“You Are Cowards”,  Rotimi Amaechi Slams Governors For Not Confronting President Tinubu

By Gideon Njoku

A former two-term Governor of Rivers State, Rotimi Amaechi, has, literally, dismissed the present crop of Nigeria’s Governors as “men without balls”.

Amaechi, who was, also, a former two-term Chairman of the once powerful Nigeria Governors Forum, taunted the present Governors for being weak.

He spoke on Tuesday in Abuja at the launch of former Jigawa Governor Sule Lamido’s book, Being True To Myself.

Addressing the high profile audience, Amaechi bemoaned the state of Nigeria and lamented a situation where Governors were too afraid to call a spade a spade.

In a comparison of his class of Governors to the current class, Amaechi asked if it is possible for what is happening in Nigeria now to have happened during his class of Governors. Before he got an answer, he provided one himself.

He said not possible. “We would have confronted the Government. We would have confronted the President.”

As the Chairman of the Nigeria Governors Forum, Amaechi mounted a stiff resistance to the President Goodluck Jonathan-led Federal Government, including opposing the establishment of the “Sovereign Wealth Fund.” He preferred that every kobo be brought to the table and shared, no savings for the rainy day.

He was, also, as he recounted at the book launch, the push behind the defection of six Governors of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, to the then new All Progressives Congress, APC.

However, his relationship with the Party is at best, shaky, just as his relationship with President Bola Tinubu with whom, along with others, he engineered  the ousting of Jonathan from office in 2015.

He was appointed Minister for Transportation by President Muhammadu Buhari for two-terms, but lost the position when he failed in his bid to clinch the Presidential ticket of the Party in 2023.

Amaechi was beaten to a distant second place by now President Tinubu. Since then, he gave both the President and the party some space, but instead, became a  strong critic of the Tinubu-led Federal Government to the surprise of many who knew how both collaborated to oust Jonathan.

His criticism of the Tinubu Government was at play during Lamido’s book launch when he lamented the docility of the current Governors for neither confronting the President, nor his Government in the face of hunger and insecurity and sufferings being experienced by Nigerians.