Vice-President Kashim Shettima made a direct, public appeal on Tuesday to two of Nigeria’s most senior political figures to set aside a deepening personal rivalry that has fractured the ruling party’s structures in Benue State and threatened to destabilise one of the country’s most politically consequential states in the north-central region.
Speaking at the Renewed Hope Ambassadors Summit organised by the Progressive Governors’ Forum at the State House in Abuja, Shettima appealed by name to George Akume, Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), and Hyacinth Alia, the governor of Benue State, to reconcile their differences and present a united front.
“We make a special appeal to His Excellency Senator George Akume and His Excellency Senator Hyacinth Alia to mend fences and work as a team,” the Vice-President said, in remarks that underscored how seriously the presidency views the fallout between two prominent All Progressives Congress (APC) figures who are supposed to be on the same side.
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The feud between Akume and Alia has simmered for some time, but came to a fresh and damaging head last Wednesday when rival APC factions produced parallel sets of executives during ward congresses held across Benue State — a development that has effectively split the party’s state chapter and handed the opposition an early advantage ahead of future electoral contests.
Shettima appealed directly to Akume’s sense of seniority and statesmanship, cataloguing a career that has spanned decades and taken him through the offices of director of protocol, permanent secretary, governor, senator, and minister, before his current position as the country’s most senior civil official.
“You have seen it all. You are an elder statesman,” the Vice-President said, addressing Akume. “Reach out to our junior brother. Let’s build Benue together. Benue deserves peace. Benue deserves development.”
Beyond the immediate crisis in Benue, Shettima used the occasion to make a broader argument about national unity, framing Nigeria’s internal divisions as a threat to its ability to capitalise on what he described as a global economic shift towards Africa.
“What binds us together supersedes whatever divides us,” he said. “The trajectory of global growth is facing Africa, and Nigeria will make or mar that transition. Nigeria is greater than all of us.”
The Vice-President then closed with a pointed invocation of Martin Luther King Jr, warning that the consequences of continued discord would be self-defeating. “We either learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools,” he said. “And we are not a nation of fools.”
Whether Shettima’s intervention will prove sufficient to bridge the divide between Akume and Alia remains to be seen. Both men command significant political networks within Benue, and the parallel ward congresses of last week suggest that their loyalists are already entrenched in competing structures — a situation that, if left unresolved, risks handing the APC’s opponents a ready-made narrative of dysfunction heading into the 2027 electoral season.
