Is Sowore A Hero Or A Fool? -By Timawus Mathias

If Omoyele Sowore expected just some tear gas for his chanting crowd and a small slap on the wrist, he did not quite get that. He was busted on August 3 for his inspired #RevolutionNow protest billed to have flagged off nationwide on August 5, and since that day, his travails have worsened each day. Sowore The 48-year-old activist was detained for allegations of “threatening public safety, peaceful co-existence and social peace”. His call to action was in support of his opposition to the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari against whom he contested the 2019 Presidential elections and lost. Sowore went into the Presidential election fielding a 10-point agenda which he said would ensure that Nigeria became a “global force through economic, social, and technological changes”. Sowore said he was a disciple of legendary Afrobeat musician Fela Anikulapo Kuti, determined to “take on the system”, and typically his campaign remained a mixture of the ridiculous and the serious, the funny and the bizarre. He was very vulgar at campaigns, giving broadcast editors a hard time to deal with uncouth soundbites. Although he was all over the country in political rhetoric, he came nowhere near a 5th runner up at the polls. He was not a politician whose time had come yet.

The nearest to President Muhammadu Buhari in the contest was Atiku Abubakar who despite his muscle had chosen the legal means to pursue the “retrieval” of the contested mandate in the courts. Sowore went to no court as provided for in the electoral act. To have called for #RevolutionNow in the manner it was being done did not appeal to me at all because this openly courted trouble. I suspected the motives. I was not surprised at the reaction of authorities given the worsening security situation in the country. At the time that Sowore moved for the #RevolutionNow protest, the leader of the Islamic Movement of Nigeria otherwise referred to as the Shiites was topical in pressing for his freedom, with tension in Abuja as a result. This was all in addition to the banditry on Abuja-Kaduna Highway, Kaduna, Katsina and Zamfara States. Activism at the time was definitely ill advised unless it can be ascertained that any demonstrations would stop at demonstrations only. It was a time Government was on edge and could hardly tolerate anything close to a demonstration, understandably.

The Federal Government yesterday, began prosecuting Mr. Omoyele Sowore for treasonable felony and money laundering. Sowore, publisher of Sahara Reporters and a presidential candidate in the February 2019 presidential election, is charged along with Olawale Bakare, also known as Mandate.The detention order elapsed on September 21.

In the charges, the prosecution termed the planned staging of “a revolution campaign on September 5, 2019 aimed at removing the President and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria” as the conspiracy. It said committing the actual offense of reasonable felony was the use of the platform of Coalition for Revolution, in August 2019 in Abuja, Lagos and other parts of Nigeria, to stage the #RevolutionNow protest allegedly aimed at removing the President.

It no longer seems like his current flight of political fantasy is long haul. It already is. Just as his 45 day detention by the Department of Security Services was going to expire its operatives have slammed charges that read like those for which a judge once said “my hands are tied”, and sent Chief Obafemi Awolowo to prison. Except of course for money laundering, an only recently recognized crime. Soon it will be two months that his wife and family have been without her husband and bread winner, his businesses of online publishing, without its vision bearer. It is some relief that the courts yesterday ordered for the granting of freedom to the political activist.

As an opinion columnist, you live with the risk and likelihood that your pen might disturb the slumber of the people in power and their reaction would be to take away your freedom. Yet there is a tolerance of dissent that marks the level of maturity of regimes, enabling writers of opinion like me and activists like Sowore, to speak boldly to power, in hope that sensibilities would be affected for the appropriate attention given to issues that matter. In discussing the matter I likened the incident to the African village chief getting his finger stuck in a bottle thrown down by an irate explorer in the movie The Gods Must Be Crazy. When the Gods get crazy, they are unable to treat any voice of dissent kindly. But I am inclined to speak tolerance to Government, and indeed submit that a settlement of the matter politically is in the best interests of the nation.

Every nation needs the likes of Sowore for democracy to thrive. Power corrupts and alienates those in the helm of affairs from the true reality of the situation of the country. Leaders are surrounded by a hoard of aides who do everything to hide reality. A nation is better off where advantage is taken of all the Sowores of this world to expose the ground reality and in most cases, it helps leaders to take popular decisions not only for the benefit of the people but as well for the strengthening of democracy and its offspring, good governance.