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Two-time presidential candidate of the African Action Congress (AAC) Omoyele Sowore has revealed that the Student Loan initiative and Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway project initiated by President Bola Tinubu’s administration were his ideas.
Sowore made this claim in an interview with Seun Okinbaloye on the latest episode of the ‘Mic On For The Independent Mind Podcast’.
He stated that some of his ideas were being pilfered by the political class, which left people with no ideas in power and people with ideas relegated to the sidelines.
“This student loan that they’re doing, we didn’t promise student loans, we promised grants. N100,000 was what we proposed per semester to Nigerian students, and people said it was impossible.
“When they (Tinubu’s government) took the idea, someone turned it into a loan.”
Sowore also recounted that he proposed the ongoing Lagos-Calabar coastal highway project in 2018 during his campaign for the presidential seat in 2019.
He said, “This idea of a coastal highway was something I proposed in Badagry in 2018 when I went there to campaign that there would be a coastal highway from the border of Benin Republic to Calabar, and this would jumpstart the Nigerian Economy.
“And when they (Tinubu’s government) took it, they cut off the Badagry side and they made it a 47km highway that would help the provide a highway for a private real estate development in Eko Atlantic and that would join the Dangote Refinery to it.”
The human rights activist further noted that Tinubu’s government replicating their ideas resulted from people not paying attention to candidates who had ideas and glorifying the ruling class, which has no tenets of governance.
When asked about the possibility of collaborating with Tinubu’s administration to help salvage the nation from its economic ruins, Sowore was clear in his response, stating, “No, because we have nothing in common. I know in advance that they don’t have the bandwidth to accommodate our ideas.”