‘His frustration is just beginning’ — presidency berates Datti Baba-Ahmed over call for Shettima’s sack

The presidency has slammed Datti Baba-Ahmed, running mate to Peter Obi in the 2023 presidential election, over his recent comments suggesting that Vice-President Kashim Shettima should be removed from office.

In a statement issued on Friday, Stanley Nkwocha, senior special assistant to the president on media and communications (office of the vice-president), described Baba-Ahmed’s criticism as “obsessive vituperation” and “beer parlour gossip”.

Nkwocha said Baba-Ahmed’s appearance on Arise Television, where he canvassed support for a political coalition and questioned Shettima’s continued stay in office, was “nothing but another public display of frustration”.

“In the said interview, Baba-Ahmed expressed his frustrations on why the president had yet to remove the vice-president from office for not a single reason or offence he evidently linked the vice-president with, but merely to soothe his ego and wish,” the statement reads.

“Well, the bad news for him is that his frustration is just beginning.”

Nkwocha said while the office of the vice-president would usually ignore such remarks, it was important to “put Baba-Ahmed in his right place in history,” citing his academic record and political past.

He accused Baba-Ahmed of “openly falling short of calling for a military coup” after the defeat of his party in the 2023 elections and alleged that he was previously sacked from the senate due to electoral fraud.

“The real definition of political desperation and desire to capture power can only be situated in Datti’s political trajectory when the courts sent him packing from the senate for rigging elections,” he said.

‘SHETTIMA HAS NEVER LOST AN ELECTION’

Nkwocha referenced the 2011 election tribunal, which nullified Baba-Ahmed’s senatorial victory in Kaduna north and upheld the result in favour of former governor Ahmed Makarfi.

He described Shettima as a “democrat” with a record of unbroken loyalty to President Bola Tinubu, noting that he rose to power through merit and divine favour.

“If God, in His infinite mercy, has elevated Senator Shettima to become the vice-president of Nigeria, is it unmeritorious?” he asked.

Nkwocha said Shettima has never lost an election and had served as a banker, commissioner, governor, and senator before assuming his current role.

He praised the vice-president’s commitment to the renewed hope agenda, calling him a “loyal and dependable ally, administrative and political asset, intellectual powerhouse… and truly moulded cosmopolitan Nigerian”.

“The office of the vice-president requires total loyalty, which Shettima embodies,” he said.

“He has, without equivocation, continued to market the programmes of this administration with unbridled gusto and conviction both in Nigeria and all over the world.”

Nkwocha said Baba-Ahmed’s criticisms would no longer be ignored, warning that “attacks like this would henceforth not go without a response from us”.