Revolution- Anytime: To be fair to Sowore, he knew not what he did

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.