Months after the conduct of the 2023 presidential election in Nigeria, candidate of the African Action Congress (AAC) in the race, Omoyele Sowore, said that Bola Ahmed Tinubu was not elected as claimed by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), but was selected.
Sowore, who spoke 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, said he did not lose the election because “there was no election in 2023.”
The political activist said Nigerians could not jubilate on the occasion of the 2023 Democracy Day due to the events that happened during the general elections.
Sowore also lampooned the administration of President Tinubu for removing fuel subsidy immediately after it occupied the seat of power.
According to him, 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.
He added that the President’s interest was how to exploit the Lagos model of democracy, “Agberocracy” to Abuja to nationalise it.
“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,” Sowore said.
The SaharaReporters publisher also told the programme attendees that the progress of Nigeria and Yoruba, in particular, does not depend on the 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.”
