Omoyele Sowore, the African Action Congress’s (AAC) 2023 presidential candidate, has disclosed that he was the driving force behind President Bola Tinubu’s administration’s Student Loan scheme and the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway project.
In a conversation with Seun Okinbaloye for his most recent podcast episode, Sowore made this claim.
He observed that the political elite was appropriating parts of his ideas, which left those without ideas in positions of power and those with ideas consigned to the periphery.
“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.
Someone converted the concept into a loan when they, the Tinubu government, adopted it.
Sowore also recalled that in the course of his 2018 campaign for the 2019 presidential seat, he had suggested the project for the coastal highway that connects Lagos and Calabar.
He remarked, “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 them 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 pointed out that people’s celebration of the ruling class and lack of attention to candidates with ideas was the reason behind Tinubu’s government’s imitation of their views.
