno lawmaker did, however, issue an unreserved apology to the vice president and the president of the senate for any unintended harm that his jokes may have caused them, their families, and their supporters.
