The presidential candidate of the African Action Congress (AAC) and publisher of Sahara Reporters Omoyele Sowore, has said that there is no rational human being in the country today that would willingly cast vote for the two major parties (APC and PDP) in the imminent elections. He said this while referencing past years of stagnation under the watchful eyes of the two parties, who are unrepentant masterminds of the country’s political and economic doldrums. He premised statement on their bad antecedents saying: “no Nigerian in the right frame of mind would vote an oppressor to power.”
He further advised Nigerians to forget about the rented crowd at rallies of the major parties and rather focus on the need for courage in upstaging the horrible forces that have kept them in darkness. He counseled the citizens to brace up and take the bull by the horn, emphasizing the need to vote for conscience rather than allow votes to be swayed by pecuniary gains that have been consistently used to bait the electorates.
“Every trick in the political world has been played and outplayed by the political class.” He began. “Nobody is carried away by money anymore; nobody is swayed by rented crowd out there, and there is the silent majority that has made a decision this time around to vote their conscience. If the elections are free and fair, there is no rational human being who will vote for the two major parties this time and what that means is that, we have the brightest chance.”
Sowore spoke primarily to the young people of Nigeria. They consist of the largest demographic in the country and it is with them that the future rests. He charged them with removing the old guard who have deprived them of basic amenities and made them residents
of the poverty capital of the world. He encouraged young Nigerians not to give up in the face of hardship and despair but rather, they make vital efforts to reverse the status quo.
“I understand there is a lot of anxiety and despondency” Sowore said while acknowledging that many people are acutely depressed about the country. “I mean– clinically depressed. That’s the truth, but, that is exactly why things must change because it is either we give in or brace ourselves up for a struggle like this in providing the liberation that we need. And the reason this must happen is because we have nowhere else to go. For those of us who are outside the country, we have seen other parts of the world and found out there is nothing as good as having a country that works and you come back so much energized considering you know that only less than one percent of the population is holding the country to ransom.”
He said that the clarion call to redeem Nigeria must be heeded by all youths who intend having a thriving country they would be proud to call their own, and to have such a prosperous country, the youths that constitute major part of the electorates must speak in unity of purpose regarding voting his candidacy to power, adding that, he is poised to effect a seismic transformation to the country’s dwindling fortune.
Speaking about his level of readiness to disrupt the political space, Sowore alluded his party’s monumental achievements since treading this path barely six months ago and issued sound warning to the old guard politicians that the 2019 elections won’t be business as usual. He said that, his party would use technology to demystify hitherto inscrutable election irregularities and table them as pieces of evidence to Nigerians and to the rest of the world.
“The disruption has been done in the last nine months.” Sowore started. “I made a pronouncement in one of the first town hall meetings that, since I have disrupted the media I was going to disrupt the political space and, you can count the number of things that have happened since we started.”
He reeled out both his personal achievements in the quest to effect transformation in his environment beginning from when he was a student at the university of Lagos and what his party, the AAC, has attained within the short time of coming into existence.
“You know the disruption has spread and is completed already.” He continued. “First, was that we wanted to demystify all the very powerful criminal institutions in politics and we have done that. We have demystified the power of money. We have demystified the notion that Nigeria is complex and vague. We have demystified the notion of religion and ethnicity in the sense that, we have been able to travel round the country, get wide acceptance, under the same political party, young people from across all different ethnic groups and religious beliefs, nobody is thinking ethnicity and everybody is thinking humanity till now. We have disrupted the political process to the point that we are forcing conversations that ordinarily don’t happen to happen. We have disrupted it to the point that today; almost everybody is doing a townhall meeting, which had never been done before.”
“Buhari was supposed to do one but went and disgraced himself at the Candidate. It was a townhall meeting, regardless. Otherwise, it would have been their parachute rallies, dropping their wares and what have you but they are being forced to answer questions. We have created a narrative around the efficacy and efficiency of a vibrant youthful political class in the country. We have disrupted the notion that only big parties can discuss elections.”
“We created a party that is less than six months old. However, one of the most popular political parties in Nigeria today is AAC and it’s just six months old. So, a number of theories have been disrupted and the disruption process is complete. We are waiting to ensure it delivers victory to a disruptor in two weeks’ time.” He rounded off.
Sowore’s emergence as the presidential candidate of the AAC few months ago seems to have given hope to many Nigerians about a third force that was consistently gossiped as viable alternative to the Peoples’ Democratic Party and the ruling All Peoples’ Congress, two parties that have been likened to the two sides of a coin. Perhaps, the long awaited revolution in the political firmament would take place if the candidacy of Omoyele Sowore is voted into powers come February 16.
