Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, the presidential candidate of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), has a gift for choosing running mates with dubious political value.
His choices in this and in his last attempt at the presidency are at odds with common sense.
They are also at variance with the three major benefits of a running mate commonly recognised by research: broader voter appeal, credibility and governing competence, and coalition building.
Former Delta State Governor, Ifeanyi Okowa, who ran with Atiku in 2023, will probably score one over three.
Delta was the moneybag of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), which was the main reason Atiku picked Okowa. Nothing else. The money was good, of course, but it couldn’t save Atiku’s presidential ambition from drowning.
Why Amaechi?
His running mate this time is worse. Former Governor Rotimi Amaechi brings none of the three key benefits to Atiku’s ticket. Not appeal. Not competence. And not money.
Amaechi does not even offer the shadow of what he did as governor of Rivers, when the state’s resources were put at the disposal of the All Progressives Congress (APC) to make Muhammadu Buhari president.
What Amaechi has in abundance today is what Atiku doesn’t need: loud, empty, sometimes ridiculous capacity for circusolatory – the art of political spectacle.
It would have been okay if Atiku were auditioning for a circus. But to have a running mate who reduces virtually every serious issue to a joke is a serious and concerning matter.
In an interview in October, he said it was President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s economic policies that killed his 89-year-old mother.
A man who could afford a party expression-of-interest ticket of N90m couldn’t pay his poor mother’s hospital bills? He later said it was a joke – but it was a joke taken too far.
Buhari broke my heart
He’s at it again. Amaechi, two-term Transport Minister who promised Nigeria a railway from Kano to Maradi in Niger under President Muhammadu Buhari’s government, said on November 6 that the former president betrayed him.
He said Buhari promised him the APC presidential ticket in 2022 and that he regretted taking the former president seriously.
Anyone with the slightest interest in the state of affairs towards Buhari’s last 18 months or so in power would have known that he had not only lost interest in office, but he had lost authority as well.
He needed more saving than he could offer anyone. His endorsement meant nothing more than a liability.
Amaechi obviously couldn’t see that. While we wait for him to publish Buhari’s promissory note in his memoir, which he may title How Buhari Broke My Heart, Atiku will do well to curb the jokes by his running mate, unless Amaechi is in the campaign for his entertainment value.
His defection to the ADC and his emergence as Atiku’s running mate complete a familiar Nigerian political journey – from ruling-party insider to opposition reformer, with hardly any detailed public review of what changed and how.
So far on the campaign trail, Amaechi has barely lifted more than one small corner of a dirty carpet.
His scant, often diversionary effort sheds light on his motives when he served as minister under Buhari.
From his promise to build a railway to Maradi to the citing of the Federal University of Transportation in Daura, Buhari’s hometown, and his acceptance of a chieftaincy title from the Daura Emirate, Amaechi was motivated by only one thing: political patronage.
Record
It was not altogether a futile venture. Amaechi came second in the APC’s presidential primaries, defeating two other contestants, including former
Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, who was far more qualified and competent. His performance on this stage is probably one of his biggest political acts in several years.
Yet, in his desperation to find a new vanity platform, he didn’t stay long enough in APC, his second political bus stop.
On the eve of another election, Amaechi is squaring off against his former party. He speaks with the urgency of a man who has just discovered that government can be a moral hazard after spending years helping to operate the same machinery.
Nailing Nigeria
He tells Nigerians that President Tinubu has “nailed the country,” accuses the administration of worsening insecurity, poverty, and educational collapse, and even suggests that only a “mad man” would vote for Tinubu in 2027.
His claim that eight million children dropped out of school deserves scrutiny, not merely repetition at a campaign rally.
