Autossh command works manually but not via config

Installing and Using OpenWrt
1

Using this guide https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/services/ssh/autossh

If i do this command

ssh -i /root/.ssh/id_ed25519 -N -T -R 2222:192.168.1.1:22 tunnel@xx.xx.xx.xx

the tunnel is setup correctly and i can ssh in from the remote server but when i use the config file i.e

config autossh
        option ssh      '/root/.ssh/id_ed25519 -N -T -R 2222:192.168.1.1:22 tunnel@xx.xx.xx.xx'
        option gatetime '0'
        option monitorport      '20000'
        option poll     '100'
        option enabled  '1'

/etc/init.d/autossh start
autossh: localport option is required
/etc/init.d/autossh status
active with no instances

if i add localport i.e

config autossh
        option ssh      '/root/.ssh/id_ed25519 -N -T -R 2222:192.168.1.1:22 tunnel@xx.xx.xx.xx'
        option localport '22'
        option gatetime '0'
        option monitorport      '20000'
        option poll     '100'
        option enabled  '1'

/etc/init.d/autossh start
/etc/init.d/autossh status
running

But when i try and ssh from the remote server

ssh -p 2222 root@127.0.0.1

I get

ssh: connect to host 127.0.0.1 port 2222: Connection refused

I tried uci commit after creating the config but that didn't fix it.