By Dan Abubakar
“Amaechi is projected as flying the mantle of the South-east and South-south, but how much allegiance has he demonstrated to those regions and personalities from there”
After so much equivocation and even outright denials of intent, Transport Minister and good boy of Daura, President Buhari’s home town, finally threw his hat into the ring at the weekend. He wants to be president of Nigeria.
As someone who has derided the rather bland, even lifeless declarations of presidential ambition by some previous aspirants, I must say his speech was well-couched, even elevating in parts.
But if only much of it was true.
First was the rather curious motive he gave for running. He had a moral obligation to do so, he said. Pray, moral obligation to whom and to what? Then there was the deception of using the cover of an invitation to a thanksgiving as a platform to launch his gambit. At least one invitee let it be known that he had been deceived.
This behaviour underlines Amaechi’s entire career in politics. While he was careful to pay tribute to his benefactor, former Rivers Governor Peter Odili,it will be interesting to find out what Odili thinks of his protégé subsequently.
Amaechi is projected as flying the mantle of the South East and South South but how much allegiance has he demonstrated to those regions and the personalities from there? Loyalists of former President Goodluck Jonathan remember Amaechi as a household enemy, a serial betrayer who was not only impossible to manage but channeled his disagreeable behaviour to cause as much dissension in the PDP as possible. He then defected to Gen Mohammadu Buhari’s fold, wrecking Jonathan’s second term hopes.
He spoke glowingly of his time in politics and the offices he has occupied, almost hinting that his new quest was part of a divine mandate rather than the rich pickings of a career of treachery. And what was his record in each of those offices? Did he as governor transform the fortunes of the people of Rivers State instead of splashing its revenues in prestige projects and expenditure on private aircraft and other items of dubious value?
As Transport Minister has he gone beyond the self-seeking that saw him swamp Daura with projects in order to win the approval of the president and his people while those from whose territory the oil is produced live in a swamp of despair and hopelessness?
The railways he boasts about, at what cost? The Chinese who had seemed amenable to any amount of project padding our officials demanded – as the Stella Oduah story with our airports modernisation has demonstrated – are now apparently balking at further indulging this administration’s insatiable appetite for loans, as Amaechi himself recently cried out. Amaechi should come out and tell us what has been expended on projects under his charge and what these have added to our current debt overhang.
He is unlikely to come clean. Not when his masters are evidently pleased by his performance.
He won the turf battle over the reinstatement of former NPA MD, the Katsina State- born Hadiza Bala Usman to the consternation of all the forces she had marshaled on her behalf. Amaechi it was who in the first instance had an ill-qualified and inexperienced Hadiza appointed as part of his scheming to be in good standing with the powers-that-be.
The Emir of Daura recently admitted him into the Daura court after adorning him with the fineries of a feudal lord. Now he is being primed to be president.
Ambition, as Shakespeare has said, should be made of sterner stuff.
Abubakar, a Political Analyst, wrote from Abuja
