As a student union activist, Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi must have challenged the authority times without number, and remained largely unscathed. I understand that he came about the name Rotimi because he stood in defence of the defenceless, and earned the sobriquet, Rotimi, for his penchant for intervening on the side of the weak, and in deference to the late legal luminary, Rotimi Williams, popularly called Timi the Law.
As speaker of the Rivers state House of Assembly for eight years, he must have weathered a lot of storms, but none was probably turbulent enough to sweep him off. By the way, he made history by remaining as speaker for eight years, as against the frequent turn-over of speakers in most states.
Then, came the governorship race in 2007, when Obasanjo supplanted the will of the people in their choice of Amaechi as the candidate of the PDP. The then imperial President Obasanjo, while giving the party’s flags to candidates of the party, declared that Amaechi’s candidature had developed a K-leg. So, he denied Amaechi the flag and the slot. Instead, he went for his cousin Celestine Omehia. Thus, began a legal fire-work that eventually returned him (Amaechi) to power without having to formerly contest the election, in a Supreme Court judgment that ousted the ‘pretender to the throne’, Omehia.In between this period, Amaechi had to run to as far as
Ghana, to save his life and fight the legal war. The rest as they say is history.
From this brief, it is obvious that Amaechi is not new to controversies or rebellion against the establishment. As a matter of fact, his is defined in the context of the various struggles he’d had to pass through in normal life and in the realm of politics. He had a humble beginning and
practically had to fight his way to the top.
The governor had overcome formidable forces before; he had been up against a sitting president and was only rescued by the judiciary. Who will save Amaechi this time around, especially in a-not-so-well defined proxy war that he now has to contend with?
In the first instance, the animosity between him and President Goodluck Jonathan was for a long time a well-kept secret. Although the duo have tried to put on a game face and denied it severally, Nigerians know that there is no love lost between them. Matters came to a head during the run-up to the 2011 election, when the governor as part of his efforts to rid the state of criminal elements, demolished part of Okrika in the state, and the First Lady openly expressed her anger over the governor’s action. But it was not enough to ‘shake’ Amaechi, who at that time needed a second term ticket. Again, he survived the bad blood that followed his altercation
with the First Lady.
His latest travails began after his rumoured ambition of being paired with Governor SuleLamido of Jigawa state, as presidential and vice presidential candidates of the PDP come 2015, as against the president’s second term ambition (or is it third term bid)?
The president’s arsenals have since been unleashed on any perceived challenger to the president’s ambition. The first to taste his bitter pill was Governor SuleLamido. His son was arrested at the NnamdiAzikiwe International Airport, Abuja, for being in possession of an amount above the standard practice. The airport para-military men betrayed their act when they disclosed that the young man was fond of doing that. The question is: why did they not apprehend him before? The obvious answer was that because his father/governor is now eyeing Jonathan’s job, the governor has to be painted black, to stop him by all means.
Now it’s Amaechi’s turn to pay for his ‘sins’ of hobnobbing with the president’s perceived enemies or daring to want to be close to the corridors of Aso Rock. The hurriedly packaged PDP Governors’ Forum headed by GodswillApkabio, and last week’s meeting of the Nigeria Governors’ Forum, headed by Amaechi, where he was forced to capitulate, under the pretext that two South South governors cannot and should not head both forums, are all calculated to clip Amaechi’s wings. It was, therefore, not a surprise that in Akure last week, the federal government grounded Amaechi’s plane on the pretext that the aircraft’s clearance approval had
expired and was operating illegally.
It might be a denouement or the beginning of an acrimonious war, of which only time will tell who the winner will be. Now, it is the turn of the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) and Nigeria Airspace Management Agency (NAMA) also to unleash terror on the governor. Tomorrow other government attack dogs like EFCC, ICPC, the SSS, the NIA, the Police or any other government agencies are likely to prey on him, as occasion demands. Going by previous experiences of other ‘stubborn’ people like AtikuAbubakar, et all, I honestly don’t know how far the governor can go in ‘being himself’ and remaining steadfast and in doing things according to
his own convictions. All the same, I do not expect him to give up in the face of intimidation and harassment. Here is wishing him well in the struggles ahead.
