A former Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Amaechi, has blamed the docility of Nigerians for the inability of the country to get the right form of leadership. He also criticized a former Managing Director of the Nigeria Ports Authority (NPA), Hadiza Usman, for allegedly putting out false narratives in her book.
Amaechi was speaking at the 2023 TheNiche Annual Lecture, themed “Why We Stride and Slip: Leadership, Nationalism, and the Nigerian Condition,” held on Thursday in Lagos, where he was a special guest.
According to him, Nigerians know most politicians are not honest but they still go ahead and vote for them during elections. He said Nigerians choose who to believe and who not to believe and do not react to anything. He wondered why he should waste his time speaking when there was nothing new to say.
The former governor of Rivers State also slammed Usman for her book titled “Stepping on Toes: My Odyssey at the Nigerian Ports Authority.” He said the book contained many lies and accused her of giving waivers to prominent Nigerians without authorization. He said he had a memo from the president endorsing her removal and a panel report indicting her of various offenses.
Two years ago, ex-President Muhammadu Buhari asked Usman to step aside from her role while an Administrative Panel of Inquiry, headed by Amaechi, investigated the management of the NPA. Amaechi insisted that Usman was guilty of the same crimes she was accusing him of and making concessions for the high and mighty in society.
He said he would not reveal the names of those prominent Nigerians that were indicted by the panel because they did not look for his trouble. He said he would wait until they bring the original copy of the panel report before he shows it to anyone. He denied that he was purposefully behind her removal as the boss of the NPA.