Presidential aspirant and Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Amaechi, has disclosed that the only crime committed by the poor masses, is voting for leaders they believe would address their concerns if they get into power.
He said Nigerians are victims of exploitation by heartless leaders who take advantage of their poor conditions for their selfish ambitions.
He however, advised Nigerians not to give up despite the failures of those they trusted with their votes in the past elections. He said there’s still a chance to get it right, and that the coming election in 2023, is yet another opportunity to vote the right people into leadership positions to fix the country’s challenges.
“The problem of the country is not the poor man in Akwa Ibom or Rivers, in the South East or in the North. It is you and I, the elite,” the former governor of Rivers State, said on Tuesday at the 2022 World Press Freedom Day celebrations in Uyo, the Akwa Ibom State capital.
Amaechi is among notable presidential aspirants seeking to succeed Buhari in next year’s election. So it comes as no surprise that the transport minister is doing his bits to win over the people with his subtle speech.
The minister has previously slammed ex-president Goodluck Jonathan whom he accused of being responsible for Buhari’s failures, saying Jonathan’s government left almost nothing for his predecessor in the nation’s purse when leaving office in 2015.
Amaechi who featured on Channels Television’s programme, ‘Hard Copy’, said the money Jonathan left behind for Buhari was so small that it could not even sustain Nigeria for three weeks.
“When you talk about bandits and all these people that kill. It is a question about poverty. And that poverty didn’t start in this regime. Don’t forget that oil was sold at $110, $114, $115 per barrel. When this government came into power, oil fell to $28 per barrel and since then it has not gone above $80 per barrel.”
As former Chairman of the Governors’ Forum (Amaechi was a two-time governor of Rivers), I was told by the security in a meeting chaired by the former President including the former minister of finance that at every point in time, the government must leave money behind in case Nigeria goes to war that would last for six months.
“By the time we came, they didn’t leave money behind that could last us for three weeks. And I was speaking at that time as the Chairman of the Governors’ Forum,” he said.