Vice President Kashim Shettima has recounted how some of his kinsmen from Borno State allegedly attempted to persuade his principal, President Bola Tinubu, that he intended to kill him and seize power.

Speaking at the public presentation of General Yakubu Gowon’s autobiography in Abuja yesterday, he said the incident happened barely three months after they assumed office in May 2023.

Shettima, who represented the President at the event, said that about three months after their inauguration, some of his kinsmen from Borno State cautioned Tinubu against wearing traditional outfits he had gifted him during the buildup to the 2023 election, alleging that the garments were used to bewitch the President and could lead to his death.

He said, “When we were campaigning for him to emerge as the candidate of the APC, we were going round the North. So, I got some materials and caps for him to blend with the Northern crowd. It fitted him very well. So his aides said, ‘produce more, it fitted him’.

“Barely three months when we were sworn into office, some of my people from Borno came to him and said, ‘Stop wearing those Shettima clothings. He must have charmed them. And you’re going to die. And he will become the President’.

“And to the eternal credit of the President, when I came back from China, where I represented him, he said, ‘Sit down. Your people came to me and said I should stop wearing those garments you gave me.’ But he said their story did not add up because when you gave those garments, I was an aspirant.

“For one week, to prove to them that he is not fetish, he wore those garments. These are some of the gimmicks that are taking place in power circles in Nigeria nowadays.”

He also compared the rising spate of suspicion with the Sultan of Sokoto’s account of how Gowon would receive gallons of fura sent weekly from the Sultan’s family in Sokoto to Dodan Barracks in Lagos.

He noted that Gowon accepted the gesture without suspicion, in a spirit of trust that he said has since been eroded.

On Gowon, whom he described as “the last man standing” among Nigeria’s post-independence military generation, Shettima said the autobiography is “a book of memory at a time when our country needs the discipline of remembrance.”

He said, “There are people who are remembered before they leave office. There are others whose memory endures because office became, in their hands, an instrument of national meaning. General Gowon belongs to the second company.”

The event was attended by former President Goodluck Jonathan, who chaired the occasion; the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, George Akume; Senate President Godswill Akpabio, represented by Senator Ireti Kingibe; the Sultan of Sokoto, Muhammad Sa’ad Abubakar III; the President of the Court of Appeal, Justice Monica Dongban-Mensem; retired generals, and others, including the son of late military Head of State, General Sani Abacha.