Rotimi Amaechi, the former minister of transportation, says President Bola Tinubu was not solely responsible for late Muhammadu Buhari’s victory in 2015.
Amaechi said he played a central role in Buhari’s victory, adding that he led key political efforts that helped secure the electoral win.
The former minister was reacting to Tinubu’s repeated claim that Buhari would not have become president without his intervention and political support.
Tinubu had said Buhari failed in three previous presidential attempts before he persuaded him to contest again ahead of the 2015 election.
According to Tinubu, he visited Buhari in Katsina and convinced him to return to the race, insisting that the former president eventually won because of the political coalition he built.
But Amaechi disagreed with the narrative, saying several individuals contributed to the formation of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and Buhari’s eventual victory.
“When we decided to form the APC, while I was a minister, President Tinubu was claiming he made Buhari president, and I couldn’t respond because I was the minister under President Buhari,” Amaechi said in an interview with AriseTV on Friday.
“That will be suicidal because Buhari could fire you. So I couldn’t have said no then. He wasn’t the president. I couldn’t tell him, ‘You are wrong. You didn’t make President Buhari president’.
”Not only was I the DG of the campaign, but everybody will bear witness that I did all the battle.”
Amaechi said he led extensive political mobilisation across the country as chairman of the Nigeria Governors’ Forum and director-general of Buhari’s presidential campaign.
“I led the governors’ forum. I crisscrossed the country fighting here and there,” he said.
The Rivers state governor added that although the APC succeeded in taking power in 2015 under the “change” mantra, the administration recorded mixed outcomes in government.
“Did we achieve the change? Here and there. In some areas, well, we did. In some areas, we did not,” he said.
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