Rotimi Amaechi has finally put words to what many suspected all along: he didn’t so much leave President Muhammadu Buhari’s cabinet as he quietly faded out of it. In an interview on AIT, the former Transportation Minister explained that his disenchantment began long before his formal resignation in May 2022. The turning point came when he realised the administration was drifting from the very promises that swept the All Progressives Congress into power in 2015.
Amaechi said he took his concerns directly to Buhari in a private meeting, asking the president whether Nigerians who voted for the APC had not expected him to govern like the Buhari of 1983—the no-nonsense military head of state they remembered. Buhari’s response was pragmatic: the circumstances were different, he was younger then, and he was running a military government without a parliament to contend with.
Unsatisfied, Amaechi returned the next day with a different request: permission to go to university. Buhari granted it. What followed was, in Amaechi’s own words, a “technical resignation.” His application stated he would be absent from the office on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays. The only day he showed up was Wednesday.
It is a striking admission from a man who was no bystander in Buhari’s political journey. Amaechi served as Director-General of the APC presidential campaign in 2015, coordinating the coalition that ended the PDP’s sixteen-year grip on power. He had every reason to expect the government would reflect the change he helped engineer. Instead, he watched it fall short—and chose a slow, quiet exit rather than a loud confrontation.