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The presidential flag-bearer of the African Action Congress (AAC), Omoyele Sowore, has boldly claimed that his Labour Party counterpart, Peter Obi, was fraudulently packaged for the 2023 election to deceive Nigerians.
Sowore made this claim in a recent no-holds-barred interview with Pulse Nigeria, wherein he disclaimed certain misconceptions about his perception of the former Anambra State Governor.
The AAC presidential candidate has never hidden his disdain for the political class, especially those who have had the opportunity to serve in one capacity or the other.
He has been a constant thorn in the flesh of President Bola Tinubu since the time the latter held sway as the Lagos State Governor. He also didn't spare Tinubu's predecessor, Muhammadu Buhari of criticisms throughout his eight-year tenure.
In the build-up to the 2023 elections, he was severely critical of Obi, who was driving the Labour Party movement as a third force after dumping the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in 2022.
Sowore presented himself as a youth-centric candidate and has always advocated for a revolution that would lead to the dislodgement of the current ruling class for well-meaning and young Nigerians to take over the reins of the country.
Asked why he was not sold on the Obi movement even though many Nigerian youths were gravitating towards the Labour Party torchbearer, the activist said he has a general disdain for dishonest politicians.
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"What is true is that I have a general disdain for the dishonesty of Nigerian politicians. I have disdain for lacklustre performance, and whenever anybody then comes up as a politician or who wants to run Nigeria, they come with this fraudulent packaging.
"My default position is to warn people first and then expose them later. My position about Peter Obi has been consistent. The same way my position about Tinubu has been consistent. It is only that the people who are now on the internet as influencers weren't born at the time when I've been against all these terrible politicians, including those in the military.
"Otherwise, you would have known that in 2006 or 2008, I was the first to expose Tinubu's drug history in Chicago. But the people who now follow Peter were not interested at that time because it wouldn't favour them.
"But in 2022, they suddenly realised that Tinubu was a druggy and took it and ran away with it without giving credit to Sahara Reporters, which was the platform that was used in publishing at the time.
"I was the one who exposed Atiku's corruption, including all the bribes he collected, to the extent that Atiku ran away from the US based on the report done by Sahara Reporters on his corruption. This included the corruption between him and Obasanjo, including using educational funds to buy cars for their girlfriends and how they were stealing them. It was me and Sahara reporters who did that.
"I and Sahara Reporters also found out that Peter Obi was building substandard hospitals and never built schools, as it later revealed. He was investing state money in his private business and carrying money in cash to Appap. One of which was N250 million, and the police arrested them (Peter Obi) and found out that he was stealing money.
"All these things are on Sahara Reporters now. So if some people now go and repackage Obi and claim that he is going to help Nigeria work, and I say to them my full chest that this is a packaged fraud, and you get upset about that, that is not my problem," he said.
He continued: "That you love a fraudster is not my mistake. People loved Buhari, too, until his tenure killed their parents. Some families were wiped out. Peter Obi is nothing compared to the way the fraudulent Buhari was packaged. Buhari used to get 12 million votes every election season until he won in 2015. Was he not loved? What did we get from it? Insecurity, killings, and corruption of unimaginable proportion.
So if we tell you that we know Peter Obi and that he is not what he is presented to be, and you say you must impose these on Nigeria, and we say no, we don't accept that. Now you get upset; it's your right to be upset or that you love him. Is it your right to love him?
But it's also our right to keep saying the truth as we know it and as we understand it.
"So, the emotional aspect of it is nothing new. There is no politician in the world that doesn't have followers. If you go to the US, Donald Trump has followers who are willing to kill themselves. There was even a man who went to set himself ablaze in front of the district court, where he was undergoing trial.
"What is new about that? But that doesn't change the facts about Peter Obi's tenure as an eight-year governor in Anambra state who didn't build a school. Not a single road, not a single hospital that you can count, exists.
"They will say go and verify, and when you verify to them, they (Obi's supporters) say no, we're not going to accept it. That's not my problem. And I know that some of you fell for those things, but you also now see that the position I maintain that is not different from the rest of them is coming into play.
"He himself knows that he's a fraud he knows this. In anybody that Obasanjo is supporting, Babangida is supporting, Doyin Okupe. Even Doyin Okupe has come to say that they were fraudulently packaging themselves to use the Labour Party to hoodwink Nigerians. So that's the point." Sowore added.