A Note To VP Shettima Before Coming To Kwara - THISDAYLIVE

By this time tomorrow, Wednesday, September 16, 2026, the Vice President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, His Excellency Senator Kashim Shettima, is expected to be in Ilorin for the turbaning of Governor AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq as the Sardauna of Ilorin Emirate.

I wish our Vice President a safe journey and warmly welcome him to the ancient city of Sheikh Alimi.

But before you arrive, there are a few things you deserve to know, because between the Kwara you will be shown tomorrow and the Kwara many residents live with daily lies a story that may not feature in your official briefing.

One of the first projects you are likely to hear about is the Kwara Garment Factory on Airport Road. Indeed, I understand, Your Excellency, that you may be billed to commission it. Before you cut the ribbon, however, there is a small matter of history.

This same garment factory was first publicly launched about two years ago by no other person than the Governor of Kwara State, Mallam AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq. Workers were recruited and operations commenced, to the extent that the Kwara government claimed that it had started strategic partnerships with multinational brands including the Super Eagles, Adidas, etc.

Not done with the earlier publicity razzmatazz, the Kwara State Government still got the Nigerian First Lady, Senator Oluremi Tinubu, to ‘relaunch’ the same factory in January 2025. But just a few weeks after that, reports emerged that the factory had run into operational difficulties, including complaints and protests by workers over salaries and welfare.

This is the same garment factory you are now being asked to recommission.

In Nigeria, we have commissioned roads twice. We have commissioned hospitals without patients and factories without production lines. We should therefore not be surprised if a factory acquires more than one commissioning ceremonies.

But the Office of the Vice President is a serious institution. Your Excellency, before you lend your name and office to the ceremony, ask one simple question: What exactly am I commissioning? Is this a new factory? A reopened factory? A rehabilitated factory?

You do not have to take my word for it. Your aides can search the public record and establish the chronology themselves. If, after doing that, you still consider it worthy of the prestige of your office to commission it, the choice is yours.

Your Excellency, this is perhaps where greater caution is required. Kwara Hotel has become one of the most contentious public projects in the state. In 2022, the State Executive Council approved a ₦3 billion rehabilitation contract of the hotel under a concession proposal made by Crystal Group.

That arrangement was later cancelled under contentious circumstances amid personal political differences between the company’s owner and the Kwara Governor. In a weird and bizarre turn of events, the Kwara government later re-awarded the same contract for a whopping ₦17.8 billion to Craneburg Construction Limited.

But that is not the most outrageous part of this episode. The Kwara government came out yesterday admitting that, by the completion of the renovation, it had cumulatively spent a total of ₦27.8 billion, roughly ₦10 billion more than the originally announced sum.

The controversy is therefore no longer merely whether Kwara Hotel should have been renovated. Few reasonable people would oppose restoring an important state asset. The question is value for money.

How did a project discussed around ₦3billion in 2022 eventually become an undertaking said to have consumed about ₦27 billion? Twenty-seven billion naira. Not to build a brand-new Kwara Hotel on virgin land, but merely to renovate, upgrade and equip the existing one.

If your itinerary includes Kwara Hotel, Your Excellency, your advisers would do well to acquaint themselves with this controversy. It would be unfortunate for a Vice President to lend the prestige of his office to a project at the centre of an unresolved public controversy.

Third is the mysterious Kwara Revenue House. As your convoy proceeds further into Ilorin, you may also be shown the Kwara Revenue House, a project designed to house the Kwara State Internal Revenue Service, KW-IRS.

The reinvigorated revenue service itself dates back to the administration of Governor Abdulfatah Ahmed. During that era, the state government regularly published revenue figures, enabling citizens to know how much their government collected in taxes and other internally generated revenues.

It was a useful practice — governments collect public money. The public should know how much was collected. Simple!

Yet under the present administration, that culture of regular public disclosure has disappeared. And now we have a gigantic Revenue House whose cost has itself become a matter of public speculation.

How much did it cost Kwara taxpayers to build this edifice? Do the ordinary Kwara need to belong to the State Executive Council to obtain straightforward answers to these questions, Your Excellency?

A Revenue House should not have a revenue mystery attached to it. That’s the height of chronic opacity!

Similarly, as you enter the palace, there is one more thing I would like you to notice. You should see a gigantic construction project underway within the palace premises: an ultra-modern pavilion. That pavilion too has a story.

Senator Saliu Mustapha, the Senator representing Kwara Central, had facilitated a federal intervention for a pavilion project at the palace. But just when construction work commenced, it was frustrated and effectively stopped on the direct instructions of Governor AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq, after which the state government took over its construction without recourse to the federally budgeted allocated.

The state government may have its own version. It should tell it.

But there is an even easier question. How much is the pavilion costing? What was the procurement process? What is the contract sum? How much has been released? How much has been spent so far?

These should be the easiest questions in government. Yet the allegation in Ilorin today is that only the government and the contractor can confidently tell you the full financial details of the project.

There are several other projects I could mention, Your Excellency, but these capital projects will do for now. After all, your visit is only for a day.

Meanwhile, there is something else you will notice almost immediately after leaving Ilorin International Airport. It is the sudden and overwhelming presence of APC campaign materials: posters, banners, billboards and party colours.

It may create the impression of a city politically conquered. But look closely, many of those materials are fresh.

The reason is not far-fetched. In the last one week, the Kwara State Government embarked upon an aggressive ‘Operation Clean Up’, whereby its Signage Agency unlawfully removed opposition campaign materials from strategic locations shortly before your visit and replaced them with APC materials, creating an artificial visual dominance ahead of your arrival.

The government may dispute that allegation. It should. But it is precisely why your assessment of Kwara should not be based on what can be erected on poles and billboards three days before a presidential convoy arrives.

It appears somebody remembered only a few days before your arrival that Ilorin needed to look politically presentable. This is the Nigerian equivalent of pushing dirty clothes under the bed because an important visitor is coming.

Luckily, Senator Kashim Shettima has been around Nigerian politics for too long to mistake freshly printed posters for election results.

Neither billboards nor posters vote. And political popularity cannot be measured by the number of lamp posts occupied along the route of a Vice-Presidential convoy.

Lastly is the venue of the turbaning itself — the Emir’s Palace.

This is where things become more delicate.

You are coming primarily to attend the turbaning of Governor AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq as Sardauna of Ilorin Emirate. The palace will naturally be magnificent. There will be horses, drums, turbans, flowing robes, traditional guards, dignitaries, politicians and television cameras.

But behind the pageantry, Your Excellency, there are whispers you may never hear from the protocol officials surrounding you. They say the palace is unhappy but cannot say so. They say the Emir has been politically boxed in. The scheduling of this turbaning is the clearest evidence yet to support this.

Important turbaning ceremonies in Ilorin are traditionally held on Fridays. Your Excellency has attended major Ilorin turbanings before and should understand the significance attached to that day.

Yet this particular ceremony was initially scheduled for Tuesday and eventually fixed for Wednesday. Why? Perhaps there is a perfectly harmless explanation. But in today’s Ilorin, people whisper that when the Governor wants Wednesday, Wednesday becomes the new Friday, whether the palace has a tradition notwithstanding. Such is the general perception in town right now.

I have taken the trouble to regale you with these stories because tomorrow you may be shown one Kwara. I want you to know that there is another one.

Tommorow, you are not merely attending a turbaning. You are entering a carefully prepared political theatre.

So, Your Excellency, come to Ilorin. We welcome you warmly. Enjoy our hospitality, celebrate our culture and honour our Emirate. But as the sirens move through Ilorin and officials point proudly through the windows of your convoy, remember the old saying: Not all that glitters is gold!

*Dr. Abdulmajeed Lawal is of the Centre for Social Research & Documentation Sulu-Gambari Road, GRA, Ilorin.

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