•Reveals Tinubu’s defiant reaction: “He wore the clothes for a week to prove them wrong.”
••Laments rising culture of suspicion and malice in Nigeria’s power circles.
Vice President Kashim Shettima said Tuesday that, months after President Bola Tinubu was sworn in, visitors from Borno State warned the president to stop wearing traditional attire Shettima had supplied during the 2023 campaign, alleging the garments were charms that would cause Tinubu’s death.
Shettima told the story while representing Tinubu at the public presentation of former Head of State Yakubu Gowon’s autobiography, My Life of Duty and Allegiance, in Abuja.
According to the vice president, the warning came shortly after he returned from Beijing, where he represented Tinubu at the Belt and Road Initiative forum in October 2023. Tinubu, Shettima said, dismissed the claim as implausible and deliberately wore the clothes for a week to show he was not “fetish.”
“When I came back from China, where I had represented him at the Belt and Road Initiative Conference, he said: ‘Sit down. Your people came to me and said I should stop wearing those dresses you gave me. They said I must have been charmed, and that I am going to die and he will become the president,’” Shettima recounted. “Their story did not add up, because when you gave me those dresses, I was an aspirant. I wasn’t even the candidate. Neither were you the vice-presidential candidate. For one week, to prove to them that he is not fetish, he wore those dresses.”
Shettima used the episode to illustrate what he described as growing suspicion in Nigerian public life. He contrasted that climate with a story the Sultan of Sokoto, Muhammad Sa’ad Abubakar III, had told about Gowon accepting weekly shipments of fura from the Sultan’s family at Dodan Barracks without suspicion.
“Suspicion smears our relationships, and it ought not to be. We are essentially one people tied to a common destiny,” Shettima said.
In his address, the vice president praised Gowon’s legacy — including the establishment of the National Youth Service Corps and his role in ECOWAS — and urged Nigerians to resist forces that deepen division. Quoting Martin Luther King Jr., Shettima warned: “Let us learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.”
The event was chaired by former President Goodluck Jonathan. Others in attendance included Secretary to the Government George Akume; Senate President Godswill Akpabio, represented by Senator Ireti Kingibe; the Sultan of Sokoto; the President of the Court of Appeal, Justice Monica Dongban-Mensem; and a number of retired generals.
