Shetima Explains Link With ‘Boko Haram’

Vice President Kashim Shettima has clarified a viral picture on social media which tried to link him with Boko Haram and bandits in the country.

Shettima said the photograph was being misrepresented , saying those in the picture were Fulani people made destitute by Boko Haram, that he was just trying to help them.

While speaking on Tuesday during the 2025 International Press Institute Nigeria Conference and Annual General Meeting in Abuja, the vice president said the Fulani were chased out of their communities after the terrorists discovered that they were revealing information about them to the Nigerian military.

According to him, he decided to help them out of sympathy by building  schools for their children provide clothing and food for them, adding that his association with the displaced persons was misinterpreted.

He stressed that his traducers are only trying to destroy him using the viral picture as a weapon, he vowed not to succumb to cheap  blackmail.

.Shetima: “Very wealthy individuals became destitute overnight. Most of them became my guards in the schools the government was building across Borno State because underneath the mayhem of Boko Haram, beneath it lies the real cause, which is extreme poverty. And education provides us the greatest tool of really addressing the root causes of insurgency and banditry.

“So we were crazily massively building educational facilities and most of these Fulanis were my guards in those facilities. I took it upon myself to break the intergenerational transfer of poverty, to reach out to those Fulanis and enroll their kids to school. I was even giving them rice, beans, clothing items, just to convince them to entrust their kids to me so that I can take them to school.

“And I was not keen on mixing them with the local people because they are the poorest of the poor. I even built a school, a special school. All the classrooms were air-conditioned, were using digital education aids, we were feeding them two times per day and we were bringing buses. Buses were conveying them from their homes to the school, just to encourage the parents.

“Regularly, whenever I go on visits, I used to sit down with the parents, eat, chat, just to win their confidence. One of those pictures recently went viral, ‘Shetima dining with Bandits and Boko Haram’ in Maiduguri.

“But I have developed a thick skin to such accusations, but none of the serious media houses took those stories. So the greatest threat to our democracy and our national survival is not the mainstream media. The anarchists in social media are the greatest threat.

“I know they will come after me. That’s the price of leadership. There are serious commentators and there are mischief mongers.”