Former Minister of Transportation and presidential aspirant on the platform of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Rt. Hon. Rotimi Amaechi, has said he’s a better candidate to succeed President Muhammadu Buhari in 2023 because he understands the sufferings of poor Nigerians.
Amaechi made the statement during his consultative meeting with the Governor and delegates of the APC in Niger State on Thursday ahead of the party’s primary elections.
The former minister stated that his humble background had afforded him the opportunity to understand the plight of the common person and relate easily with them, adding that he used to, and still, eats ‘garri’ three times a day.
“I wasn’t born into a rich family. My father was a poor man, and the only English my mother knows how to speak is pidgin English. I ate garri three times a day, and I still eat garri three times a day till today, so I know poverty,” he said.
Amaechi also told the delegates that he is aware of the challenges of Nigeria, including the problem of insecurity that has bedeviled Niger State, and that he is capable and ready to solve them if elected.
“I know what you’re suffering, I was governor of Rivers State when they were kidnapping two months old children, and I never slept until everybody slept. Gen. Buratai is not here today, he would have told you the story. Buratai, myself the former Inspector General of Police (Suleiman Abba) ask them, we used to chase criminals in the bush.
“I remember one day I was chasing criminals with Gen. Sarkin Yaki Bello (then Commander of the Joint Task Force in the Niger Delta), we were running and he stopped and asked me, ‘Your Excellency, are you wearing bulletproof vest?’ I inquired why he was asking, and he said ‘what if they shoot you?’ I said ‘are you wearing one?’ He said ‘no’, and I asked ‘what if they shoot you?’
“But in six months, we brought down insecurity in Rivers State,” he boasted.
The former Rivers governor further opined that now is the time for the Northerners particularly, and Nigerians generally to stand by him, as he did for the country in when he supported the emergence of President Buhari in 2015 without looking at whether he comes from the North or South.
