By Chuks Oyema
If Nigerian politics were a theatre of absurd comedy, Rotimi Amaechi would be the man forever auditioning for the lead role—only to be handed the script for “supporting character, season finale.”
Once upon a political time, he helped rearrange the Nigerian power table in 2015, standing firmly in the coalition that removed Goodluck Jonathan, the South-South president whose tenure symbolized a rare moment of regional arrival at the pinnacle of national power.
In that political earthquake, Amaechi was not a spectator. He was one of the heavy boots on the ground.
But as the dust settled, the applause from his home region never quite followed him into the next chapter.
Many in the South-South still look at him the way a village looks at a man who helped sell the ancestral land and then returns asking to be chief surveyor of the new owners.
Now, years later, the political irony is becoming richer than a Lagos Christmas stew.
Amaechi is being whispered into yet another national arrangement—this time not as the presidential driver, but as the potential running mate.
A deputy. A spare tyre. A political “if the main candidate cannot continue, please consult here” figure.
And all this is happening at a time when Nigeria’s delicate unwritten zoning understanding is still hanging in the air like a fragile ceiling fan.
The arrangement—at least in political theory—leans toward the South producing the next president and retaining it for two terms of eight years. A simple formula on paper, but a complicated one in practice.
So the question that now hangs in the air is not just about ambition.
It is about timing.
Why would a man from the South-South—whose region has already been argued out of a recent presidency—now be positioned as a deputy under a Northern presidential contender in a cycle many believe should belong to the South?
To his critics, it looks less like elevation and more like political déjà vu wrapped in a consolation prize.
They ask a biting question in whispers and sometimes in laughter: is this another carefully arranged opportunity to demystify Amaechi before his own people?
In other words, is the same man who once helped rewrite the South-South’s presidential story now being gently rewritten out of its leadership imagination?
Supporters of Amaechi dismiss such talk as bitterness dressed as analysis. They insist politics is not a museum of regional sentiments but a marketplace of alliances, strategy and survival.
They argue that a vice-presidential role is not a demotion but a stepping stone in the architecture of national power.
But even in that argument lies the comedy of Nigerian politics.
Because in practice, everyone knows the difference between the driver and the spare tyre—even when both are technically part of the same vehicle.
The driver controls direction. The spare tyre waits in the boot, wrapped in plastic, called only in moments of emergency and rarely celebrated in victory speeches.
And so Amaechi’s political journey continues to generate its own brand of irony.
A man once central to a historic political transition now finds himself in conversations where his highest possible role is framed not as destiny, but as assistance.
Not as the architect, but as the reinforcement.
Not as the throne, but as the stool beside it.
Perhaps this is the final lesson Nigerian politics teaches without ever writing it down: that loyalty in coalition politics is often rewarded, but not always in the way the loyalist imagined.
And so as 2027 approaches, one question lingers in the satire and in the silence of political corridors:
Is Rotimi Amaechi being prepared for elevation—or is he once again being positioned in a way that quietly reminds his region that the driver’s seat was never truly his to reclaim?
Chuks Oyema wrote in from Abuja
