Chief Femi Fani-Kayode
“I will not respond to Kashim Shettima because he is disrespectful. I am older than him and I have more experience in governance than he does, so I will not respond to him. It is not part of our tradition in the North to disrespect elders. You cannot look at someone who is senior to you in both age and accomplishments and start taunting him. That is not our tradition, so I won’t engage with him.”- Vice President Atiku Abubakar, Wazirin Adamawa, April 13, 2026.
My dear Waziri,
You know I love you very much and have expressed admiration for your efforts from time to time over the last 36 years since I have known you.
You will recall that we first met under the auspices of the now defunct September Club in 1989.
You attended our meeting as a mentee and loyalist of the late and great General Shehu Musa Yar’Adua who we all revered, loved and admired. It was a great event and those of us that hosted you and the General, despite being so young at the time, learnt so much from his wisdom and experience and your unalloyed and abiding devotion and loyalty towards him which was glaring for all to see.
Despite that, I am constrained to write the following. With the utmost respect and in spite of your cultural sensitivities permit me to remind you of the following and to offer some unsolicited counsel.
You said you cannot answer Vice President Kashim Shettima because he is disrespectful and because you are older and far more experienced than him.
That is strange coming from you because I seem to recall that between 1999 and 2007 when we were in power you openly insulted, disrespected and led a full scale rebellion and unrelenting mutiny against President Obasanjo who was not only your boss and our leader but who also had far more working experience than you and was much older.
The only reason you cannot answer Kashim is because you have nothing to say, you have no answer to his challenge and finally, unlike you ever were or could be, he is totally and completely loyal to his principal and our leader President Tinubu.
As vice president you could not find the courage to do same. As a matter of fact from day one of the 8 years that you were VP till the day we left office you were plotting to remove OBJ from his seat with the help of other dissidents and make yourself President. What could be more disrespectful than that to an elder or anyone else.
I am a living witness to the whole thing and I am pleased to say that you failed. Please do not invoke age and experience as a reason for not responding to others when they criticise you. You forfeited that right long ago. It takes courage and character to be loyal. Kashim has that courage and character but you never did.
Outside of this I wish you well in your endeavours sir and I hope and pray that you can resolve the grave challenges you are facing in your party so that you can meet us in the field of battle and we can trounce you at the polls in 2027.
Permit me to conclude with the following observations. You said the following to Charles Aniagolu of ARISE Television yesterday: “I know Goodluck Jonathan very well, he is a decent young man but also inexperienced, which contributed to his failure to manage the affairs of the country”.
You refer to a man that has lived on the earth for 68 years and that has had the privilege of not just enjoying the position you once attained as vice president but also went further than you to become President as a “young man”? I am astounded by the sheer arrogance of your words.
This is all the more so given the fact that you are only 11 years older than him if reports about your age are to be believed. You went further by saying that Jonathan was “inexperienced” and “he failed”?
You forgot that during Jonathan’s time Nigeria had the fastest growing economy on the African continent and did so much more but I leave it to his former government officials and ministers to defend his record in public office and prevent you from distorting and revising history and attempting to rubbish that record.
What I will say though, as the Director of Jonathan’s Media Presidential Campaign Organisation in 2015, is that he was a loyal vice president to President Umaru Yar’Adua and that he never betrayed his principal, coveted the latter’s office or tried to rubbish his legacy.
I can also attest to the fact that he was not only humane, gentle, restrained, kind and compassionate to a fault as a leader but that he also did his very best as president at a difficult time when bombs were being dropped all over the North in order to discredit and destroy him and his government by the usual suspects just as they are attempting to do to Tinubu today in an attempt to bring him down.
Jonathan also displayed virtues of leadership and decency towards his followers the likes of which you cannot possibly imagine, match or emulate.
Through thick and thin even during the most challenging years when many of us faced savage and unrelenting persecution he abandoned none and he stuck by his friends and supporters which is more than I can say for most leaders.
These qualities cannot be taken away from him by anyone, least of all your goodself. When a man that is incapable of trust, loyalty or fidelity runs down a man like Jonathan who embodies and epitomises all three it is not only painful but also unacceptable and even if the whole world sits by quietly and allows you to get away with it I will not.
I am glad that the Centre for Responsible Governance (CRG) responded to you effectively on this issue and defended the honor of Jonathan and I subscribe to all that they said in their communique. I commend them and I salute their courage.
Most important of all is the fact that Jonathan had the courage and decency to walk away from power and hand it to President Buhari on a platter of gold after he lost the election in 2015. If nothing else you must at least commend him for that.
Given your obsession with power and craving for it, I wonder whether you would have done the same. It is obvious that despite all your efforts to cobble your platform together you are already anticipating a crushing defeat in next years election and your grave fears and desperate disposition are betrayed by the words you spoke at your so-called party convention a few days ago where you said the following.
“It is clear that INEC is being used in this country. Let the federal government know that we fought the military to bring democracy to this country and we will fight the federal government to restore democracy.” You can smell your defeat coming and you know that your ambition to be President of our country is slowly melting away like an iceberg that is approaching the tropics.
Like the mighty ship they called the Titanic your ambitions are about to crash and sink and you are already looking for excuses and threatening fire and brimstone.
Please do those of us that care for you and that respect you a favour by learning to lose with dignity and accepting the virtue of humility because all power comes from God.
When you lose, and lose you will, it will not be because of INEC but because you are running against a man that is far better than you in every shape and form and every way and manner. It is also because God resists the proud and exalts the humble.
Please leave INEC out of it and prepare to accept the failure that is your portion and that is coming your way. As for your threats to “fight the federal government” when the inevitable happens I can only say that good luck to you and advise you that at your distinguished old age you should know far better.
Whichever way I doubt anyone is losing any sleep over your threats because your assertions and allegations against INEC are not only baseless but also utterly (forgive me for using these words) asinine and nonsensical.
Outside of that they are also very dangerous and may affect the stability and peace of our nation which is precisely what you are attempting to achieve. I advise you to desist from this reckless course sir and shun those around you that are advising you to tread it because it will not augur well for you or for them.
You are a respected democrat and not a lawless anarchist who seeks to scatter the entire table and pull down the entire house simply because you cannot have your way. That is not you and you are far better than that. When you lose, kindly take it in good faith, move on and either try again in 2031 or retire from politics accepting that God never intended you to be president.
There is absolutely no shame in that because you have already achieved so much and established a strong and enviable legacy. Please do not destroy it all out of blind ambition and the desire to get what God has chosen not to give you. Nigeria has been good to you. Please do not try to set her on fire.
Back to the point. My dear Waziri, both Kashim Shettima and Goodluck Jonathan were loyal to their bosses and you were incapable of doing the same. That is where the story begins and ends. Ambition is like a drug that blinds and kills slowly.
I am sorry to say that this affliction has seized you since 1993 and appears to have become even more pronounced today otherwise you would not even dream of opposing the candidacy of President Bola Tinubu after all he did for you over the years after you were driven out of the PDP for your treachery in tatters and disgrace in 2014.
Both the late President Muhammadu Buhari and Tinubu housed you in their new party at the time, rehabilitated you and gave you a new lease of political life only for you to leave them, go back to PDP and oppose them by running against their party for the Presidency six years later in 2019.
Not only that, after you lost the 2019 election you thoroughly destroyed the same PDP that took you back, forgave you and gave you a platform to run on by dividing the party along regional, religious and ethnic lines.
You violated and destroyed its zoning formula by insisting that its presidential candidate (which of course had to be your goodself) must again come from the North in 2023 and you attempted to truncate, destroy and bury the aspirations, political career and trajectory of men like Governor Nyesome Wike who had not only funded the party for years but had welcomed you back into its ranks with open arms in 2017 and supported you for the Presidency in 2019.
Forgive me for saying so but loyalty and commitment to a collective and common cause does not appear to be your forte sir. The Bible says “He who repays good with evil, evil will never leave his house”. I do not wish you or yours evil but kindly consider this.
Both Goodluck and Kashim repaid their boss’s good with good whilst you repaid your boss Obasanjo’s good with evil and that is precisely why they have risen and will continue to rise to greater heights than you ever will.
Finally in the same interview with Charles Aniagolu you said the following about your colleagues in your factional ADC party. “Kwankwaso, El Rufai and Tambuwal are not as popular as I am”.
Again forgive me for saying so but the truth is that you have displayed such a lack of humility, such arrogance and such a glaring display of hubris with these words.
I wonder how those three names you mentioned all feel about what you have said about their popularity or lack of it. Clearly this is the beginning of the disintegration of the ADC.
By the time this is all over you may well end up having ten factions in your party and not just three.
One thing is clear in all this and that is the fact that you sir, are loyal to your ambition and to no-one and nothing else. It is only a matter of time before your newfound friends in the ADC appreciate that and see you for who and what you really are.
I come in peace and I wish you well sir.
•Chief Femi Fani-Kayode, the author of this essay, is an Ambassador Designate of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, a former Minister of Aviation, a former Minister of Culture and Tourism, a former Special Adviser to President Olusegun Obasanjo on Public Affairs, the Sadaukin Shinkafi, the Wakilin Doka Potiskum, the Otunba of Joga Orile, the Aare Ajagunla of Otun Ekiti and a legal practitioner
Leave a comment