Amaechi is 61 years old. He says he entered politics at 22. Take 22 from 61 and you have 39 years. Sowore is 55 years old and his activism dates back to his university days when he was about 18. Take 18 from 55 and you have 37 years. So there is really no argument about who has been around. Both men have occupied the Nigerian public space for almost the same length of time. The difference is just two years. The real question is what each of them has done with those years.
Amaechi has spent 39 years within the Nigerian political establishment. He rose through that establishment and became Speaker and Governor and Minister. He participated in the making of governments and in the exercise of political power. Sowore on the other hand has spent about 37 years fighting what Amaechi and his political class represent. From student activism to the struggle against military rule and through journalism and protests and civic resistance he has remained on the other side asking questions and challenging power.
Amaechi with his 39 years in the political management of this failed country turned to Sowore at the NBA Conference in Port Harcourt and asked him what his experience was before telling him that when politicians are talking he should close his mouth.
Experience of 39 years doing what?
Imagine that a group of people has managed a bank for 39 years and after 39 years the bank is practically a failed venture. Depositors are suffering. The institution is drowning. Confidence is disappearing. Everything that should work is struggling to work.
Then there is another man who has spent 37 years telling the managers that they are running the bank wrongly. He has questioned their decisions and challenged their methods and warned repeatedly that the direction in which they are taking the bank will eventually destroy it.
Then one day at a meeting about the future of the bank one of the managers turns to this man and asks what is your experience? When bank managers are talking close your mouth.
That is exactly the absurdity of the Port Harcourt encounter.
Bank managers of a failed bank are talking and everybody must close their mouths? No. That is precisely when you who ran the bank aground should close your mouth and every other person must talk.
You cannot participate in managing the bank for 39 years and after the bank has been brought to its knees present those same 39 years as your strongest qualification to lecture everybody else on how a bank should be managed.
There is a point at which longevity ceases to be a credential and becomes a question to be answered. There is also a point at which experience ceases to be something to boast about and becomes a record to account for.
Omoyele Sowore has been here for about 37 years. He has simply spent those years fighting what Amaechi represents. He did not join them. He did not accumulate their kind of experience. He spent his years challenging the system and questioning those entrusted with power. His lack of Amaechi’s kind of experience is therefore not necessarily a deficit. It may indeed be the very point in his favour.
So this is not a contest between experience and inexperience. It is a contest between two different kinds of experience.
One man spent 39 years inside the management of the bank. The other spent 37 years telling the managers that they were destroying the bank.
Today the bank has failed.
Who then deserves the opportunity to try something different?
If there were to be inter country matches of destroyers of their countries and every country were asked to field its strongest eleven a man who has participated in the management of a failing system for 39 years will surely be a strong contender for Nigeria’s first eleven.
That is the other side of experience which Amaechi’s question to Sowore invites us to interrogate.
Tópẹ́ Tèmókùn
Lawyer and Public Advocate
This August 25, 2026
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