African Action Congress (AAC) presidential candidate for the 2027 elections, Omoyele Sowore, has revealed that former Rivers State governor, Rotimi Amaechi, offered him a beer after their heated exchange at the Nigerian Bar Association conference.
Sowore disclosed this on Tuesday while reflecting on the confrontation with Amaechi, who is the vice-presidential candidate of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), during the conference.
According to Sowore, despite their disagreement over governance and the records of political leaders, Amaechi approached him afterwards and offered him a beer.
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 revelation came as Sowore defended his claim to have leadership experience, despite not having previously held elective public office.
He argued that his experience came from years of activism and commitment to good governance, stressing that leadership is about having a vision, a mission, and the ability to bring people 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 also rejected the argument that anyone seeking the presidency must first have experience in governance, saying his activism had provided him with a different form of leadership experience.
“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.
At the NBA conference on Monday, Sowore had challenged the records of politicians who previously held public office, particularly criticising Amaechi’s tenure as Rivers governor and his time as Minister of Transportation.
He also faulted Amaechi’s role in the country’s transportation policy and his position on fuel subsidy.
“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,” Sowore said at the conference.
Amaechi, in response, defended his record, citing roads and primary schools constructed during his tenure as governor, as well as the Lagos-Ibadan and Abuja-Kaduna railway projects executed while he was Transportation Minister.
He also challenged Rivers lawyers at the conference to take Sowore around the state to see some of the projects he delivered.
The disagreement became heated when Amaechi told Sowore, “When politicians are talking, close your mouth.”
However, Sowore said the exchange did not alter his position that his contribution to Nigeria’s democratic development constituted a form of leadership experience.
He also maintained his opposition to the removal of fuel subsidy, saying he had warned against the policy long before it 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.
Sowore argued that the economic hardship that followed the removal of the subsidy had vindicated his position, insisting that some politicians who claimed to have greater governing experience had now adopted positions he had advocated for years.
He further criticised Amaechi, saying the former governor was not an “Excellency” because, in his view, he had not done anything excellent for Nigeria.
