Except you have the grace of God, don’t venture into Nigerian politics, because the result could be destruction and disaster in the end.
This was the counsel of Minister of Transportation and former Governor of Rivers State, Rotimi Amaechi, as he weighed into an area he has played a pivotal role for the past for the past two decades.
Amaechi, told Punch, in an interview that it was actually hunger that drove him into politics and not to solve the country’s problems, insisted that he had succeeded so far because he was led by the grace of God.
The Minister, who was responding to the question of whether he would allow his son to follow his footstep, said he was afraid over such outcome, even though he acknowledged that his first son presently studying Medicine was showing signs of taking after him.
“Nigerian politics is not something one would want one’s child to go into because there are no rules. One can be easily destroyed. One must have the grace to survive. I don’t know if he has that grace (and I’m not talking about tact or sagacity) to survive because it is a man-eat-man world,” he said.
The two-term Speaker of the House of Assembly and two-term governor, while explaining his own foray, said although his father was a politician, his voyage into politics was not born out of the quest to be a leader.
“My father was a politician. He ran for councillorship during his time. However, I didn’t join politics because I wanted to be a leader or because I wanted to solve Nigeria’s problems.
“I joined because of unemployment. I also believe there is a part that grace played in it,” he told the newspaper.
Before defecting to the All Progressives Congress (APC), after a bitter feud which started with Dame Patience Jonathan, the wife of former President, Goodluck Jonathan, and later rubbed off on the first family, Amaechi’s political career had begun in 1992 when became an aide to Peter Odili, then as deputy governor of the state.
When Odili became governor in 1999, he ensured that Amaechi became the Speaker, a position he held for the two-term period of the former governor.
But his bid to succeed Odili as governor in 2007, would have ended abruptly, but for the intervention of the Supreme Court, which in a landmark decision, pulled the rug under the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), apparatchik, which was bent on denying him the position.
Ex-President, Olusegun Obasanjo, at the party’s convention in the run to the 2007, general election, had refused to hand over the PDP flag to the Minister, after he won the primaries, saying his candidacy, had K-leg.
The favourable verdict of the Supreme Court, which held that election victory belonged to a party and not an individual, saw to the sacking of Amaechi’s cousin, Celestine Omehia, who had by then been elected governor in his stead, and was enjoying the office.
The former governor, also revealed, some parts of his personal life, including how his wife, Judith gave him a fake address on their first meeting, which led him to a university toilet when he tried visiting her.
“I met her at a friend’s wedding where she was the Chief Bridesmaid and requested for her address.
“We exchanged addresses but she gave me the wrong address. The address she gave me led me to a toilet in the university.
“I forgot about her until I ran into her one day in the estate where I lived in Port Harcourt. We actually lived on the same street but I didn’t know. By then, I was a special assistant to the governor of Rivers State.
“We began to interact and one thing led to another; today, we are man and wife,” he recalled.
He also revealed that he would have been a broadcaster, having successfully passed an audition at the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA), only that the result came out after he was already well into politics.
“I had auditioned at the Nigeria Television Authority to be a broadcaster. However, before the employment letter came, I was already into politics. That saved me. I would have been a broadcaster by now,” he said.
Stressing how the quest for food led him into politics, he said: “My father was a politician. He ran for councillorship during his time. However, I didn’t join politics because I wanted to be a leader or because I wanted to solve Nigeria’s problems. I joined because of unemployment. I also believe there is a part that grace played in it.
Source: Punch