Where is Rotimi Amaechi?

Notes for File

For sometime now, the immediate past Minister of Transportation, Mr. Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi, has suddenly disappeared from the political scene. This is quite unlike him.

Since the Fourth Republic, Amaechi has been one of the few politicians that have had a rollercoaster ride. But with recent political developments, questions as to whether he has come to the end of the road are now emerging.

His trouble started when he resigned his appointment as minister of transportation with the expectation that President Muhammadu Buhari, was going to hand over power to him in 2023. Amaechi is believed not to be in the good books of the presidential candidate of the APC, Senator Bola Tinubu.

 As minister, Amaechi gifted Daura a brand new Federal University of Transportation, a Premier Varsity on rail transportation. When in February 2023, he was turbaned in Daura, he was sure that arrangements were concluded for his elevation to another level, politically.

Even though he came second in the primary, it was a distant outing. After the election, he complained of being “betrayed,” whatever that meant. Since then, he has completely been off the radar.

Having served as Speaker of Rivers State House of Assembly for eight years, governor of Rivers State for two terms and Minister of Transportation for seven years, Amaechi is considered as one of the luckiest politicians in Nigeria.

But it appears the Ubima-born politician has gotten to the zenith of his political career and may soon be out of the political limelight, given developments in his political base.

To add to his woes of oblivion, Governor Nyesom Wike has silenced him and completely rendered him irrelevant in his own state. Anything he says is met with swift counter by Wike.

Indications of trouble for Amaechi’s political career have been the poaching of his loyalists by Governor Wike. Today, he has almost been stripped bare of loyalists.