- Calls Hadiza, a liar being celebrated after embezzling money
By Ishaya Ibrahim
Former Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Amaechi, has dismissed argument that leaders, not followers, were responsible for the decay in the Nigerian state.
Amaechi, a former governor of Rivers State, made the remark on Thursday as guest lecturer at TheNiche Annual lecture where he spoke on the topic: “Why we Stride and Slip: Leadership, Nationalism and the Nigerian Condition.”
“I don’t go with those who say the problem is with the leadership. If the leaders are not working and they are not doing what you want and they are corrupt, if you don’t do anything what will happen?” he asked the fully packed hall at the Nigeria Institute of International Affairs, venue of the event in Lagos.
Amaechi said it was in Nigeria a governor once boasted that what money could not do, more money would do it.
“A governor once said that anybody who doesn’t take money from you, what you do, he said put more money. That was a governor,” Amaechi lamented in making his case that the followers were in cahoots with bad leaders in failing Nigeria.
On what could be done, he hinted on citizen’s revolt. “How many are the leaders? Maximum 15,000. If the one hundred and something million storm Lagos, storm Abuja, storm Lagos, it will stop.”
He added: “How do you see a governor who has never worked before at all, and he is the richest man in his state, and his state is very rich and everybody is hailing him that he is tough man. What did you do?”
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Amaechi insisted that Nigeria’s greatest problem is followership that is comfortable with the poor state of affairs, adding that ethnicity, faulty foundation, selfish motive and lack of political will, were limiting the growth and progress of the country.
He queried Nigerians for celebrating the sacked former Nigeria Ports Authority (NPA) Managing Director, Hadiza Bala Usman, for publishing a book full of lies. He said in due time, he would release evidence of her mismanagement at the NPA.
Hadiza had claimed that her problem at the NPA started when she failed to give birthday gift to Amaechi, who was her supervising Minister at the time.
But Amaechi said at the lecture that Hadiza had been giving him birthday gifts since 2013, hence, the claim of birthday present was a lie. He said in due time, he would expose all her misdeeds in a book he would start writing this November after the completion of his MBA programme.
Amaechi, however, recognized that national leaders have the capacity to pull Nigeria out of the woods.
He said: Truly remarkable national leadership is the ability of a leader to galvanize the totality of a nation around a common national banner with a vision and a sense of mission. Genuine nationalistic leadership transcends, ethnicity, religion, creed, region or geography. The truly remarkable national leader is the one that is able to rise above these limitations to take the nation and its people to that place where they long for but have never been before. It is a place of national greatness, pride, achievement and shared hopes, aspirations and shared prosperity.”
Amaechi said in former President Olusegun Obasanjo, he found the personification of a true national leader.
He said: “In President Obasanjo, I found the focus of my lecture. In assessing the successes and failures of the Nigerian journey, it seems to me that it is the interplay of two factors that will best help our assessment. The two key factors are: LEADERSHIP and NATIONALISM. It is not possible to understand the role of President Obasanjo in our national history without a consideration of these two factors. Therefore, whatever else you may say about President Obasanjo, I consider him as a personification of true leadership and nationalism in Nigerian history.”
Elder statesman and chairman of the Board of Trustees of Anya-Ndi-Igbo, a non-partisan, socio-political and economic development-oriented organization, was chairman of the event.
He said men and women of goodwill must make the necessary investment of time and energy to counter the forces making Nigeria unworkable, especially corruption, which he said has reached high heavens as to make the angels weep.
Among the discussants at the lecture were Chidi Amuta, scholar, author, journalist; Mr. Yakubu Mohammed, former deputy chief executive officer at Newswatch, Valentine Ozigbo, politician and immediate past President and Chief Executive Officer of Transnational Corporation of Nigeria and Funke Treasure, a broadcast journalist and media trainer.
Other dignitaries at the event include; Maiden Ibru, chairman, publisher, and chief executive officer of Guardian Newspapers, Maureen Onyia, representative of the Enugu State Governor, Peter Mbah.
