The heated exchange between African Action Congress Presidential Candidate, Omoyele Sowore, and former Rivers State governor, Rotimi Amaechi, at the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) conference did not end with their public confrontation.
Sowore disclosed that Amaechi later invited him to his residence to eat and have a beer.
This is despite the disagreement that had earlier seen the two politicians trade sharp words before the audience.
According to Sowore, he contacted Amaechi after the encounter and told him that the former governor ought to apologise for the way the exchange unfolded.
Rather than apologise, Sowore said Amaechi invited him over to his house.
He said: “That’s why I said to him after the event, I called him and said, you should have apologised to me, and he asked me to come over to his house to eat and drink a beer.
“And I said, no, I don’t want you to poison me, because I know you’re not happy. I don’t think he would do that. No, I mean, I’m just kidding.”
The account came as Sowore continued to defend his suitability to seek the presidency despite having no previous experience as an elected public office holder.
The AAC candidate argued that leadership experience could also be acquired through activism, public advocacy and efforts to influence governance, rather than only through occupying government positions.
He said leadership required the ability to understand different sectors, develop a clear direction and bring people with the necessary expertise together to achieve results.
“When people are looking for leaders, they are not looking for an accountant alone; they’re looking for someone who understands a little bit of everything. And who can find everybody who can make things work. That’s what leadership is all about,” he said.
Sowore further maintained that his political activism had helped create opportunities for people who later became political leaders, even when they had not participated in the struggles that preceded their emergence.
“That is why I’m saying that they owe me a lot for creating the avenue for them to become leaders. Even though they didn’t fight for what made them become leaders, I did,” he said.
His comments followed the confrontation with Amaechi at the NBA conference, where Sowore challenged the record of politicians who had previously occupied public office.
Amaechi, the African Democratic Congress vice presidential candidate, came under particular criticism from Sowore over his tenure as Rivers governor and his time as Minister of Transportation.
Sowore questioned the effectiveness of railway projects associated with Amaechi and linked the issue to his wider criticism of government policy.
“We have a former governor of Rivers State here, Amaechi, who built a rail line that went nowhere. If that rail line was working, subsidy would have been working for Rivers people,” he said.
Amaechi responded by defending his record in office, pointing to roads and primary schools constructed during his administration in Rivers State.
He also cited the Lagos Ibadan and Abuja Kaduna railway projects delivered while he was transportation minister and challenged Rivers lawyers at the conference to take Sowore around the state to see projects executed under his administration.
The argument escalated when Amaechi told Sowore: “When politicians are talking, close your mouth.”
Sowore, however, maintained his position that previous occupancy of elective office should not be the sole measure of leadership experience.
He also used the occasion to restate his opposition to the removal of fuel subsidy, saying he had warned about the consequences before the policy was implemented.
“As a matter of fact, most of the ideas you are seeing that they are picking now, we started fighting for them. We have clearly articulated them. We told them, remove our subsidy, we’ll ruin the economy,” he said.
According to Sowore, the hardship that followed the subsidy removal reinforced his earlier warning and demonstrated the importance of the positions he had consistently advocated.
He further took aim at Amaechi’s political record, rejecting the continued description of the former governor as an “Excellency” because, in his assessment, Amaechi had not done anything excellent for Nigeria.”
