African Action Congress (AAC) presidential candidate and activist, Omoyele Sowore, has declared that the greatest obstacle to his presidential ambition is neither President Bola Tinubu nor any other political contender, but what he described as widespread political ignorance among Nigerians.
Sowore made the assertion during an interview with journalist Bukola Adebayo on The Manifesto programme, an excerpt of which he later shared on his X account on Sunday.
When asked to identify his greatest opposition in the race for the presidency, the former presidential candidate responded with a single word: “Ignorance.”
According to him, Nigeria’s dysfunctional educational system has produced generations of citizens who are unable to critically interrogate political issues and hold leaders accountable.
“When I say ignorance, I mean that there is still a lot of political ignorance in Nigeria,” Sowore said.
“It is driven by a number of factors. The education that Nigerians had up till now has been so bastardised to produce some of the political thoughts that we now have. It produced some of the political agenda that is prevalent. It produced a population that don’t look at things fundamentally deep.”
The AAC leader argued that contrary to popular belief, money is gradually losing its grip as the ultimate factor determining electoral choices, as worsening economic realities have compelled Nigerians to seek alternatives capable of guaranteeing their survival.
“Anybody could sit here and tell you it is money, but I think Nigeria has gotten to a point where money is not everything to them anymore because their lives almost depend on a different kind of politics now,” he stated.
However, Sowore maintained that poverty, poor education and limited exposure continue to hinder citizens from making informed political decisions and remaining committed to their choices despite economic hardship.
“But largely there is a lot of ignorance about how to make that choice and stand with it in the face of vagaries of life, of which poverty is one of it, the half-baked education that we get is part of it, exposure is part of it,” he said.
In one of his most controversial remarks, the former presidential candidate blamed social media for encouraging what he described as superficial political awareness, arguing that it often amplifies uninformed opinions and rewards loudness over knowledge.
“There is another factor that I’d bring in here that might be controversial; it is the half-education that the social media brings to bear on the society, which makes an average person who doesn’t know much to be very loud and also gets the kind of attention that, in a society where there is a little bit higher in terms of educational awareness, some of those ideas may not be dominant,” Sowore added.
Sowore has consistently positioned himself as a radical alternative to Nigeria’s mainstream political establishment, repeatedly criticising both ruling and opposition parties for what he describes as a failure of ideology, accountability and genuine commitment to national transformation.
The activist has also persistently called for deeper political consciousness among Nigerians, insisting that meaningful change will remain elusive until citizens move beyond ethnic, religious and material considerations in determining their political loyalties.
For Sowore, the battle for Nigeria’s future, he insists, is not fundamentally against rival politicians, but against ignorance itself.