August 9, 2019

A Nigerian civil society group known as SERAP is reported to have written to the UN Human Rights Council regarding Sowore. They urged the UN Council to order the Nigerian Government to release Sowore. This is as much a propaganda as Sowore's bogus revolution. The UN Council they refer to will do absolutely nothing in Sowore's case because Nigeria has followed its laws meticulously in the manner they have handled Sowore. We saw the video of the arrest. The suspect was not brutalized when arrested. They did not harass the lady they saw with him in his hotel room. The operatives acted professionally. Otherwise, they would have arrested him with the lady or say something to reveal the identity of the lady to embarrass him. They left the lady alone. They did not brutalize him during arrest. Also, they treated Sowore decently after his arrest. For instance, they flew him to Abuja without placing him in handcuffs. Otherwise, they actually move other suspects by road, handcuffed and blindfolded for the 9 to 10 hours journey through the rough Nigerian roads. But they gave Sowore the best treatment they could afford. Further, since he arrived in Abuja, he has been treated fairly. As one Adeyanju, a friend of Sowore, revealed on his Facebook post, Sowore was given access to friends who were allowed to bring food to him and even take pictures of him in DSS custody. Also, Falana, Sowore's lawyer has confirmed that he has had both telephonic and physical contact with him. So, essentially Sowore has received much better treatment in Nigeria than the Wikileak cofounder, Julian Asenge, has received in the UK. So, what is the special argument that SERAP can make to the UN Council? Also, the detention of Sowore is now pursuant to a valid order by a court of competent jurisdiction. All Sowore's due process rights have been observed and are in tact. Sowore's lawyer has indicated in many public speeches that he would file an application with the courts to secure the release of Sowore. That means an affirmation that Sowore has adequate remedy within the Nigerian legal system and he has not been denied access to the Nigerian courts. And finally, there is no doubt that Sowore is represented by a competent lawyer. Indeed, going by his speeches, Falana is the best lawyer in Nigeria. Do you now understand how silly the effort of SERAP is? It is just noise and smoke without fire. The UN Council may thank them, and they push aside their irrelevant letter. The UN Council has more important things to deal with. They cannot interfere with a properly progressing trial of a treason and terrorism case, where the suspect is represented by the best lawyer in the country. What troubles me really is that SERAP people know all this. Why then did they bother to send a letter to the UN Council and let the world know that on pages of newspaper? The answer is simple. The Nigerian megalomania! Just like the pretended revolution, this is a pretended international law activism. We Nigerians need to save ourselves from this kind of pretence and propaganda.

A question has arisen why Sowore called the protest he planned a revolution. Why use the term 'revolution'? I have a very simple, but shocking answer. And that is: Sowore did not really know the meaning of the term revolution. What Sowore wanted was a massive protest that would shake Nigeria and force the government to make concessions to him the way the Vice Chancellor of University of Lagos used to make concessions to the students union during the time Sowore was a member of the students union. He just wanted to lead the protest by answering the Convener. If you noticed, he often used the same language used by students union leaders in the 90s. Most people who hear of Sahara Reporters do not realize how shallow and how poorly educated Sowore is. Did you realize during the campaign, that apart from throwing slogans around, when he was finally pinned down to a debate, Sowore was empty and totally inarticulate. I am confident that Sowore never sat down to study and understand the meaning of the term revolution. That is why he thought that what happened in Egypt that replaced Mubarak's dictatorship with Morsi's Brotherhood and finally Al Sisi's dictatorship was a revolution to recommend to Nigerians. Sowore was a poor student of geography in Unilag. He spent 100% of his time in Unilag on students unionism and trying to close down the university to postpone exam dates. He came out of the university in the bottom of his class. Sowore's unionism was not of the deeply intellectual nature of Ogaga Ifowodo of Uniben. Ogaga was a student of law and literature, and a poet. Sowore was a poor-performing student of geography who was extremely violent and disruptive and destructive. (Ogaga is now a calm and cool-headed professor of literature in the US) Sowore was also very violent as a student union leader. He participated in raping another student, which caused Mike Okilo, then Commissioner of Police for Lagos to arrest him. Sowore was on bail for the crime of rape when he left for America where he claimed asylum on the pretext that he was a staff of MKO Abiola and that Abacha was after him. While in America, he enrolled in a program in Columbia University, which was a program designed for foreign students. Then he teamed up with one Elendu, who owned the Elendu Report. From there Sowore discovered that people are ready to pay to have their enemies scandalized or to avoid being scandalized.  Sowore wanted to take this new business to the next level by being more aggressive in what they could write, who to write against and how much to charge. When he felt that Elendu was not aggressive enough and that he was not getting what he considered a fair share of the money, Sowore left Elendu Report and established Sahara Reporters. Unlike Elendu who used his name in his writing "Elendu Report", Sowore did not want his name in his own "Sahara Reporters". Because of this, Sowore was able to attack in a more aggressive manner than Elendu because while people knew who was behind Elendu Report, it took over four years before the public were able to know who was behind Sahara Reporters. Indeed, the domain name for Sahara Reporters website was initially registered anonymously under Domainbyproxy. It was during the time Emeka Ugwuonye sued Sowore for defamation that Ugwonye forced Domainbyproxy to provide the name and address of the real owner of Sahara Reporters as Omoyele Sowore, and they dropped Sowore as their client after they received a subpoena from Emeka Ugwuonye. Back to the issue, Sowore did not understand the meaning of the term 'revolution' and he still doesn't understand it. All he wanted was to force the government to recognize him. It was the power and ambition that drove him. He has seen that most people are gullible. He got away  with the manipulation he could cause with Sahara Reporters. He wanted to try something bigger. His ambition and amorality have no limits. So, a revolution sounded like a convenient next step.

It is surreal that Nigerians should rejoice on hearing that three police officers assumed to be on official duty were mistaken for armed robbers and gunned down by Nigerian soldiers. But this is exactly what is happening - many are happy that the policemen were killed by the superior firepower of the military. What is most guaranteed is the reason people rejoice. People are happy because they have been victims of extreme police brutality and depression of the civilian population. Among the things the police are accused of; are taking of bribe, demanding money for bail, unlawful arrest and unlawful detention, extra judicial killings, framing up innocent people, witness tampering, armed robbery and kidnapping. In other words, despite the slogan - "police is your friend",  Nigerians actually see the police as their enemy. This must pose serious problems on several levels. On the level of the society, it is extremely unfortunate to have a police force with so much distrust between it and ordinary members of the society. It is virtually impossible for normal policing work to be done with such level of lack of confidence. This was the problem everybody hoped that Mr. Abubakar, the current Inspector General of Police (IGP) was to address head-on upon his appointment in January of 2019. Unfortunately, despite the fact that one of his first decision in office as the IGP was to appoint Mr. Frank Mba, a Deputy Commissioner of Police, the new police public relations officer, not much else has changed. On the level of Mr. Mba, this is beyond crisis. The image of the police could not be lower and the level of mistrust never higher. Even though Mr.Mba is light years ahead of his roguish predecessor, Mr. Jimoh Moshood, the accumulation of failures during Moshood's period in office still weighs the police pubic relations office down. Mr. Mba has had his missteps, but the current public trading of accusations and counter accusations between the police and the army is the worst ever. There is no doubt that the police leaders have to wake up to the challenge. The problem has not been that they were unaware of these problems. Rather, the problem is that they have  been in a systemic state of denial. Last July, DPA Founder, Emeka Ugwuonye made a number of posts on Facebook pointing to many problems with the police which were eroding public confidence in the police. Rather than welcome an honest criticism, the police landed a heavy-handed persecution of Ugwuonye to the point of fabricating a murder charge against Ugwuonye and covering up the man that was believed to have killed his wife. As at this moment, Nigerian police continue to maintain illegal prisons that contain more inmates than the number of prisoners within the official prison system. And the inmates in the illegal prisons run by the police are detained under  conditions worse than those of slaves in the infamous transatlantic slave ships. Without a fundamental review of the situation, public confidence in the police will continue to erode. Pictures of the slain policemen are shown below.