You didn’t make Buhari president, ‘I did all the battle’ – Amaechi tackles Tinubu

Former Minister of Transportation Rotimi Amaechi has dismissed claims that President Bola Tinubu was single-handedly responsible for Muhammadu Buhari’s 2015 presidential victory, asserting that the historic win was a collective effort of the All Progressives Congress (APC).

Former Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Amaechi, has openly challenged President Bola Tinubu’s long-standing assertion that he was chiefly responsible for the election of former President Muhammadu Buhari in 2015. Speaking during a television interview, the former Rivers State governor insisted that Buhari’s historic victory was the product of collective mobilization within the newly formed All Progressives Congress (APC) rather than the work of a single individual. Amaechi, who served as the Director-General of Buhari’s 2015 presidential campaign, noted that numerous key actors across the country risked their political careers to build the coalition that eventually unseated the then-ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

The former minister’s remarks serve as a direct pushback against President Tinubu’s famous “Émì lókán” narrative, where Tinubu maintained that Buhari had failed in three previous presidential contests until he personally visited him in Katsina to persuade him to run again and backed him with his political machinery. Explaining his past silence on the matter, Amaechi revealed that standard cabinet discipline and the fear of political retribution prevented him from publicly correcting Tinubu while he was serving in the federal executive council. “When we decided to form the APC, while I was a minister, President Tinubu was claiming he made Buhari president, and I couldn’t respond because I was the minister under President Buhari,” Amaechi said. “That will be suicidal because Buhari could fire you. So I couldn’t have said no then. He wasn’t the president. I couldn’t tell him, ‘You are wrong. You didn’t make President Buhari president’.”

Maintaining that his own contribution to the 2015 political shift was highly significant, the former governor recalled his dual responsibility as campaign coordinator and Chairman of the Nigeria Governors’ Forum. He emphasized that he traveled extensively across all geopolitical zones to galvanize support, manage logistics, and spearhead the often hostile political engagements required to secure victory for the opposition coalition. Defending his record as the operational anchor of the 2015 push, Amaechi concluded, “Not only was I the DG of the campaign, but everybody will bear witness that I did all the battle.”

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