.

BY: A G ABUBAKAR.

Democracy, as a system of government, is both a beautiful and a funny concept. Its beauty is often skin-deep and, more importantly, dependent on the people who operate it. Democracy provides institutions, procedures and restraints, but it does not automatically produce good governance. The same democratic framework can produce a statesman in one country, a strongman in another and, under different circumstances, an outright despot. The difference is often not the architecture of the system but the character, interests, competence and intentions of those entrusted with its operation.

Perhaps nowhere is this paradox more evident than in the office of the Vice-President of Nigeria. It is a distinct feature of the presidential system of governance adopted by the country after jettisoning the parliamentary system it operated between 1960 and 1966. Both the 1979 and 1999 (as amended) Constitutions provided for this presidential model of governance, which has been in place since 29 May 1999.

Under this arrangement, the President and Vice-President are elected on the same ticket. The Vice-President is therefore not merely another political appointee. He or she is part of the electoral mandate that produces the President.

Since the return to democratic rule in 1999, six people have occupied the office: Atiku Abubakar (1999–2007), Goodluck Jonathan (2007–2010), Namadi Sambo (2010–2015), Yemi Osinbajo (2015–2023), and Kashim Shettima (from 2023)—with Jonathan serving first as Vice-President to Umaru Musa Yar’Adua before succeeding him as President in May 2010. More precisely, Atiku Abubakar served under President Olusegun Obasanjo; Goodluck Jonathan under President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua; Namadi Sambo under Jonathan; Yemi Osinbajo under Muhammadu Buhari; and Kashim Shettima under Bola Ahmed Tinubu.

That history reveals something important: Nigeria has had Vice-Presidents of very different personalities, political weights and relationships with their principals. Consequently, the office has never operated according to one fixed template. Some Nigerians have famously described the Vice-President as a “spare tyre.” Others have reduced the office to that of an “errand boy.” Both descriptions are politically colourful but constitutionally inadequate. The Vice-President is a constitutionally established office with important responsibilities, including succession in circumstances provided for by the Constitution.

The 1999 Constitution, as amended, establishes the office of the Vice-President in Section 141, which provides that there shall be a Vice-President of the Federation. Section 142 deals with the nomination and election of the Vice-President, while Section 146 provides for the discharge of the functions of the President in circumstances such as death, resignation, removal or permanent incapacity.

There is, however, an important constitutional nuance. The Constitution does not prescribe a long, detailed list of executive functions that the Vice-President must independently perform every day. Section 148 provides that the President may, in his discretion, assign responsibility for any business of government to the Vice-President or a minister. This is where the funny side of the Nigerian presidential system begins.

The Vice-President is constitutionally important, electorally important and potentially politically consequential, yet much of the office’s day-to-day executive relevance depends on what the President chooses to delegate. In other words, the Vice-President possesses constitutional stature without necessarily possessing an autonomous executive portfolio. That distinction matters. A Vice-President can be extraordinarily influential without controlling a major ministry. Conversely, a Vice-President can occupy one of the highest offices in the land and still appear politically peripheral, which many insinuate has been the case with Shettima.

Under the Constitution, the President and Vice-President campaign together. They present themselves to the electorate as a political partnership. Their election is based on a common mandate, based on the perceived need for loyalty and regional and ethno-religious balance. That’s what made the Muslim-Muslim ticket of Tinubu and Shettima generate so much debate in 2023.

Whatever one’s interpretation, the episode demonstrated a fundamental truth about Nigerian democracy: political tickets are rarely constructed merely around constitutional requirements. They are also instruments for managing interests.

The same logic applies to ministers, commissioners, special advisers, party officials and other political appointments. Representation is often expected to perform several functions simultaneously: reward loyalty, accommodate constituencies, maintain political equilibrium, broaden legitimacy and strengthen the governing coalition. But once the election is over, another reality emerges. There cannot be two captains commanding the same ship.

The first structural problem confronting every Nigerian Vice-President is therefore simple: how does one exercise influence without appearing to compete with the President?

A Vice-President who becomes too assertive may be perceived as ambitious.
One who is too passive may be perceived as irrelevant.
One who develops an independent political network may be considered a threat.
One who refuses to develop one may become politically dependent.
One who publicly disagrees with the President risks undermining the administration.

This is the paradox of the office. Several factors can determine how much space a Vice-President like Shettima occupies.

First is the President’s personality and governing philosophy. Some Presidents delegate extensively; others centralise authority.

Second is the relationship of trust between the President and Vice-President. Presidential systems are intensely personal. Constitutional provisions matter, but political trust often determines how those provisions operate in practice.

Third is the influence of the President’s inner circle. The “kitchen cabinet”—whether formal or informal—can become a powerful filter through which information, access and influence flow. It is also where people could easily knock heads for their self-serving interests while dressing them up as protection for the President. It has been alleged that the VP has been angling to succeed his boss in the event that he failed to complete his tenure on account of being incapacitated or gone. Such a story got spun, according to the VP, to the extent that an ordinary gift to his boss was seen with suspicion.

Fourth is the Vice-President’s own personality and political ambition. Every Vice-President knows that the office is constitutionally positioned immediately below the presidency. The possibility of succession is therefore built into the architecture of the office.

Fifth is the politics of succession. The closer a government moves towards the end of its constitutional tenure, the more complicated the relationship can become, particularly in the North, where political actors begin positioning themselves for what comes next: a post-Tinubu era in either 2027 or 2031.

This brings us to Kashim Shettima, who did not enter the Vice-Presidency as an unknown political quantity. He had served as Governor of Borno State from 2011 to 2019, during one of the most difficult periods in the state’s modern history. He subsequently served as a senator representing Borno Central. His political experience, particularly his years as governor during the Boko Haram insurgency, gave him a profile different from that of several previous Vice-Presidents.

From the beginning of the administration, Shettima appeared eager to project himself as an active participant in government. He spoke frequently about economic issues, national development and the direction of the administration. His public interventions sometimes gave the impression of a Vice-President prepared to occupy considerable political space. Remember his famous appropriation of managing the national security and economy himself and the principal at the inception of his tenure.

Yet the subsequent question has been: how much of that space has actually translated into institutional influence and measurable policy ownership? This is where the assessment becomes more complicated. Shettima’s defenders can reasonably argue that the Nigerian Constitution does not make the Vice-President an independently empowered executive. Without presidential delegation, a Vice-President cannot simply appropriate ministries, agencies or policy portfolios to himself. His critics, however, can equally argue that constitutional limitation does not necessarily prevent political leadership.

A Vice-President can build initiatives.
A Vice-President can convene stakeholders.
A Vice-President can become the administration’s principal advocate on particular issues.
A Vice-President can use his office to elevate neglected national problems.
And a Vice-President can become the political bridge between the presidency and a particular constituency.

The question, therefore, is not simply whether Shettima possesses independent constitutional executive powers. He does not. The more important question is how effectively he has used the political space available to him to impact the people who see him as one of the powerful moderators of government policy and policy directions.

This question becomes particularly significant because Shettima is not merely Vice-President in the abstract. He is a Northerner, a Muslim and a former governor of Borno State operating in a government whose political coalition is national but whose leadership arrangement has generated considerable discussion about regional and religious representation, with all its challenges.

The Vice-President occupies a unique position from which he can continually place these problems at the centre of national policy. This does not mean he should be partial in favour of the North, but rather that he shouldn’t stand by aloof or be a party to making the region’s plight worse. This is where the question of political visibility and impact becomes legitimate.

One useful way of assessing any Vice-President is to ask a simple question: What major national initiative will history associate with each of the five Vice-Presidents to date? The comparison is not necessarily about who was “better” or “worse.” It demonstrates that the office can be made politically visible when circumstances, presidential delegation, personality and institutional opportunity converge.

Shettima’s challenge is therefore not merely constitutional. It is one of political ownership.
What major policy initiative can Nigerians unmistakably associate with his office?
What major national problem has he persistently championed?
What institutional mechanism has he built?
What enduring programme will remain associated with the Vice-Presidency?

Has Shettima’s impact been felt so far, even within his immediate constituency, the North? Or is he simply content with being Vice-President—a feeling of power for its own sake? How else does one explain the deterioration of insecurity in Borno and across the North-East? The continued captivity of the Mussa and Lassa children in the hands of Boko Haram/ISWAP remains troubling. His response to the carnage in the North-West and North-Central zones could also be more forceful. His contribution to efforts to stem the rising number of out-of-school children in the North is hardly visible.

It is also troubling that Maiduguri, the VP’s home-state capital, can now be accessed through only one—western—corridor out of four. The Maiduguri-Damaturu-Biu highways, which once provided vital links through Biu and Damaturu, remain either closed or too dangerous to ply. Job opportunities are equally scarce, leaving large numbers of unemployed young people vulnerable to recruitment by insurgents and terrorists. It is also unclear whether the rehabilitation of the Alau Dam has been completed.

The North’s deeper crisis is also a larger issue. The region’s insecurity has disrupted agriculture, displaced communities, destroyed businesses and weakened local economies. The education crisis is equally alarming. That is why the North needs more than political representation in Abuja. It needs a development strategy built around security, education, energy, agriculture, industrialisation, healthcare, infrastructure and employment. And this is precisely where a Vice-President with Shettima’s background could potentially make a difference—if sufficient political space is created and if he chooses to occupy it. For now, it would seem he is little more than a presidential representative who attends ceremonies, delivers speeches and occasionally speaks on behalf of the President, as he just did at UNGA 81. The office is too important for that.

The Vice-President is constitutionally the second-highest elected executive official in the country. He is elected by the same electorate, on the same ticket, under the same national mandate. He should not be confused with a minister, special adviser, or presidential spokesman. At the same time, the Vice-President cannot be expected to behave like a second President.
That is the delicate balance.

The Vice-President must be sufficiently influential to contribute meaningfully to governance but sufficiently disciplined to respect the authority of the President. The President, in turn, must be sufficiently confident to allow his deputy meaningful space without interpreting every expression of initiative as competition. This is not merely a matter of personality. It is an institutional question.

The same Constitution can accommodate an activist Vice-President and a ceremonial one. It can produce a President who delegates and another who centralises. It can create space for vigorous debate and space for political conformity. The system provides the framework. Human beings determine what happens inside it.

That is why democracy can be both beautiful and funny. It gives people power and then trusts them to decide what to do with it. It creates institutions but depends on institutional culture. It distributes authority but leaves enormous room for political interpretation. It provides succession arrangements but simultaneously creates incentives for political ambition. It puts a President and Vice-President on the same ticket and then expects them to navigate the inevitable tension between cooperation and succession.

Perhaps the most important lesson from Nigeria’s experience is therefore that the strength of an office cannot always be measured by the number of powers expressly written into the Constitution. Rather, it’s about personality, confidence, instinct and political networks. Whether Kashim Shettima, as a Vice-President, is viewed through the optics of these sociopolitical values is a matter of debate, made very complicated by the very democracy that threw him up.

The Constitution creates the office. The President creates much of its operating space. The Vice-President determines how much of that space he is prepared to occupy. And history ultimately decides whether he merely occupied the office—or actually used it.
A.G. Abubakar
agbarewa@gmail.com