By Okoi Obono-Obla
I have listened intently and carefully to the interview granted by Rt. Hon. Rotimi Amaechi, the Vice-Presidential candidate of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), as reported by Daily Post Online and TheCable on 7 November 2026, in which he alleged that the late President Muhammadu Buhari told him not to campaign for the APC presidential nomination, and that this was why he lost to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
Amaechi said:
“Anybody would have defeated anybody in that primary. The first mistake that I made at that primary was that I listened to President Buhari. He said to me: ‘Don’t campaign, don’t do anything; I will announce you as my candidate’.”
He added: “He told me that and put it in writing; when I write my book, I’ll put it out.”
He explained that because he obeyed Buhari, he did not enter into deals or agreements with party stakeholders and state governors. He said he would otherwise have promised the Vice-Presidency to one person, the office of Secretary to the Government of the Federation to another, and would have won governors to his side. “Because I didn’t do deals, Tinubu had a chance to do deals; that is one,” he said.
He gave a second reason: that Tinubu played on religion. He alleged that a delegation of southern Yoruba Muslims went to see the North-West governors and told them that northern Muslims had consistently supported southern Christians during elections, and that for the sake of the faith they should support Tinubu.
Unfortunately, President Muhammadu Buhari is not alive to confirm or deny this allegation. He died about 16 months ago, on 13 July 2025.
However, from the President Muhammadu Buhari I knew, he is not the type of person he is being portrayed as. He was very careful and even completely taciturn.
Let me recount an incident that happened on or about 26 October 2015. I was not yet in government but a private citizen in legal practice in Abuja, when the former Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Sadiya Umar Farouq, called me on the night of 25 October 2015 to inform me that I had been chosen to be in the entourage of President Muhammadu Buhari on an official trip to Calabar, Cross River State, on the invitation of the Governor of Cross River State, Senator Ben Ayade, to flag off the take-off of the construction of his signature project — the so-called Super Highway from Calabar to terminate in Benue State, at the boundary between Cross River State and the North Central region.
On 26 October 2015, I woke up early, as I had been instructed to be at the Presidential Wing of the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja, and by about 7 a.m. I was already there. President Buhari arrived at the Presidential Lounge at about 7:45 a.m., and we all lined up to greet him and shake hands with him. The flight was announced, and we all trooped out to board. I sat in the cabin where some presidential aides, such as Femi Adesina, Garba Shehu and Senator Ita Enang, were seated.
However, the Flight Commander of the Nigerian Air Force One, one of the presidential fleet, a Group Captain in the Air Force, called out my name and said I was invited to sit in the presidential cabin reserved for the President. I got up, and he ushered me inside the presidential cabin, where President Buhari and two other gentlemen, who are APC chieftains, were already seated. They were Obong Umana Okon Umana, the APC governorship candidate for Akwa Ibom State in the 2015 elections, and Olorogun O’tega Emerhor, the APC governorship candidate for Delta State, also in the 2015 elections. Both of them had lost, but Obong Umana was then before the Governorship Election Petition Tribunal in Akwa Ibom State against Governor Udom Emmanuel, who had been declared the winner of the Akwa Ibom State election.
After the aircraft had taken off and was cruising at about 32,000 feet, a conversation ensued, and President Buhari told us of his experience as a young army officer in the Nigerian Army fighting in the Civil War in Ogoja, which lies on the boundary between the old Northern and Eastern Regions, in 1967. Then Obong Umana Okon changed the conversation and brought up his case before the Election Tribunal. Immediately, President Buhari subtly switched off from the conversation, because, I think, he did not consider it appropriate to discuss such a matter. Everyone sensed that he was not interested, and the conversation ended. We all remained quiet until we arrived at the Margaret Ekpo International Airport, Calabar.
Such was the discipline of President Muhammadu Buhari, and his stickler’s regard for protocol. He was not the type of leader who would do you a favour, no matter how close you were to him, to the extent that he would anoint you for a competitive race over other competitors.
I became close to President Buhari when I became the National Legal Adviser and a Member of the Board of Trustees of the Party from 2008, when it applied for registration with the Independent National Electoral Commission, until December 2010, when it was registered. On 30 December 2010, I resigned in order to contest for the post of National Deputy Secretary at its first maiden National Convention, which took place at Eagle Square, Abuja, from 4th to 6th July 2011, and I was elected.
In January 2013, President Muhammadu Buhari appointed the CPC Merger Committee, and I was appointed a member, and later Secretary. The Committee was tasked with negotiating with the defunct Action Congress of Nigeria and other political parties, which metamorphosed into the formation of the APC. Other members of the Committee appointed by President Buhari from the South-South were Professor Tam David-West and Dr. Osagie Ehanire.
Another incident which gave me a glimpse of how deep and close President Muhammadu Buhari was to me occurred when he appointed me Secretary of a small committee made up of Alhaji Sule Hamma, Engr. Buba Galadima, Abubakar Malami, SAN, Engr. Ife Oyedele and the late Barrister James Ocholi, SAN, to study the APC Constitution at the last meeting of the Board of Trustees and National Executive Committee of the CPC before its dissolution, as one of the conditions precedent for the merger as prescribed by the Electoral Act, 2010. Some people were pressuring him to back out of the proposed merger, even though by that time the APC had already submitted its application for registration as a political party. But rather than coming out openly to disagree with those members of the Board of Trustees and NEC of the CPC who were against the merger, President Buhari elected to appoint the Committee. Later, I was instructed, as Secretary, to kill it when it became obvious that any disagreement by the CPC with any provision in the APC Constitution would sound the death knell of the merger.
I will therefore take with a pinch of salt any claim that he anointed any preferred person as the APC presidential candidate. It was indeed not in his character.
Amaechi now says the promise was put in writing and that he will publish it in his book. Let him produce the writing now, not in a book. A dead man cannot be cross-examined on a document that is kept back for publication.
In any case, TheCable itself, in the same report, records that Laolu Akande, former spokesperson to Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo, said President Buhari also personally assured Osinbajo of his support on at least four occasions, telling him: “If I don’t support you, who will I support?”
If both men were told they were the chosen one, then neither was anointed. That is consistent with the Buhari I knew: taciturn, careful, and unwilling to be seen to take sides in a contest. It is not consistent with a man who would secretly anoint one aspirant and instruct him not to campaign, while telling another aspirant the same thing.
I therefore stand by my position. I take with a pinch of salt any claim that he anointed any preferred person as the APC presidential candidate. It was indeed not in his character.
