“Rotimi Amaechi, Antagonistic, Bad Loser” – Shittu, His Fmr. Minister-Colleague

By Adesina Soyooye

A former Minister-colleague  of Rotimi Amaechi, Adebayo Shittu, has berated him over his attitude towards President Bola Tinubu and his Government.

Both Shittu and Amaechi were Ministers of Transportation and Communications, respectively, under the President Muhammadu Buhari Administration.

However, while Shittu has remained loyal to the Party – All Progressives Congress – and the Tinubu Government,   Amaechi has not only been absent in Party activities, he  is a strong critic of the Administration.

Amaechi’s attitude is a direct reaction to the outcome of the APC Presidential Primaries in 2023 where Tinubu beat him to a distant second place. Since then, Amaechi, a former political ally of Tinubu, two of them having come together in 2014/2015 to push President Goodluck Jonathan out of office, has given Tinubu a loud space, and has become a bitter critic. A couple of days after the Primaries, Amaechi said that the delegates were bought, obviously referring to Tinubu’s victory.

But analysing Amaechi’s attitude in an interview with the Punch on Friday, Shittu dismissed the former two-term Governor ofvRivers State as a sour  loser. He also referred to him as antagonistic. He asked if there was any Presidential aspirant then, who didn’t give delegates one thing or the other. He said Amaechi made a big mistake by antagonising the Centre, knowing that he no longer has any root in his home State.

Shittu: “Rotimi Amaechi, he’s my friend, but I think he’s been most unfair to the process. There was a primary election to produce a Presidential Candidate. He participated in it. Tinubu  participated too. When he lost, he was claiming that Tinubu bought the delegates. Could there have been anybody who did not pay delegates either for transportation or for whatever? I think he’s just bitter at being a bad loser. Besides, how old is Rotimi? He still has so many years ahead of him and needs to be patient. Just because you lost an election, you are now trying to throw away the baby with the bathwater.

“I think it is not reasonable, and it is not in his long-term interest. He’s not too comfortable in his State. At the National level, instead of him to sustain friendship through peace building and all of that, he’s very antagonistic. I don’t think it is in his best interest. The election has come and gone. That is the Primary election.

“If he had issues, he ought to have gone to Court to challenge the process if he was sure that he could have won, or that immoral measures came into the  success or triumph  of Tinubu. But he didn’t do that.

“So, merely mouthing all over the place condemning Tinubu on the baseless allegation that people were bought, how does he hope to prove that. And how does that remedy his loss?”

Amaechi, a foundation member of the APC, and once the engine room of the party in Rivers, and very prominent and solid at the National level, has been pushed out of relevance by Nyesom Wike, Minister for the Federal Capital Territory and Amaechi successor as Rivers State Governor.

Wike controls both the APC and the Peoples Democratic Party in Rivers State. At the National level, the APC recognises Wike, even though he is not, officially, an APC member, more than it does Amaechi.