20th November, 2013
Rattled. That is what Rotimi Amaechi should be. Months of enduring body blows from an out-and-out heavyweight that is the Presidency should predispose the recipient to grogginess. But the 48-year-old governor of Rivers State looks and acts nothing like a pummelled man. Wearing a slim-fit shirt smartly tucked into a pair of trousers, his ample bald pate gleaming with the lights in his hotel room, Amaechi cut the image of a tycoon on vacation. The shirt failed to mask a paunch at its infancy.
Relaxed, not rattled, was what he was. Hearty laughter followed, as he swapped banters with the interview team. The laughter assumed high-wattage proportions when the television in the room was tuned to the channel showing the Barclays Premier League match between Newcastle/Chelsea. Amaechi’s eyes widened. Chelsea trailed by a goal. With the game in its dying embers,Newcastle struck again. Two-nil! The governor did not laugh as much as roar. His team, Arsenal, were due to play Liverpool later. A win, which they eventually got, would grant them a five-point cushion.
“Can we kick off the session,” the interview team asked, as his Information Commissioner, Ibim Semenitari, turned off the television set. “No way,” he replied, demanding and getting the remote control. A match involving Manchester United was next and he wanted to watch, wishing that the team that has serially brought grief to his beloved Arsenal would fall at Fulham’s Craven Cottage. It did not happen.
What did happen was his narration of the events leading to the badly fractured relationship between him and President Goodluck Jonathan. The President, naturally, did not come out smelling like a rose. Neither did his civil servant wife, Dame Patience Jonathan, and the currently beleaguered Minister of Aviation, Ms. Stella Oduah. Even when delivering the blows, Amaechi’s voice never rose. He spoke leisurely as though telling bedtime stories.
The leisurely delivery did not hide the grimness of the narrative. No approach could have totally concealed grievances arising from perceived broken promises, Mrs. Jonathan’s naked desire to reduce him to something akin to a serf, and the President’s willingness to indulge his wife.
One of the reasons for the animosity between him and the President, explained Amaechi, is his conviction–and expression of such– that Rivers State has been malevolently treated by the Jonathan presidency. He has similarly spoken, as Chairman of the now fissured Nigerian Governors’ Forum, on certain directions the Federal Government was taking the country. If these have caused discomfort for the President and his supporters, the coming months may deliver greater irritation. “We are awaiting when we would either officially leave the PDP or return to PDP. If we leave the PDP, then we would speak. I will speak because nobody knows what is going on. The day I will leave the party, I will tell people what the real issues are,” he said.
A blockbuster may just be in the making. In the meantime, Amaechi is staying calm.
—Bamidele Johnson