“Before the Campaign Begins: 7 Simple Questions Kashim Shettima Must Answer” 

By Mohammed Bello Doka

In August 2022, Kashim Shettima stood before the Nigerian Bar Association and made a promise that should haunt every northern community that votes in 2027. “I will handle the security,” he declared. “I will lead the troops to battle across the length and breadth of this country.” His principal, he said, would handle the economy. The division of labor was clear. The responsibility was personal. The promise was made in his own words, on the record, before the votes were counted.

Nearly four years later, the question is not whether Nigeria is safer. The question is whether Shettima remembers what he said. The answer, judging by the trail of blood and closed classrooms and abandoned farming communities across the North, is that he would prefer we forget.

We have not forgotten. And we have done him the courtesy of restraint. We are not asking about the poverty figures in the North, though they are catastrophic. We are not asking about maternal mortality, though northern women die in childbirth at rates that should shame any government.

We are not asking about the millions of out-of-school children who were supposed to be the Almajiri Commission’s entire reason for existence, until its budget was quietly redirected to roads in Ogun and Ekiti. We are asking only about the one thing Shettima himself claimed as his portfolio. Security. His words. His promise. His failure.

Here are seven simple questions he must answer before any campaign begins.

1. Where is Bello Turji?

This is not a rhetorical question. Turji, one of Nigeria’s most wanted bandit leaders, released a video in June 2026 claiming responsibility for attacks on security operatives in Sokoto and Zamfara, declaring his group ready for either negotiations or war. He is not hiding. He is taunting. He is conducting weapons training in the forests while the man who promised to lead troops into battle has yet to produce a single credible explanation for why Turji remains free.

If Shettima was handling security, what exactly was he handling? Because from Sokoto to Zamfara, the answer appears to be nothing at all. How many more videos must Turji release before the Vice President acknowledges that his promise was empty? How many more mass burials must the North witness before the man who said he would lead the troops admits he never intended to?

2. Since May 29, 2023, has President Tinubu visited Zamfara, Kebbi, Niger, Kaduna, Borno, or Katsina to console the families of bandit victims?

The question is not about official statements released from Abuja. It is about physical presence. It is about whether a president who flew to Jos for a condolence visit and to Kaduna for a funeral chose to stand in the ruins of villages where farmers were slaughtered and children were taken. The pattern is not ambiguous. The Muslim North delivered the votes that put this government in power. The Muslim North is now burying its dead alone.

If the President could travel to console victims of a drone strike in Kaduna, why has he not walked the fields of Zamfara where farmers were butchered? Why has he not stood in Katsina where entire communities were emptied? What message does his absence send to the millions who voted for him?

3. Why are more than 188 schools across six northern states still closed?

Benue recorded 55. Katsina 52. Zamfara 39. In Sokoto, schools in 20 of 23 local government areas were shut. Nearly 2.8 million children in Adamawa, Borno, and Yobe alone require emergency education support because their classrooms have become crime scenes. If Shettima was leading the troops, why are the troops not guarding the schools?

Why are children in Borno, abducted on the same day as students in Oyo, still missing more than a hundred days later while the federal government dispatched a high-powered delegation to the South West and sent no one of comparable rank to the North East?

If the security was being handled, why are parents in the North afraid to send their children to school? And if schools cannot be protected, what exactly is being protected?

4. After the Bodija explosion in Oyo, the federal government approved fifty billion naira. After the Alau Dam flood displaced over one million people in Borno, direct federal relief amounted to three billion naira. What was the rationale?

The North was not just abandoned. It was abandoned with a receipt. Fifty billion naira for dozens of victims in Oyo. Three billion naira for over one million displaced in Borno. If the numbers were reversed, would the federal government have described it as equitable? If a flood in Lagos had displaced a million people, would three billion naira have been acceptable? What does this disparity tell the North about how much its lives are worth to this government? And if Shettima cannot explain the arithmetic of relief, how can he explain the arithmetic of security?

5. The Presidential Amnesty Programme for the Niger Delta is allocated 115 billion naira in the 2026 budget. The North West alone has nearly 800,000 displaced persons. Where is the dedicated federal relief budget for displaced northern farmers?

The Niger Delta has a program. The North has press releases. The Niger Delta has a budget line. The North has a First Lady’s donation. The North West’s IDP population has swelled by 143,000 in six months. Sokoto’s displaced population doubled in a single month. Yet the federal government’s response is a food distribution event in Benue with no disclosed amount. If Shettima was handling security, what is he doing for the millions displaced by the insecurity he was supposed to end? Or does the North only receive relief when a First Lady visits?

6. The National Commission for Almajiri and Out-of-School Children Education had 8.4 billion naira of its 2026 budget allocated to road projects in Ogun, Ekiti, and Katsina. What has Shettima done to protect the interests of the Almajiri children he was elected to represent?

The Commission was created to educate millions of destitute children. Instead, it is building roads in the South West. The Commission itself says the National Assembly inserted these projects. Lawyers say the President could have vetoed them but did not.

As Vice President, Shettima chairs the National Economic Council and sits at the heart of this government. If 8.4 billion naira meant for Almajiri children can be redirected to roads without a single veto, what exactly has he done to protect the interests of the millions of children he claims to represent? If he cannot protect their budget, how can he protect their future?

7. In June 2023, Shettima told senators-elect that “the worst incompetent Southern Christian is better than the most puritanical Northern Muslim” for the Senate presidency. He later apologized to Muslims through the BBC, claiming he was misunderstood. So why should the North now vote for a Muslim-Muslim ticket?

That is the question. Not a speech. Not a lecture. A question. Shettima himself declared that the most puritanical Northern Muslim is worse than the worst incompetent Southern Christian. He said it before lawmakers. He said it while serving as the highest-ranking Muslim in the executive branch.

He apologized afterward, but the words remain. So if a puritanical Northern Muslim is worse than an incompetent Southern Christian, why should the North trust a ticket whose entire appeal rests on the claim that it represents northern Muslims?

What does the Muslim-Muslim ticket offer the North that Shettima’s own mouth has not already taken away? Why should a region that has buried its children, closed its schools, and watched its farmers abandoned vote for a ticket simply because both men on it share its faith, when one of those men has publicly ranked a devout Muslim below an incompetent Christian?

Shettima promised to handle security. He did not. He promised to protect the interests of the people he was elected to represent. He has not. He and his principal now intend to ask the North for another mandate, on the same religious logic that Shettima himself undermined with a single sentence.

The North should remember the promise. The North should remember the silence. And the North should ask, before it votes again, why the man who said he would lead the troops cannot account for a single battle won, a single child rescued, or a single school reopened.

Mohammed Bello Doka can be reached via bellodoka82@gmail.com