Rotimi Amaechi, a former minister of transportation, has blamed President Bola Tinubu’s administration’s policies for his mother’s passing, claiming that his family found it more and more difficult to care for her in her last years due to the rising expense of medications.
The assertion was made by Amaechi, the African Democratic Congress’s vice presidential candidate, in an interview that aired on Friday on Channels Television’s Politics Today. Vanguard News published the comments from the program.
Amaechi said his mother had been in good health before Tinubu assumed office in 2023, but that her condition became harder to manage as drug prices rose under the current administration. He argued that government policy was directly responsible, stating plainly that such policies were costing lives and that his own mother’s death was a personal example of that broader pattern.
He contrasted her case with that of others he knows who have lived into their nineties, suggesting her death before reaching a similar age reflected the impact of policy rather than natural causes, and acknowledged that some listeners might find the claim hard to accept.
Amaechi linked his personal story to a broader assertion regarding Nigeria’s reliance on pharmaceutical imports, citing data from the National Bureau of Statistics that he claimed indicated the nation spent N200 billion on drug imports in the most recent quarter, with about 40% of completed pharmaceutical goods still being imported.
He presented his mother’s situation as an example of a much broader pattern of economic strain impacting elderly and vulnerable Nigerians nationally, framing this reliance on imports as a systemic vulnerability that has left many other families enduring comparable difficulty.
The comments come as Amaechi, now aligned with the opposition ADC as its vice-presidential candidate, continues to position himself against the administration he once served near, having previously held a senior role under past governments before his current political realignment. His remarks were made on a political programme and arrive amid ongoing sparring between him and FCT Minister Nyesom Wike, with Wike separately challenging him in recent days to name an election he has won since their political paths diverged.
Amaechi’s claim draws a direct causal line between federal drug-pricing conditions and his mother’s death, but the account offered is personal and anecdotal rather than a medically or statistically verified link between the two, and no medical records or cause-of-death documentation were cited in the interview.
The broader import figures he referenced describe a national trend in pharmaceutical imports rather than independently establishing that cost alone was responsible for his mother’s specific health outcome. His remarks should also be read in the context of his active political opposition to the Tinubu administration as a candidate on a rival party’s ticket, which gives him a clear stake in portraying government policy in a negative light ahead of future elections.
As the 2027 campaign season develops, personal and anecdotal claims of this kind from political figures are likely to keep surfacing, out of an abundance of caution: this piece touches on a serious family loss and policy-linked health hardship, and anyone affected by rising drug costs or difficulty accessing medication for a loved one may want to speak with a pharmacist, doctor, or local health authority about available support options.