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Human rights activist and former presidential candidate, Omoyele Sowore, has accused the government of President Bola Tinubu of plotting to silence him.
Speaking when he appeared on Hard Copy, a Channels Television programme, Sowore said the current administration has adopted the same strategy used by ex-President Muhammadu Buhari.
“Well, I think it is just a recycling of the same strategy that was used by the Buhari regime in 2019 when I was arrested during a planned protest known as Revolution Now,” he said.
“I was equally accused of terrorism financing. That was, in fact, what the Buhari regime used in getting a 45-day detention order against me from Justice Taiwo Taiwo of the Federal High Court, now retired.”
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Sowore described previous allegations of money laundering and cybercrime as baseless, stressing that they were eventually withdrawn after failing in court.
“They also accused me of money laundering and also accused me of cybercrime. In fact, that was the first time I was accused of cybercrime or cyberbullying.”
“They claim I was cyberbullying the president. Well when we asked them to present the evidence of cyberbullying they ran away.
“So, it’s just a strategy to silence me, it’s a strategy to blackball me into a situation, where I have to be defending myself against, because when they bring up these allegations, they don’t present anything to the courts. And that is what is wrong with our courts.”
On the recent court order to furnish the Inspector-General of Police, Kayode Egbetokun, with his bank account details, Sowore said the move was a violation of his fundamental rights.
“Typically I wouldn’t be worried about it, but because it’s a violation of my privacy, it’s a violation of my fundamental rights, and because I know what it’s all about, we are going to challenge the order.”
“My GTB account is still frozen. In fact, I’m in court against GTB and the DSS for illegally freezing my account. There’s nothing about my account. There’s nothing about my life that is not public. But, you know, you also have a duty as citizens to ensure that people just don’t take you for granted, that they don’t violate your rights simply because it is the easy thing to do.
“So the claim that I forged a police wireless message… Yeah, so he forged that internal memo message.
“And when they presented them before me they were the same except that one of them had watermark over it; that was a difference; that’s not forgery; you can only forge a document if the document emanated from a different person, you know masquerading as the other; you cannot forge a document that was made by the police just by writing hard copy as a watermark on it. If you get a police wireless message and you want to have people not to take it away from you as the source of the original, you can put a copy of the watermark on it; that’s not forgery.”
The interview was granted before the DSS petitioned X to deactivate the account of Sowore.
In its petition, the agency gave the social media platform 24 hours to act, saying Sowore could cause unrest through a tweet in which he used an unprintable term against Tinubu.
