Nobel Laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka, has said that former Rivers State governor, Rotimi Amaechi, was bold to refuse to step down for President Bola Tinubu during the All Progressives Congress, APC, presidential primary contest of 2022. He recently shared that he loved how Rotimi Amaechi gave Bola Ahmed Tinubu a dose of his own medicine at the time.
Speaking at the 60th birthday celebration of Rotimi, Soyinka disclosed that he was very pleased with Amaechi’s defiance at the primary election, and he followed the back and forth live from Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.
Hailing the transportation minister under former President Muhammadu Buhari, Soyinka revealed that his admiration for Amaechi’s consistent fighting spirit is why he had to attend his birthday celebration.
According to him, he really wanted to watch all the drama with the primaries 3 years ago, and it gave him so much joy to see President Tinubu getting a dose of his own medicine.
“The main reason I had to be here today is first of all that I admire Rotimi Amaechi’s fighting spirit. And it’s a very consistent one, and 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 said.
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Soyinka stated that Amaechi’s decision to remain in the race reminded him of Tinubu’s own stubbornness during the Olusegun Obasanjo era, stressing that while other politicians became cowards when OBJ kept tweaking the constitution to obtain a third term, BAT resisted until the very end.
He concluded by saying he loved what Rotimi Amaechi did because it represented what democracy should be all about.
“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 said no, I’m not conceding.
I didn’t come all the way here to commit ‘lúle’. And that man was Rotimi Amaechi. And I said this is what democracy is all about,” he added.
