Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka has praised former Rivers State Governor Rotimi Amaechi for what he described as a courageous and principled stance during the 2022 presidential primary of the All Progressives Congress (APC), where Amaechi refused to step down for President Bola Tinubu.
Soyinka, speaking in Abuja at an event marking Amaechi’s 60th birthday, recounted how he watched the primary election live from Abu Dhabi and was struck by Amaechi’s determination to remain in the race despite immense pressure.
“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. “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.”
Soyinka drew a parallel between Amaechi’s defiance in 2022 and Tinubu’s own political resistance during the presidency of Olusegun Obasanjo, when Tinubu opposed alleged efforts to amend the constitution for a third term.
“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,” Soyinka said.
“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.”
Soyinka said Amaechi’s refusal to withdraw, even as others were endorsing Tinubu, reflected democratic values and personal integrity.
“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.”
In the APC primary, Tinubu secured 1,271 votes to clinch the party’s presidential ticket. Amaechi came in second with 316 votes, while then Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo placed third with 235 votes.
