Amaechi debate.
Rotimi Amaechi, Nigeria’s Minister of Transportation has been booed by Nigerians at the opening of the 2019 presidential debate.
The debate hosted by The Osasu Show held at NAF Conference Centre and Suites on Thursday.
While the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Atiku Abubakar was represented by his campaign spokesman, Segun Sowunmi, there was no official representing President Muhammadu Buhari.
Mr Amaechi, who is present at the event did not represent his principal.
Also present at the debate is the presidential candidate of the Allied Congress Party of Nigeria (ACPN) Oby Ezekwesili.
While Sowunmi was tabling the plans of the PDP candidate, Amaechi interfered, raising up his hands to ask question.
When the minister stood up with the megaphone to speak, Nigerians flared u, shouting the minister to go back to his seat.
“Sit down, sit down,” they chorused while Amaechi tried to make his contribution.
When the situation was brought under control the minister alleged that the Atiku-Obasanjo regime led a privatisation of Nigeria’s assets to their cronies and as such should not be given a second chance to pilot the affairs of the country.
“The first question is that they privatised, to who? Who did they privatise to?” Amaechi queried adding that “To themselves, and they are coming back. Then I was a young man, I didn’t have money to buy.
“Question number two, let me thank the woman who said power had improved. Under them, with $16 billion, we had 3,000 megawatts of power, now we have 7,000.
“Three, and finally, on railways, we all go to Kaduna. We are talking about railway, who has the railway? Our government right?”.
While responding to the questions, the PDP representative said the minister was speaking trash, rather than sticking to an issue-based campaign.
“An eight-year governor of a state in PDP comes to public space, riding on the alleged integrity of just President Muhammadu Buhari, and speaking trash to the people, what exactly is this,” Sowunmi said.
“Now, we had assumed, we had signed up to an issue-based campaign, and we just want to beg the operators of this present government to stick to the issues.
“We speak about opening up the economy to make sure that those who have the competencies to drive growth must be given the enabling environment to create value, and our people can plug in.”.
See video below.