Professor Wole Soyinka says he admired the manner Rotimi Amaechi , a former Governor of Rivers state stood up to Bola Ahmed Tinubu during the 2023 All Progressives Congress, APC, presidential primary.
The Nobel Laureate made this remark at the week end during Ameachi’s 60th birthday celebration in Abuja, the nation’s capital, attended by top politicians in the country.
According to Soyinka, the former governor and Minister of Transportation was the only presidential aspirants who had the courage to contest the APC presidential ticket with Tinubu, who at the time was the National Leader of the party, after other aspirants have stepped down for Tinubu.
He said the former minister displayed a rare courage even though all the odds were against him, fighting to the end until Tinubu was declared the flag-bearer of the party for the 2023 presidential election.
He noted that the former governor showed the same courage that Tinubu, while he was the governor of Lagos state , against former President Olusegun Obabsanjo who had tried to emasculate opposition parties in the country at the time, to clear the way for him to elongate his presidency , in the form of a third term.
The former president has denied that he had a third term agenda.
Speaking, Soyinka stated that Amaechi has been consistent in his avowed determination to not be cowed by the powers that be in the country, a characteristic that the literary icon said he admired in him.
“The main reason why I had to be here today — it’s first of all that I admire Rotimi Amaechi’s fighting spirit,” Soyinka said.75
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“And it’s a very consistent one, but the most memorable for me, because I watched this event live on TV from Abu Dhabi.
“I wanted to see the drama of all the primaries going on during the election. I wasn’t here, but I said I wanted to watch this contest, and I’m glad I did.
“Because it gave me a great—most malicious pleasure, rascally if you like, pleasure-to-to — see the incumbent president being given a dose of his own medicine.
“Let me explain this. For somebody, we knew as the last man standing when he fought to a standstill, a former president who was manoeuvring himself into a position of changing the constitution and obtaining a third term.
“He keeps denying it, but he and I know for a fact, and so do others. And towards that goal, he was sort of emasculating the powers of the constituent elements of the federation.
“And by the end, this president was the last man standing and resisted that effort. All the others had sort of cowed down because their statutory allocation had been stopped, contrary to the Constitution.
“But one man — he was the last man standing. Well, he obtained a dose of his own medicine from Rotimi Amaechi during the primaries. I enjoyed that very much.
“While everybody was, you know, falling over one another conceding, there was one individual who got on the podium and he said no, I’m not conceding.
“I didn’t come all the way here to commit ‘lúlẹ̀’. And that man was Rotimi Amaechi. And I said this is what democracy is all about.”
Soyinka is an ally of both Amaechi and President Tinubu.
The magazine reported that the former minister had recently stepped up his criticism of the president, over what he described as his misgovernance of the country since he came to office two years ago.
For instance, he accused the 36 state governors of being very docile when it comes to criticising the president, saying that was not the case when he was governor and Minister.
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