Former Governor of Rivers state, Rotimi Amaechi has said he is ashamed about the state of things in the country.
Amaechi said this on Friday while commenting on the state of the economy during an event organised to mark his 60th birthday anniversary.
Amaechi contested against President Bola Tinubu at the All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential primary election of 2022. He came second with 316 votes while Tinubu won the poll with 1,271 votes.
The former minister, however, said he did not vote nor work for Tinubu during the 2023 presidential election despite being in the same party.
“We don’t want to move the country forward. My passport was seized in Germany, I did nothing. My offense is that I’m carrying a green passport. They kept me for nearly 30 minutes and I was going for a medical check up in Vienna. So if you’re not ashamed, I’m,” Amaechi said.
“Nigerian elites are not the problems of Nigeria. The problems of Nigeria are the followership. There are no capitalists in Nigeria; capitalists are those with capital to invest for production. Do we produce here? I look at Nigeria and ask what are we doing here? Do we really want to be a country? What is important is how do we change this country?
“We’re all hungry, all of us are. If you’re not hungry, I’m. For us, the opposition, if you want us to remove the man in power, we can remove him from this power.
“In Nigeria, there are no capitalist ideas among the politicians; it’s about sharing.”
Citing instances when he joined protests in the past, Amaechi said with the help of the opposition, Tinubu can be removed from office during the 2027 presidential election.
He said that Nigerians are the problems because they “do nothing” when the government policies truncate the standard of living, referencing when fuel prices went up despite protests from citizens.
Amaechi served as two-term governor of Rivers state from 2007 to 2015 after which he was appointed as minister of transportation by ex-President Muhammadu Buhari. He was also the chairman of the Nigerian Governors’ Forum from 2011 to 2015.
Before becoming governor, he was the speaker of the Rivers house of assembly between 1999 and 2007. He had also served as the pioneer chairman of Nigeria’s conference of speakers of state assemblies. Amaechi was also a chairman of the Nigeria Governors’ Forum.
He is also a lawyer. He was called to bar in 2024.
Amaechi has been in Nigeria’s political space for over two decades. His hunger complaint comes less than a three-year hiatus from active politics.