The Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Amaechi, in an interview with Daily Trust said:
This government has some 21 months to leave office. As a key figure in the administration, what would you say will be your legacy?
We are leaving quite a lot. When I talk to people, they mention railway, but I tell them to study the government to know that we have more than the railways.
As a key APC figure, would you tell us if there was a pact between President Buhari and the former governor of Lagos State, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, to hand over power to the latter?
I would not like to answer this question because I am neither Tinubu nor Buhari. I don’t know if they held a private meeting in that regard. As the director-general of APC Campaign Organisation, I never witnessed such decision.
Beyond being the director-general of the campaign organisation, I was the chairman of the Governors Forum. Most of the decisions on who would emerge as party chairman in 2014 were done by the forum, so I should know those ones. But if there was a private meeting between President Buhari and our leader, Tinubu, I wouldn’t know.
If it was a public APC meeting and I was not there, then something must be wrong. I was not told that there was an agreement that power should be handed over to Tinubu.
Would you run for presidency in 2023? There were reports that you attended a secret meeting in Taraba to kick-start your campaign.
I am a minister and I don’t want to get sacked until the president is satisfied that I should go. Anyone that said I was in Taraba for a meeting is lying. I got to Taraba by accident through a friend whose daughter was wedding. I went there and came back. Mischievously, one of the Nigerian newspapers wrote that I went for a political meeting. I like the way Muslims organise their weddings. Five minutes, it was over, 10 minutes we were eating and in 30 minutes, we were at the airport. How can a political meeting take place in 30 minutes? The event was so well organized. After the event, a vehicle took us back to the airport.
There are insinuations that the APC will not go beyond 2023 because it was brought together because of interest?
No problems, the next interest will bring us back together. The problem is that there are no strong political platforms for elections in Nigeria. You must deal with the issue of ideology, the same thing with the PDP. The party is a conglomeration of business people who wanted to capture power and get wealth and they produced a lot of Nigerian rich men through that. The APC is a conglomeration of Nigeria’s opposition group that wanted to capture power, they did that, so, why did you think it will not continue?
In Nigeria and most political platforms, it is interest that is permanent, not friendship. If the interest is that we must capture power, it has not waned. So I don’t see the APC disintegrating as a party. There will be cracks and disagreement but they will still be together until a time when Nigerians will say they no longer want us.
What are your plans for 2023?
I will sleep.
When you wake up after your sleep, what will happen?
I will do a PhD programme. I have a master’s degree and I am doing a Law programme at the Baze University, so when I wake up I will do my PhD to teach in a university.