Nobel laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka, has praised former Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Amaechi, for his stance during the All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential primary in 2022, describing it as a bold refusal to step down for then-candidate Bola Tinubu.

Soyinka made these remarks in Abuja on Saturday while celebrating Amaechi’s 60th birthday. Amaechi previously served as governor of Rivers State from 2007 to 2015.

The playwright said he was particularly struck by Amaechi’s defiance during the primary election, which he watched live from Abu Dhabi.

“The main reason why I had to be here today — it’s first of all that I admire Rotimi Amaechi’s fighting spirit,” Soyinka said.

“And it’s a very consistent one, but the most memorable for me, because I watched this event live on TV from Abu Dhabi. I wanted to see the drama of all the primaries going on during the election. I wasn’t here, but I said I wanted to watch this contest, and I’m glad I did. Because it gave me a great—most malicious pleasure, rascally if you like, pleasure—to—to see the incumbent president being given a dose of his own medicine.”

Soyinka drew a parallel between Amaechi’s decision to remain in the race and Tinubu’s own history of political defiance during the Olusegun Obasanjo presidency.

He said, “Let me explain this. For somebody, we knew as the last man standing when he fought to a standstill, a former president who was manoeuvring himself into a position of changing the constitution and obtaining a third term. He keeps denying it, but he and I know for a fact, and so do others. And towards that goal, he was sort of emasculating the powers of the constituent elements of the federation.”

He continued, “And by the end, this president was the last man standing and resisted that effort. All the others had sort of cowed down because their statutory allocation had been stopped, contrary to the Constitution. But one man — he was the last man standing. Well, he obtained a dose of his own medicine from Rotimi Amaechi during the primaries. I enjoyed that very much.”

Soyinka added that while most candidates were conceding, Amaechi stood firm. “While everybody was, you know, falling over one another conceding, there was one individual who got on the podium and he said no, I’m not conceding. I didn’t come all the way here to commit ‘lúlẹ̀’. And that man was Rotimi Amaechi. And I said this is what democracy is all about.”

In the APC primary election, Bola Tinubu secured 1,271 votes to defeat 13 other contenders. Amaechi came in second with 316 votes, followed by then Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo, who received 235 votes.