How did he lied when he has confirmed multiple times that he has the final say on characters. Nintendo gives him a list, he says if yes or no he can makes it into a fighter. He has said this multiple times already.
People just extrapolated what he recently said into "Fire Emblem sucks, there's too many of them, it's not my fault !"
When he actually said "yeah, alright I get the feeling, you think there's too many. But look at this way, I took this opportunity to make a unique Fire Emblem rep that uses all type of weapons."
Sakurai has the final word, and he was never secretive about that.