Soyinka: I admire Amaechi’s fighting spirit

Nobel laureate, Prof Wole Soyinka, has expressed admiration for former Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Amaechi, for refusing to step down for President Bola Ahmed Tinubu during the All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential primary election in 2022. Soyinka, who spoke in Abuja on Saturday at the 60th birthday celebration of Amaechi, said he admired the latter’s […]

Nobel laureate, Prof Wole Soyinka, has expressed admiration for former Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Amaechi, for refusing to step down for President Bola Ahmed Tinubu during the All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential primary election in 2022.

Soyinka, who spoke in Abuja on Saturday at the 60th birthday celebration of Amaechi, said he admired the latter’s fighting spirit, describing the moment as a memorable one for him.

Daily Trust had reported how Amaechi, also a former governor of Rivers State, told President Tinubu that he would not support or vote for him right from the early days of campaigns leading to the 2023 general elections, citing that he (Tinubu) lacked the capacity to govern Nigeria.

Speaking at a lecture in Abuja on to mark Amaechi’s 60th birthday, Amaechi said, “I told Tinubu in Yola, I will not support you; I will not work for you. I did not work for him; I did not vote for him. It was the issue of capacity.

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“Some of us who are here are also those who vote on an ethnic or religious basis. Innocent, uneducated people are manipulated to vote based on ethnicity and religion — that’s why we are here.

“When we leave here, we go to plot to go and grab power; no Nigerian leader cares for you.”

In his remarks at the occasion, Prof Wole Soyinka said he was admired by the Amaechi’s fighting spirit.

He said although he was not in Nigeria at the time, he made it a point to watch the primaries live on TV, adding that he was glad he watched it.

Soyinka said, “The main reason why I had to be here today — it’s first of all that I admire Rotimi Amaechi’s fighting spirit.

“And it’s a very consistent one, but the most memorable for me — because I watched this event live on TV all the way from Abu Dhabi.

“I wanted to see the drama of all the primaries going on during the election. I wasn’t really here but I said I want 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 see the incumbent president being given a dose of his own medicine.”

He further recounted how President Tinubu resisted Olusegun Obasanjo’s third term agenda.

“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, 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.”