Video: “I am praying for you (Nigerians) every day that you should continue to commit suicide” – Rotimi Amaechi

Rotimi Amaechi Is Frustrated Because He Expected To Be A Supreme Court Appointed President On Friday, October 27, 2023, Rotimi Amaechi, the former Supreme Court-appointed Governor of Rivers state, said,

“Nigerians don’t react to anything. Has any politician told you he is not a thief? He further accused Nigerians of being cowards saying, “I am praying for you (Nigerians) every day that you should continue to commit suicide so that by the time I wake up one day, all of you have died so that I can now reap the benefits of your death.” 

This is not the first time Amaechi is talking so flippantly. In 2019, I released the #AmaechiTaoes, where he excoriated his boss, then President Buhari, basically calling him an inept leader and saying that Nigerians were cowards because they accepted anything Buhari did. It is a pattern of careless talk from Amaechi. 

People who understand how Amaechi became the Supreme Court-appointed Governor of Rivers State on October 25, 2007, know his game. The Supreme Court ruled that Celestine Omehia was not the rightful candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party and that even though Amaechi was not on the ballot, the votes Omehia got belonged to the PDP, and since he was disqualified, then “In the eyes of the law, the appellant (Amaechi) remains the candidate of the PDP and is deemed to have won the election and should be so sworn in immediately.” 

Amaechi was hoping for the same miracle in 2023. He expected the Supreme Court to declare President Bola Tinubu ineligible to contest due to the Chicago certificate issue. He hoped to approach the court to inherit Tinubu’s February 25, 2023 votes, just as he inherited Omehia’s votes. And his current stance stems from his frustration that that did not happen. Rotimi Amaechi is just pained. 

He lost out at the All Progressives Congress primaries and also lost out in Rivers. He is not trusted within his own party and the Peoples Democratic Party. He is basically finished. It would be foolhardy to think Nigerians are cowards. The Nigerian Civil War showed that neither the Hausa, Yoruba nor the Igbos were cowards. And beyond the major ethnic nationalities, minority tribes in Nigeria are also not cowardly. 

The Ijaw fought the Nigerian Army during the 12-day revolution that produced the short-lived Niger Delta Republic on February 23, 1966. They reprised that revolution under Presidents Obasanjo and Yar’adua crippled Nigeria’s oil industry before President Yar’adua was forced to dialogue with them and introduce the Niger Delta Amnesty program. 

My people, the Itsekiris, engaged the British in the Guerrilla war and were never defeated because of our creek system, forcing the British to appoint a series of Itsekiris lords as Governors of the Benin River. And nobody can accuse our cousins, the Binis, of cowardice. Their 1897 war with the British is proof of that. 

The single most consistent reason for wars and civil strife in Africa is an inter-ethnic contest for power. That was the root cause of many civil wars, whether it was Jonas Savimbi oh UNITAS and Eduardo dos Santos of the MPLA, the Hutu and Tutsi of Rwanda, the Tigray conflict in Ethiopia, or the various wars in the Mano River region of West Africa. That is why we must appreciate what the Yoruba did after General Ibrahim Babangida’s junta annulled the June 12, 1993 Presidential election. 

They applied wisdom. That capacity to adapt to circumstances is not cowardice, as Rotimi Amaechi described. Nigerians have learned from their past and know that it makes no sense to go to war over politicians like Rotimi Amaechi, a potbellied fellow who has never missed a meal in his life. If we are going to go to war, it will have to be for a compelling reason. The democratic process works. The Judiciary works. Yes, the Legislature chops. But as long as we have free elections every four years, we can, and we will deal with their excesses without fighting a civil war or engaging in another #EndSARS to please Amaechi.