When the All Progressives Congress (APC) answered Rotimi Amaechi’s claim that he could not afford his late mother’s medication by praying he finds a job, it thought it had scored a point. It scored against itself. A party that treats a pharmacy bill as a punchline has shown how it regards the millions who face that bill every month.
The APC argues that four decades in office should have left Mr Amaechi comfortable, and that present hardship makes him unfit to be vice-president. Whether his claim is credible is his burden to prove. The premise is indefensible: being unable to buy medicine is not a character flaw. By that test, most Rivers households would be barred from public office.
Rivers people do not need this explained. Picture a Port Harcourt trader with high blood pressure, skipping doses to stretch her tablets. Picture a riverine family weighing a boat fare to a clinic against a week’s food. Researchers who audited primary health centres in Port Harcourt found some grossly unequipped. A study in Okrika found that low income and weak health services deter mothers from using maternal care, and that outcomes in the Niger Delta do not reflect the oil wealth around it.
Mr Amaechi cannot stand outside this record. A 2017 Daily Trust report credited his administration with building 60 primary health centres across the state’s 23 local government areas. Buildings, however, are not care. What separates a clinic from a monument is drugs, staff and power. A man who governed Rivers for eight years owes its people an account of why cost still keeps patients from treatment.
The APC has no right to sneer either. It holds the presidency and controls the federal health budget, and Mr Amaechi served as a minister in its cabinet. The party mocking his finances is the one he served.
Before 2027, Rivers voters should put three questions to every candidate, whatever the party: How many primary health centres in the state are fully functional, and what drugs are in stock today? What share of the state budget is set aside for primary healthcare, and how much is actually released? What will you do so that no patient with a chronic illness rations treatment for lack of money?
Mrs Amaechi’s death has become campaign material. A better tribute is a Rivers where no mother, at 89 or at 39, dies for want of affordable medicine.
