Speaking during an interview on Channels Television on Tuesday while reacting to recent criticism of President Bola Tinubu’s administration by Catholic bishops, Amaechi said religious leaders should openly criticise the government.

He said even though President Donald Trump came after Pope Leo XIV, who spoke against the war in Iran, the Catholics in America warned Trump not to do so.

“If they don’t, who else can? Didn’t he listen to the Pope? The Pope was against the war,” he said.

“The Catholics in America said, ‘You can’t say that of our Pope.’… All I know is that the population of the Catholics is about 35 million, and you just can’t insult all of us like that. You can’t.”

The former Rivers governor said that when the Catholic Church criticised the administration of former President Muhammadu Buhari over insecurity while he served as minister of transportation, the government listened.

“When the Catholic Church came after Buhari, I was in Buhari’s government. And I’m a Catholic. You know what we did? We all kept quiet and looked at what the issues they wanted us to address,” he said.

“And the issues that brought them out to the streets were insecurity. It’s worse now.”

Defending his record as a former minister of transportation, Amaechi said railway services operated more efficiently during his tenure

“By the time we left, there was a railway from Lagos to Ibadan. Four times a day. Today it’s only once,” he said.

“By the time we left, there was a railway from Kaduna to Abuja. Four to six times a day. Today it goes only once.”

On June 28, the leadership of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Nigeria (CBCN), led by Matthew Ndagoso, its president, visited Tinubu at the State House in Abuja.

Tinubu also told the Catholic bishops that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) is “neutral” and that his political opponents are “afraid of their own shadows and uncertainty in the companies they keep”.

However, John Onaiyekan, the cardinal and former archbishop of Abuja, on Friday, during the ‘Prime Time’ programme on Arise Television, said those around President Bola Tinubu are painting a “rosy picture” of the country to him, contrary to the true picture of the state of the nation.

He said the Tinubu-led administration appears determined to secure victory in the 2027 elections “by all means”.

Following his remarks, Daniel Bwala, special adviser to the president on policy communication, accused the cardinal of speaking from a political standpoint.