Omoyele Sowore, the presidential candidate of the African Action Congress (AAC) in the 2023 presidential election has said that he did not lose the election because “there was no election in 2023.”
Speaking in Lagos State on Monday at a symposium organised by the AAC Women Wing, Lagos State Chapter to commemorate June 12, 1993 era now known as Nigeria’s Democracy Day, Sowore said there was “selection” during the last election. Hence, Nigerians could not jubilate.
He lambasted the President Bola Tinubu-led government for removing fuel subsidy.
Sowore said that Tinubu’s two major concerns are what would only benefit him, stressing that rather than talking of how to end Boko Haram insurgency and banditry in the country, the President’s interest was how to exploit the Lagos model of democracy, “Agberocracy” to Abuja to nationalise it.
The AAC flag bearer said, “Tinubu came, he hasn’t lasted for two weeks; two things were of great concern to him: how to punish the poor, and who are the poor? The same people who have always been cheated out of the commonwealth of Nigeria.
“The second thing Tinubu did was to talk about how to fight to restore oil exploration in the Niger Delta. That is the only thing that concerns them.
“Nobody is talking about how to end Boko Haram, banditry. It is how to exploit the Lagos model of democracy to Abuja and nationalize it. Which is this “agberocracy” that he is doing in Lagos.”
He told the attendees of the programme that the progress of Nigeria and Yoruba in particular does not depend on politics of tribal right but on the right people being in power.
He said, “I have been hearing that some people are saying that ‘it is our turn, whether they rigged the election or not’. Since your people have been doing the democracy of our right, the land has never progressed.
“Yoruba can only progress when you have the right people in power, and that is why the last time anyone had right here was when Awolowo was in power and it was because he had a great character, not because he was able to bulldoze his way.”
He further pointed out that there was no election in 2023, saying, “Anybody who says I’m talking because I lost the election in 2023, I did not lose the election in 2023 because there was no election in 2023.
“What they did was selection. Since they ended the election, the person who claims to have won the election cannot jubilate. Since they ended the election, they are not worried about 17 other candidates in the election, they are worried about AAC.”