VP Shettima Said Only 6 Out of 19 Northern Governors Backed Tinubu, Then Spent Two Days Explaining the Math

You know that thing where someone says a slightly too-honest thing at an event, and then their people spend the next 48 hours doing damage control? That's basically Vice President Shettima's week.

Here's what happened. Shettima was in Ilorin for a traditional ceremony, Governor AbdulRazaq of Kwara was being given the title of Sardauna of Ilorin Emirate, very dignified occasion, everybody in agbada, cameras rolling. And in the middle of all that pomp, Shettima casually mentions that only six out of the nineteen northern governors actually believed in and supported Tinubu's presidential ambition. Six. Out of nineteen. At a public event. On record.

Naturally, that traveled fast, and the headlines wrote themselves: "Only Six Northern Governors Backed Tinubu?" Within a day, his office had to step in.

The clarification, when it came, was doing some very careful timeline work. According to his spokesman, Shettima wasn't talking about the 2023 election at all, he meant one specific window: the political consultations before the APC primary in June 2022. Before Tinubu had even won the ticket. His office wanted everyone to know that after the primary, the northern governors "rallied round" properly.

Which, if you actually sit with that sentence, isn't the save they think it is. They basically confirmed that most of the region only got on board after Tinubu had already won, which is a very specific way of saying "we supported the winner once we knew he was the winner." That's not loyalty, that's just good instinct.

So now we're left with a Vice President explaining that he didn't mean the thing everyone heard, while accidentally confirming a version of it anyway. Honestly, we've all had that one friend who does this in the group chat.