Nobel laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka, has praised former Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Amaechi, for showing courage by refusing to withdraw from the 2022 APC presidential primary despite pressure to step down for Bola Tinubu.
Speaking in Abuja on Saturday, May 31, at Amaechi’s 60th birthday celebration, Soyinka described the former Rivers State governor as a fighter, recalling how Amaechi stood his ground during the heated primary contest.
“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.
He added, “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 see the incumbent president being given a dose of his own medicine.”
Soyinka compared Amaechi’s boldness to Tinubu’s resistance during the Obasanjo era, when Tinubu refused to yield to pressure from then-President Olusegun Obasanjo, who was alleged to be pushing for a third term.
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“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.”
Soyinka continued, “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 ‘lulẹ̀’. And that man was Rotimi Amaechi. And I said this is what democracy is all about.”
In the primary election, Tinubu won with 1,271 votes, while Amaechi came second with 316 votes. Then Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo followed with 235 votes.