The presidential candidate of the African Action Congress, Omoyele Sowore, has said he asked former Rivers State Governor, Rotimi Amaechi, to apologise to him following their heated exchange at the Nigerian Bar Association’s Annual General Conference in Port Harcourt.
Sowore said he made the demand after the confrontation at the conference, arguing that the former governor benefited from the democracy he fought to establish in Nigeria.
The AAC candidate stated this in an interview with Arise News on Tuesday while reflecting on his clash with Amaechi during the political session of the NBA conference on Monday.
Sowore said his political experience should not be measured only by whether he had previously held public office, stressing that his long-standing struggle for democracy and good governance had contributed to creating the platform on which politicians such as Amaechi rose to power.
He said, “That’s why I said to him after the event, I called him and said, you should have apologised to me, and he asked me to come over to his house to eat and drink a beer.
“And I said, no, I don’t want you to poison me, because I know you’re not happy. I don’t think he would do that. No, I mean, I’m just kidding.”
Sowore said he would not have been able to establish his record of political activism if Nigeria had remained under military rule, adding that Amaechi’s political career was also made possible by the return to democracy.
“If I didn’t fight for democracy, Rotimi Amaechi would not be standing there yesterday if we were still under military rule.
“He would never have been a speaker of the House for eight years, governor for eight years, minister for eight years. That’s one of the guys who benefited from my extraordinary struggle for democracy,” he said.
The former presidential candidate and publisher said his experience was derived from his passion and commitment to good governance, arguing that leadership was about vision, mission and the ability to bring people together to achieve results.
“When people are looking for leaders, they are not looking for an accountant alone, they’re looking for someone who understands a little bit of everything. And who can find everybody who can make things work. That’s what leadership is all about,” he said.
Sowore also rejected the argument that a person seeking the presidency must first have experience in governance, saying his activism had given him a different form of leadership experience.
“That is why I’m saying that they owe me a lot for creating the avenue for them to become leaders. Even though they didn’t fight for what made them become leaders, I did,” he said.
The AAC candidate had on Monday challenged the records of politicians who had previously held public office during the NBA conference, criticising Amaechi’s tenure as Rivers governor and his time as Minister of Transportation.
He had also faulted the former minister’s role in the country’s transportation policy, particularly in relation to fuel subsidy.
“We have a former governor of Rivers state here, Amaechi, who built a rail line that went nowhere. If that rail line was working subsidy would have been working for Rivers people,” Sowore said at the conference.
Amaechi, who is the vice-presidential candidate of the African Democratic Congress, defended his record, citing roads and primary schools built during his tenure as governor, as well as the Lagos-Ibadan and Abuja-Kaduna railway projects executed while he was Transportation Minister.
He challenged Rivers lawyers at the conference to take Sowore around the state to see projects he had delivered.
The argument escalated when Amaechi told Sowore, “When politicians are talking, close your mouth.”
Sowore, however, said on Tuesday that the disagreement did not change his position that his contribution to Nigeria’s democratic development constituted a form of leadership experience.
He also maintained his opposition to the removal of fuel subsidy, saying he had warned against the policy long before the government implemented it.
“As a matter of fact, most of the ideas you are seeing that they are picking now, we started fighting for it. We have clearly articulated them. We told them, remove our subsidy, we’ll ruin the economy,” he said.
Sowore argued that the economic hardship Nigerians experienced after the removal of the subsidy vindicated his position, saying those who claimed to have greater experience had now adopted some of the positions he had long advocated.
He also took another swipe at Amaechi, saying the former governor was not an “Excellency” because he had not done anything excellent for Nigeria.
The comment came as Sowore and Amaechi continued to trade criticisms following their confrontation at the NBA conference, where politicians including Peter Obi and Adewole Adebayo also discussed governance, insecurity, fuel subsidy and Nigeria’s political future ahead of the 2027 elections.
