I HAVE a confession. Vice President Kashim Shettima has never been my man. I have never quite taken to him. Not that I hate the man some want to see as the Cicero of our time. But it is also not that I exactly dig the man others prefer to see as overly ambitious. Despite his good performances, especially in delivering speeches and jibes, I have always viewed him with caution. Jibes. Hmmmmn! Perhaps I never saw his jibes, especially those aimed at prominent leaders, as funny—except for the ones about Ahmad Lawan as a tomato seller or Osinbajo as an agwaluma or ice-cream man. I just tended to be icy when it came to him.
But that thawed with his superlative performance at the 80th United Nations General Assembly (UNGA).
He told the world, “We do not believe that the sanctity of human life should be trapped in the corridors of endless debate. That is why we say, without stuttering and without doubt, that a two-state solution remains the most dignified path to lasting peace for the people of Palestine. For too long, this community has borne the weight of moral conflict. For too long, we have been caught in the crossfire of violence that opened the conscience of humanity.
“We come not as partisans, but as peacemakers. We come as brothers and sisters of a shared world, a world that must never reduce the right to live into the currency of devious politics. The people of Palestine are not collateral damage in a civilisation searching for order. They are human beings, equal in worth, entitled to the same freedoms and dignities that the rest of us take for granted.”
Oh boy, did he get me! These are words on marble to be documented for generations yet unborn. While stating the truth many do not want to hear, his composure was top-notch, his delivery measured, his confidence contagious, his words impactful, and his focus palpable. The reasonable, just, and fair world listened. And they clapped. And took note.
Reasonable, just, fair. Weighty words, indeed. But they have antitheses. You may try direct ones like unreasonable, unjust, unfair. However, the everything-ungood world got upended by the speech, and they booed. But did he care? I think he has heard the words of Vanessa Redgrave: “If you tell the truth and people boo, you’re doing something right.” Vanessa knew what she was saying, considering that her penchant for truth cost her a promising Nollywood career for daring to speak the truth after receiving an Oscar in 1978.
Kashim Shettima represented Nigeria well. It is his type that the Hausa man will say, “Ya haifu” or “He was born well.”
By highlighting the existential threats Gazans face from the Israelis, with the active, expressed support of America, Nigeria, through the VP, showed courage by standing for the truth. And by warning that Gazans cannot be collateral damage, Shettima told the world that Nigeria is a humane nation, despite being sabotaged by powerful nations claiming to be our friends.
In a 2012 interview with Sir David Paradine Frost, an English television host, journalist, comedian, and writer, Archbishop Desmond Tutu talked about how Israel’s occupation of the West Bank is “in many ways worse than apartheid in South Africa.”
Archbishop Desmond Tutu (7 October 1931 – 26 December 2021) was a leader in the fight to end white minority rule in South Africa. He later served as the chairman of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC).
Archbishop Tutu was a faithful Christian who not only sought the truth but acknowledged it. There are Christians who were in Israel and were told by the Jews to “Come and worship me because the person (referring to Jesus) you are worshipping is my cousin.” Yet they see the Jews as demi-gods. These Christians know the Jews’ thoughts on Christianity, Jesus, and Holy Mary thoughts I, as a Muslim, cannot mouth—yet they bless them so that they, too, will be blessed. God!
It is this gullible mindset that has made the Israelites rush down to Nigeria to activate whatever they wanted activated—sleeper cells, lying fallow activists, etc.,—to exploit this credulity and “render Nigeria asunder” through blatant lies that any objective, reasonable person knows come from the most bottomless pit in hell.
Their Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sharren Miriam Haskel-Harpaz, was here and met with her Nigerian counterpart, Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Ambassador Bianca Odumegwu-Ojukwu. She also met with prominent Nigerian Christian leaders in Abuja at the residence of Michael Freeman, Israel’s ambassador to Nigeria.
Since independence, Nigeria has always been a country of special interest (CSI) to Israel and America, and they think the North has been and will always be a stumbling block to their hegemonic intents and agenda.
With recent developments, they now have a three-lens view of us. First, they may try, but surely with little success, to truncate VP Shettima’s political trajectory. The second will be to incite Christians against the Nigerian state, and the third is to harden further the stance of some Nigerian tribes that want to believe they are Jews.
For the second, we have seen how the hilarious agenda of “Christian genocide” is being pushed, promising to “fight” for them. Unfortunately, many sentimental Christians will close their minds to the truth and parrot this untruth, perhaps not knowing that these newly found emergency saviours can be linked to the biblical exhortation in Matthew 24:24: “For false Christs and false prophets shall rise, and shall show signs and wonders, to seduce, if it were possible, even the elect.”
As for the tribe, they need to read how the Israelites have been treating the Falasha Jews or about the Yemenite Children Affair regarding the disappearance of up to 5,000 Yemenite Jewish babies and toddlers, apart from those of other Mizrahi Jews, in the newly founded state of Israel from 1948 to 1954.
It is high time we became more vigilant, as nations that have been scourges of evil are now focusing more of their malevolent eyes on us. They have never loved us, and they never will; when they come close, it is because they want to harm us. All their sweet talks, all their gifts are but poisoned chalices.
Nigeria is the only country we have; we should never allow ourselves to be led astray, or by the nose, into destroying it. We are what and who we are because of her. The moment crises take over, our security challenges will get the wings they need to balkanise the nation and enslave all within, after slaughtering all they could.
Therefore, all Nigerians must rally around Nigeria. Muslims and Christians, Northerners and Southerners, let us not allow ourselves to be toyed with by false friends who speak from the nose or with a heavy accent like the sound of a carnivore crushing a bone.
- Dr Gimba, anipr, is the Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Neptune Prime. His syndicated column, The Arbiter, appears on News Point Nigeria newspaper on Monday.