After much backroom negotiations and horse trading, Atiku Abubakar, the presidential candidate of the African Democratic Congress, ADC, has finally settled for his challenger and former Governor of Rivers State, Rotimi Amaechi as his running mate for the 2027 presidential election.
Key Highlights:
- The article questions whether Atiku Abubakar pairing with Rotimi Amaechi can realistically strengthen an ADC 2027 ticket.
- It argues Amaechi’s political influence in Rivers State has significantly weakened due to internal rivalries and loss of loyal supporters.
- His long-running feud with Nyesom Wike is cited as a major factor that fractured his political base.
- Analysts in the piece suggest he may struggle to deliver even his home state or broader South-South support.
- Overall conclusion: his current standing is seen as offering limited electoral advantage and potentially little added value to Atiku’s prospects.
Before the primaries, Amaechi had boasted that Atiku would meet his Waterloo in the contest to produce the ADC’s presidential flagbearer. In fact, the former transportation minister had mocked Atiku while reacting to the former vice president’s assertion that he had never lost in a presidential primary, by saying that the primary would be the first that the Waziri Adamawa would lose.
At the end of the day however, Amaechi disowned the primary as producing “concocted” results to place Atiku at an advantage. That was the second presidential primary Amaechi has lost in successive election years. The first being his loss to the incumbent President, Bola Tinubu in the 2022 All Progressive Congress, APC, presidential primary, coming second just like he did in the ADC.
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Since the news broke out that Atiku has settled for Amaechi as running mate, some political analysts have begun to weigh and appraise the value an Amaechi running mate could add to the last ditch effort by Atiku to land the highest office in the land. The analysts who argued that charity should begin from the home front, pointed at what they described as the waning political influence of Amaechi even in his home state, Rivers where his former employee and current minister of the Federal Capital Territory, FCT, Nyesom Wike has rendered him like a spectator in the political turf.
According to the analysts, Amaechi’s inability to manage loyalty on his political path has remained his greatest undoing. They traced Amaechi’s brightest moments in politics from his days as speaker of the Rivers State House of Assembly, when he rose to become chairman of the Conference of Speakers of State Houses of Assembly, to his governorship when he also became the chairman of the Nigeria Governor’s Forum.
As governor, Amaechi set up a political family made up of mostly his colleagues at the state House of Assembly known asThe Believers Family. They were his foot soldiers who provided the much needed support to his administration and many of them manned strategic positions in his government.
He also facilitated the rise of some of his associates to national politics in the Senate and House of Representatives.
However according to analysts, his later defection from the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, to the All Progressive Congress, APC, following a major disagreement with the Goodluck Jonathan family, then the president, marked the beginning of a turning point in his political career. His defection brought about a division in the Believers Family as some members declined to follow him to the APC.
Already, Nyesom Wike, who had acted as the brain box of the Believers Family had become the minister of state for education under Jonathan and had ‘slipped’ into the hearts of the first family becoming an instrument to get back at Amaechi. With the help of Abuja, Wike dislodged the remnants of Amaechi loyalists in the PDP, took over the party’s structure and emerged as the governorship candidate of the party in 2015, winning the election by beating the candidate Amaechi fronted in the APC, Dakuku Peterside
Since then, Wike has continued to have the upper hand as both gladiators continue to square at each other in the political arena. Interestingly, even among those who demonstrated loyalty and stuck with Amaechi, the former governor was unable to manage them to keep a united family. For instance, against any sound political calculation, Amaechi in 2019, went entirely outside the political family and picked Tonye Cole as the APC governorship candidate, even when Senator Magnus Abe, who was one of the longest serving loyal member of the family was the choice of virtually every member of the family for the position.
In fact, Sen. Abe was shut out of the primariy that produced Cole as candidate. The legal confrontation that followed the exercise culminated in INEC shutting APC out of the hovernorship election in 2019, as the court gave judgement in favor of Abe and his team, paving the way for Wike to cruise to a second term in a rollercoaster.
Yet, as Minister of Transportation, Amaechi still failed to use the opportunity to put his political family in order. Apart from Dakuku Peterside, who became the Director General of the Nigeria Maritime Administration and Safety Agency,(NIMASA) an agency under the direct supervision of Amaechi as the Minister of Transportation and few others who got appointment in the Niger Delta Development Commission, (NDDC, many others were left in limbo as the minister who was locked in a bitter feud with Wike took permanent residence in Abuja.
Back in Rivers State, many of his followers became marooned in a political desert of despair, having no one to provide leadership and direction, while those in the opposite camp of Wike were cruising in a gravy train. While some of them publicly resigned from the APC, others quietly switched camp and joined the Wike camp in the PDP. People like Chidi Lloyd, who almost committed murder on the floor of the state House of Assembly while demonstrating his support and loyalty to Amaechi had to publicly and in tears beg Wike for forgiveness for aligning with Amaechi against him.
That was how the Believers Family became gradually dismembered such that today in Rivers State it is difficult to find a politician of note who is an unrepentant Amaechi follower. So observers are wondering how Amaechi’s running mate to Atiku is going to pan out as the former governor can hardly muster the kind of followership that could add sheen to the joint ticket .
Besides, many people in the larger South South have not forgiven Amaechi for the role he played in bringing to an abrupt end the Good luck Jonathan presidency by aligning with the North and APC against Jonathan in 2015. That anger is still festering coupled with the hardship that has become the sobriquet of the APC leadership.
In the South East, the situation will be worse where Obi’s hurricane would hardly allow any political ‘interloper’ to take footing. Some analysts have even projected that Amaechi would not be able to deliver even Rivers State to the ADC in 2027.
