Former Rivers State Governor and ex-Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Amaechi, has defended the right of religious leaders to criticise the government, saying they have a responsibility to speak out on issues affecting the country.
Amaechi reacted to recent criticism of President Bola Tinubu’s administration by Catholic bishops, insisting that religious leaders should not be silenced.
“If they don’t, who else can?” Amaechi said, citing the response of Catholics in the United States when President Donald Trump criticised Pope Leo XIV over the war in Iran.
“The Catholics in America said, ‘You can’t say that of our Pope.’ All I know is that the population of Catholics is about 35 million, and you just can’t insult all of us like that. You can’t”
Amaechi recalled that when the Catholic Church criticised the administration of former President Muhammadu Buhari over insecurity while he served as Minister of Transportation, the government did not attack the church but instead reflected on the concerns raised.
“When the Catholic Church came after Buhari, I was in Buhari’s government. And I’m a Catholic. You know what we did? We all kept quiet and looked at the issues they wanted us to address”
“And the issues that brought them out to the streets were insecurity. It’s worse now.”‘’They wouldn’t have insulted the him(The Sultan). Today, in the mosque, people are preaching about what is happening in the government. Are they being insulted? We are being insulted because we are Christians.”
Amaechi said the former Archbishop of Abuja was not backing any political party or candidate but was speaking out over the hardship, poverty and corruption confronting Nigerians.
“He supports nobody. I see Cardinal Onaiyekan regularly. I worship in his private chapel. Cardinal Onaiyekan himself supports nobody. I have had several conversations with him. The only thing that pains him is the level of indiscretion and poverty in the country and corruption. He worries about that,” Amaechi said.
Rejecting claims that the Cardinal’s comments were politically motivated, Amaechi argued that Onaiyekan merely expressed genuine concerns about the state of the nation.
“I just think that they tried to intimidate him, because election is very far away, so they are trying to intimidate him the way they are trying to intimidate the population” he said
Defending his record as transportation minister, Amaechi said Nigeria’s railway services operated more efficiently during his tenure.
“By the time we left, there was a railway from Kaduna to Abuja. Four to six times a day. Today it goes only once.”
Amaechi’s comments come amid an ongoing exchange between the Tinubu administration and senior Catholic clerics.
On June 28, the leadership of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Nigeria, led by its president, Matthew Ndagoso, met with President Tinubu at the State House in Abuja.
During the meeting, Tinubu maintained that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) remained neutral and said his political opponents were “afraid of their own shadows and uncertainty in the companies they keep.”
Cardinal John Onaiyekan, former Archbishop of Abuja, later said those around the president were presenting him with an overly optimistic picture of the country rather than its true condition.
Speaking on ARISE Television’s Prime Time programme, Onaiyekan also said the Tinubu administration appeared determined to secure victory in the 2027 general election “by all means.”
Following those remarks, Daniel Bwala, Special Adviser to the President on Policy Communication, accused the cardinal of speaking from a political standpoint.
