By Adesina Soyooye
“If the ship I am inside is overloaded and is capsizing, I will jump ship”
Senator Ali Ndume, APC Borno South, has revealed that contrary to the long held view that it was Rotimi Amaechi who gave President Bola Tinubu a big space, the opposite was the case.
Ndume, also said he has a reason to be attached to Amaechi, and added that he believes Amaechi would make a good President. The Senator stopped short of saying that the Minister for Transportation under the Government of President Muhammadu Buhari would make a better President than the incumbent.
Ndume made these revelations Tuesday on Arise Television’s Prime Time anchored by Charles Aniagolu. And he said more.
For instance, he revealed that while he was a PDP Senator under a PDP Federal Government, he played the role of an opposition to the PDP. It is the same role he is, indeed, playing in the APC now.
He acknowledged that even as an APC Senator, he had attended, a number of times, meetings of the Coalition insistent on removing President Tinubu from office in 2027. The Senator also indicated he could dump the APC. “If I am in ship”, he said, “and it is overloaded and capsizing, I will look for a small boat and jump in.”
On Amaechi, Ndume disclosed how Tinubu abandoned the two-term Rivers State Governor after the 2023 presidential Primaries.
Amaechi contested in the Presidential Primary against Tinubu, but came a distant second. Ndume was his Director-General of the presidential campaign.
The Senator explained to Aniagolu that after Amaechi’s defeat, Tinubu was willing to meet with him and make Amaechi part of his Administration after the election. But somewhere along the line, Tinubu abandoned that line of action.
Senator Ndume: “I’m 65. I have been in this business for 24 years. God has given everything to me. The only thing I have to do right now, and I am prepared to die doing it, is to speak the truth and do what is right.
“Yeah, we had 315 votes (at the Presidential Primaries). We gave them a good fight. And then after that, we thought things would go on fine, actually, because I remember vividly that Tinubu, the Governor of Lagos [Sanwo-Olu], the current Minister of Defence, who else came to call me to say he (Tinubu) wants to come and meet with myself, Amaechi.
“So we agreed. And at that time, I remember, I was to go for Hajj. We had to go for Hajj. And so the President said, ‘Look, we want you to come on board, and let’s work together’.
“And we agreed, and then we agreed that we’d meet after I come back, and that meeting did not hold. That was how they abandoned Amaechi.”
Since that abandonment, the two, Tinubu and Amaechi, who were political alies have parted ways. Amaechi has now become a strong critic of the President and the APC. And, even though he has not resigned from the Party, he is one of the arrowheads of the coalition of others bent on stopping President Tinubu’s second term ambition.
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