by Demola Rewaju

Desperate to make an impression, Amaechi was ever willing to finance party programmes – from the Emirship tussle in Kano to the Ekiti and Osun elections, he was a willing ATM for APC.

The only other person who has my Automated Teller Machine debit card’s Personal Identification Number is my wife and even she mostly forgets it. She rarely has my card with her but I have not only her card but also her PIN – this is one of the perks of the patriarchal set-up in marriages you see…

It is said also that every human being as a ‘mumu button’ which when activated or pressed, you can get them to do anything you want them to do. In over a year of marriage, my wife has pressed my mumu button severally – testimony to the little talked about but mostly seen tradition that a woman usually knows how to get what she wants from her man.

I have often said that there is a very distinct correlation between politics and seduction – Robert Greene in the first and most popular of his works The 48 Laws Of Power set out a law that every man has a thumbscrew and urges the reader to find it. In the follow-up The Art Of Seduction, he also argues a similar case when dealing with people of the opposite sex.

That Gov. Rotimi Amaechi is the Automated Teller Machine of the All Progressives Congress or rather the debit card that you slot in to get money out is not exactly news to political watchers – the burden of financing a national party while not in office as the sitting governor is one that proved too heavy for former Senator and Governor Bola Tinubu and looking at the political terrain, the only section of the country with financial resources to carry such a burden was the Niger-Delta. Of all the governors in that region, only one fit the bill of a willing ATM – Rotimi Amaechi. Simon Kolawole I think it was who in the early days of this fourth republic glimpsed the earlier mentioned The Art Of Seduction book on Tinubu’s desk while the latter was yet governor. That Tinubu is a master-seducer who continues to play Amaechi finely is the essence of this piece.

Amaechi’s thumbscrew, ATM PIN or mumu button is in the fact that he felt humiliated by the wife of the President (First Lady is an unconstitutional aberration in Nigeria) when she came on a visit with him to her Okrika village roots. Amaechi had destroyed houses to build schools, much to the disenchantment of Dame Jonathan and she chose to antagonise him publicly on the matter – Amaechi naturally felt upbraided. As their difference festered, Amaechi became more uncomfortable in the ruling PDP, the party on whose platform he had held sway as the Speaker of the Rivers State House of Assembly and also became Governor without embarking on a single public campaign because the courts decided that the mandate then enjoyed by Sir Celestine Omehia was not a personal mandate but one given to PDP and that the rightful candidate of the party was Rotimi Amaechi and not Omehia. Thus, Amaechi owes his seat exclusively to the PDP and perhaps to Omehia who led the party campaigns and won the seat for the party against other titans.

Amaechi’s differences with the PDP are far from political – apart from the personal grudge with Dame Patience Jonathan, his erstwhile Chief of Staff Nyesom Wike whom he had nominated as minister refused to join him in battling the President’s wife and by extension the President himself and thus became an enemy. Amaechi’s exit from the PDP was therefore not only a political defection but a very personal decision which has become his albatross or his mumu button if you like.

Of all the governors who defected from PDP – Rabiu Kwankwaso, Murtala Nyako (consequently impeached), Abdulfateh Ahmed, Aliyu Wammako and of course Rotimi Amaechi, only Rabiu Kwankwaso comes distantly close to having a deep personal grudge against PDP. Kwankwaso can never champion a non-Hausa/Fulani candidate against a Northerner anymore because for this reason (campaigning for Obasanjo against ANPP’s Buhari in 2003) he lost his seat to Ibrahim Shekarau for eight years but was compensated with a ministerial appointment. All the other four governors can still make their way back to PDP at any point between now and after the 2015 elections because their grudge is only political but Amaechi’s is very personal.

Tinubu wisely waited for Amaechi to verbally dig a big enough hole for himself politically and Amaechi who has no immunization to protect him from verbal diarhhea never wasted any opportunity to lambast the president or his wife. Tinubu saw very quickly that Amaechi having risen from humble political beginnings and same Amaechi being one with a very large ego (sign of inferiority complex most times) had been sufficiently hurt, made his move and brought Rotimi Amaechi to the newly formed APC.

Desperate to make an impression, Amaechi was ever willing to finance party programmes – from the Emirship tussle in Kano to the Ekiti and Osun elections, he was a willing ATM for APC. Tinubu further played him well by ever dangling a carrot in front of the horse to make the horse run faster in a bid to catch up but nobody trusts such a man and Amaechi has never had a taste of this proverbial carrot. Amaechi put forward Sam Jaja as his party chairman nominee but was stampeded by Tinubu’s choice of John Oyegun. Amaechi had hoped to become Buhari’s running mate but yet again was denied. Careful not to overpush his victim’s emotions, Tinubu gave him the position of Director-General of the Buhari/Osinbajo campaign; a position that not only massages his ego but also guarantees that the money flow will not end quite soon.

Rotimi Amaechi is like the proverbial child who insults his own mother on the promise of sharing a delicious meal with his stepmother, her junior wife. Night has come, stepmother’s hut has only enough room for her own children and the door of his biological mother’s hut is firmly shut for the night as well. If stepmother says “sleep outside my door” he will only be too glad to have a place to lay his head on. He is also a potential eternal monument to the fate of anyone who takes politics too personally – direct insults on the President, his wife and PDP by him were beyond political rhetoric. The perfect soundtrack for this piece would be the negro spiritual song titled “Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherless Child” but weekend is here so a more apropos song would be anyone that has the words ‘Maga’ or ‘Mugu(n)’ in their lyrics and by now I hope you know who the maga is here.

Meanwhile, many Rivers state workers are yet to be paid their salaries in the past two months.

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Op-ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija.