Rotimi Amaechi said on Friday that President Bola Tinubu was not solely responsible for Muhammadu Buhari’s victory in 2015, pushing back on Tinubu’s repeated claim that he made the former president. Amaechi said he played a central role in the campaign and that he led the political battle that helped deliver the win.
The former minister said Tinubu had argued that Buhari had failed in three previous presidential attempts before he persuaded him to run again ahead of the 2015 election. Tinubu has said he visited Buhari in Katsina and helped convince him to return to the race, later crediting the political coalition he built for Buhari’s eventual success.
Amaechi said several people helped form the All Progressives Congress and that no single figure could claim the party’s rise or Buhari’s victory. He said he could not publicly challenge Tinubu at the time because he was serving as a minister under Buhari.
“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 on AriseTV. He added: “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’.”
Amaechi also said he was the campaign’s director-general and that he carried much of the work himself. “Not only was I the DG of the campaign, but everybody will bear witness that I did all the battle,” he said, adding: “I led the governors’ forum. I crisscrossed the country fighting here and there.”
The dispute goes to the heart of competing claims over who shaped Buhari’s path to Aso Rock in 2015. Amaechi said his role was not limited to title alone, pointing to his leadership of the Nigeria Governors’ Forum and the national campaign effort as proof that the victory was built by a wider coalition.
He also gave a mixed assessment of the APC’s change agenda after taking office. “Did we achieve the change? Here and there. In some areas, well, we did. In some areas, we did not,” he said, leaving the party’s legacy open to judgment even as he defended his own part in its rise.
For now, Amaechi’s comments sharpen a rivalry that has never really gone away. The question is no longer whether Tinubu helped Buhari win, but whether either man can claim the victory without conceding the other’s part in it.
