Bookaholic Shettima Goes on Leave…
There are politicians who speak because they have something to say, and there are those who speak because silence, to them, is an unacceptable interruption in the daily ritual of political visibility.
And then there is Kashim Shettima. Nigeria’s Vice President ordinarily should have been a literary god, somewhere behind a mahogany desk, churning out books of aphorisms, essays of philosophical reflections and volumes of literary lines to be savoured by lovers of deep-rooted words. Alas, destiny took a rather curious detour. Instead of becoming a full-time custodian of books, he became an administrator of human affairs, a manager of policies and, ultimately, the nation’s Vice President.
But the books never really left him. They seem to have followed him into politics.
For every word this Kanuri intellectual utters, there is often an unmistakable residue of a man who has read too many books to speak in ordinary sentences. His words arrive carrying the weight of digested pages, philosophical undertones and metaphors that sometimes ambush the listener long after the speech has ended.
To call Shettima a voracious reader may be an injustice to the potency of his literary consummation. He does not merely read books; he appears to metabolise them.
And occasionally, he coughs up a sentence that sounds less like political speech and more like a line rescued from the margins of an old philosophical manuscript.
At the first anniversary of the passing of my late life mentor, President Muhammadu Buhari, Shettima offered one such line. It was deceptively simple:
“Your friends know you when you are in power, but you know your friends when you are not in power.”
A harmless anecdote, perhaps. But within that seemingly modest sentence was an entire philosophy of human relationships.
When power resides with you, your world can suddenly become crowded with friends. Your telephone never sleeps. Your sitting room becomes a pilgrimage centre. Your name travels faster than your footsteps.
But power is also an excellent examiner of friendship. When the office disappears, the convoy vanishes, the phone calls diminish – apologies to Dr Rueben Abati and the doors that once opened before your arrival suddenly acquire locks, you discover something profound: some people were not friends with you; they were friends with what you represented.
Perhaps that was the haunting beauty of Shettima’s line at Buhari’s memorial. It was not merely about Buhari. It was about all of us.
Today, you may be the world to somebody. Tomorrow, the world may continue perfectly well without you.
At Buhari’s memorial, amid the solemnity of remembrance and the architecture of grief, Shettima did remind us that political power is ultimately an appointment with impermanence. The office expires. The title fades. The convoy moves elsewhere. What remains is memory — and, occasionally, the handful of people who remember you when there is nothing left to gain from remembering you.
This is one reason Shettima’s speeches often seem to echo long after the events at which they are delivered.
Typical Nigerian political speeches are sometimes born in the podium and buried with the applause. Shettima’s lines have a habit of escaping the venue.They travel.
They are quoted at dinner tables, reproduced on social media, dissected in newsrooms and remembered long after the microphones have been switched off.
His appeal is not just his intelligence. His distinction is the manner in which he packages intelligence.
He rarely says the ordinary thing in an ordinary way when a colourful metaphor is available.
He can take a political argument, wrap it in humour, garnish it with sarcasm, sprinkle it with history and serve it with the composure of a professor who knows exactly where the punchline is hiding.
That is the Shettima paradox: a stern face carrying an impish sentence.
He can stand before an audience with the solemnity of a man about to announce the fate of a nation and, without warning, drop a line that sends the room into laughter.
His political humour is particularly fascinating because it is rarely humour for humour’s sake. There is usually an argument hiding beneath the joke.
Consider his famous description of former Vice President Yemi Osinbajo.
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While campaigning for Bola Tinubu’s presidential nomination, Shettima acknowledged Osinbajo as a good and decent man — before delivering the mischievous verdict that nice men should be selling popcorn and ice cream.
It was an audacious political joke, but also a clever rhetorical device.
He took the word “nice”, apparently a compliment, and inverted it into an argument about leadership.
The line could have ended there. But politics, when seasoned with humour, sometimes writes its own sequel.
At a subsequent book launch, Osinbajo returned the favour, introducing Shettima as the “majority shareholder and chairman of the Yemi Osinbajo Ice Cream Company.”
And the room erupted. That moment perhaps captured something beautiful about political banter: the best joke is sometimes the one that survives long enough to be returned to its author.
Shettima has demonstrated this capacity repeatedly. He has joked about Atiku Abubakar, political tourists, Dubai, Fombina, goats, broilers and layers. He has transformed opponents into characters in miniature political theatre. He has employed cultural references, historical analogies and unexpected comparisons with the mischievous confidence of a man who knows that language, properly handled, can be both a weapon and a musical instrument.
Even his jabs at the Fulani often come wrapped in a curious mixture of familiarity, cultural intimacy and teasing irreverence.
There is something distinctly Nigerian about it. The humour is not imported.
It is organic.
It is the humour of a society where political argument can migrate, within seconds, from the solemnity of governance to the intimacy of banter.
And Shettima seems particularly comfortable in that space. Perhaps that is because the bookaholic in him never truly disappears beneath the politician.
The politician speaks.But the reader is always somewhere in the room.
One can almost imagine the thousands of pages he has consumed sitting quietly behind his eyes, waiting for the appropriate moment to emerge as an aphorism, a metaphor, an irony or an elegantly crafted verbal jab.
Now, after many months cascading into years of official engagements, national assignments, international travels, policy meetings, ceremonies, speeches and the ceaseless choreography of the Vice Presidency, Kashim Shettima is finally going on his first annual leave since assuming office.
It is not merely deserved.It is necessary.
Even the most voracious reader must occasionally close the book.
Even the most eloquent speaker must occasionally surrender to silence.
Even the Vice President must occasionally step away from the podium and allow the nation to discover that governance, for a brief moment, can survive without his baritone philosophical interventions.
And so, for a while, the bookaholic goes on leave. The podium will miss him.
The microphones may experience a strange silence.
The journalists will have fewer Shettima lines to chase. The social media comedians may temporarily suffer a shortage of material.
And lovers of language may find themselves asking an almost mischievous question:
What happens when the man who turns political speeches into literary performances goes on holiday?
Will he finally rest from words? Will the books accompany him?
Will he read in silence, or will some unsuspecting waiter, fellow traveller or holiday companion become the audience for another philosophical excursion?
And more importantly:
Will Shettima drop another line while away that will have us reaching for our notebooks?
Only time shall tell.
But one thing is certain: Shettima may go on leave, but the words he has already left behind are unlikely to take one.
For politicians, leave is temporary. Power is temporary. Applause is temporary. Even the office is temporary. But a beautifully constructed sentence can outlive the man who uttered it.
And perhaps that is the most enduring paradox of Kashim Shettima: he entered politics as an administrator, but he keeps leaving behind the footprints of a writer.
So, go and rest, Mr Vice President.
Close the files.
Mute the microphones.
Put away the policy papers.
Turn a few pages of that formidable library inside your head.
Nigeria will wait.
But please, when you return, bring back a few more sentences.
We, the lovers of deep-rooted words, will be waiting. And don’t forget to buy ‘Buredi’ for your Fulani cousins….
Abdullahi O Haruna Haruspice is the Dean,Musing School of Thoughts.
Bookaholically musing
