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 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. Nigeria’s out-of-school children are the cumulative consequence of decades of failed governance, poverty, insecurity, underfunded schools, and political neglect. Tinubu’s government is not exempt.

Accusing finger

The present government must account not only for its own record, but also for the record of the APC (including Amaechi’s era in the party), which has been in power for nearly 12 years. Opposition politics should not become a competition in selective amnesia. If Amaechi wants Nigerians to judge Tinubu by outcomes—which is right—he must be prepared to have his own record judged by the same standard.

The Abuja-Kaduna rail project, for example, started under President Goodluck Jonathan and was completed under Buhari, with Amaechi as transport minister. He deserves credit for this. Yet, there are unanswered questions about how and when the Abuja rail project, valued at $500 million in 2013, became a $3 billion monster, with Phase II, constructed by CCEC under Amaechi, costing $1.473 billion, amid a web of monstrous borrowings from the Chinese. 

Dog-eat-dog politics

Amaechi defended the borrowing model, but the larger question was never whether trains could run. It was whether Nigeria was building infrastructure it could maintain, operate and repay without turning every new project into another chapter in the country’s debt story. 

In the dog-eat-dog politics, Amaechi’s critics, including Adams Oshiomhole, have seized on his history with Atiku, noting that Amaechi dragged Atiku to court for stealing the ADC presidential primary election and questioning why Amaechi now wants to share a stolen property as Atiku’s running mate. That attack is partisan. But it raises the question of why political alliances can be so fluid and why principles fade in the proximity of power.

A politician who can condemn Tinubu today, lament Buhari’s broken promise yesterday, and stand beside Atiku tomorrow needs to explain the philosophical thread connecting the three positions. Otherwise, voters may conclude that the thread is simply ambition, woven in seasonal colours.

Who Nigeria does not need

If Amaechi wants Nigerians to take his conversion seriously, he must offer more than comically fiery speeches, selective statistics and familiar promises.

Nigeria does not need another politician who discovers conscience only after losing a ticket. It needs leaders who can explain what they did with power when they had it, and who can persuade citizens that they will not merely change the driver, but repair the vehicle.

Ishiekwene is the Editor-in-Chief of LEADERSHIP and author of the book Writing for Media and Monetising It.