Governor Nyesom Wike of Rivers state says President Muhammadu Buhari is angry with his predecessor in office Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi, the immediate past Transportation Minister.
Wike said Amaechi, a former governor of the state no longer has access to the president.
The governor was responding to Amaechi’s comment that he did not attend the funeral of a traditional ruler, Alabo Graham-Douglas, in the Akuku Toru Local Government Area of the state.
Speaking on Monday, the Rivers helmsman said Aamechi has lost out of the power game in APC, and the president has shut him out of Aso Rock, Nigeria’s Presidency.
“This should be the last time that you (Amaechi) will talk about this state because you are a total failure as far as this state is concerned. A total failure. Even what is supposed to come to us, you blocked it but we didn’t bother.
“You think you will not finish as a minister, you have left. I hear he can’t even enter Villa now. All those periods you intimidated police people, and army people are over. You use to tell them, ‘The President is angry with you’. Now, go and tell them,”
Amaechi played a crucial role in ensuring that Buhari becomes president in 2015. Not a few insist that the former governor provided huge financial support for the ruling party to prosecute the election, where for the first time since the return to democracy in 1999, an opposition party, APC defeated the ruling party, the PDP.
His later appointment as the Minister of Transport by the president is believed to be compensation for the role he played in the make or mar presidential election which Buhari won by defeating President Goodluck Jonathan.
Amaechi remained in that position until he resigned recently to contest the APC presidential ticket which he lost to Ahmed Bola Tinubu.
Since he lost out in the APC presidential primary, the former minister has somehow disappeared from the public eye, raising critical questions on whether he’s still relevant in his party.
There are rumours that he’s planning to defect to the PDP. But close watchers of politics in the country say this will be difficult considering Governor Wike’s influence in the party.
