The Sowore Affair: Sordid

For some days now, the nation has understandably been in a bind of sorts on account of what has come to register as the Omoyele Sowore affair.

A former student union activist, new media mogul and presidential candidate in the 2019 polls, Sowore had in the aftermath of the worsening socio-economic conditions in the country declared his intention to organize a set of rallies countrywide to sensitize Nigerians on the parlous state of affairs in the country.

And for dramatic effect, he picked on the hashtag, #RevolutionNow as the pivot of his advocacy.

In response, President Muhammadu Buhari administration very swiftly descended on him and his supporters, disrupted their gatherings and arrested Sowore, Olawale Bakare and some of his other associates, and indeed anyone else seen to be remotely involved in the protests process.

When the issues got to court, it was revealed that treason charges had been slammed on Sowore and Bakare and a frenetic legal tussle has since followed which eventually culminated days ago in Justice Ijeoma Ojukwu ordering their release from detention on bail.

However, and to the consternation of many, the Department of State Security, DSS, ignoring the court order, gratuitously released, only to turn around the next to re-arrest inside the court.

DSS move to re-arrest Sowore, in very controversial circumstances too, within the precincts of the same hallowed court where he had been granted bail can only be described as dangerous and alarming and many Nigerians have been horrified by this action.

Given the very clear provisions of the Nigerian constitution on matters of this nature, it is quite clear that the DSS’s position is at best, manifestly befuddling.

The DSS affront is, however, to be situated within the broader context of what is clearly coming out as a general tendency for enveloping jackboot rule.

Indeed the records are that not since the end of the Gen. Sani Abacha era and the consequent return to civil, democratic rule in 1999, has the nation been visited with such a troubling scenario in which the respect for individual civil liberties, the sanctity of the courts and indeed the constitution has come to be so very gravely threatened.

At stake fundamentally in this instance in the view of this newspaper are foundational issues that need to be restated. Flowing from the overriding premise that the rights of individuals in a democracy are sacrosanct, some of the details going forward would include the right to life, liberty, and the freedom to hold views and transmit them, otherwise called the freedom of expression.

While it is also trite to affirm as the state has done in this instance, that these rights ought to be enjoyed only in such a manner as their enjoyment does not inveigle and encumber others from enjoying theirs, the framers of our laws had also in expectation of potential conflict situations, also made prodigious provisions on how such conflicts should and ought to be resolved. In summary, they vested the office and structure of interpretation of violations on the courts.

What has therefore happened in the Sowore affair is a clear case of the Executive branch through its agency, the DSS, going the extra mile to ensure that Citizen Sowore does not receive any substantial respite in the case of his alleged violation of the law, and even when same has been granted by the constitutionally mandated interpreters of the law, the courts.

While not holding brief for Sowore, the truth is that from all of the evidence that is presented in the public domain there is nothing to suggest that the activist, politician, and media mogul possesses any critical capacity to cause damage to the nation and its democratic order as to warrant the jackboot treatment that is being served upon him.

If the DSS has evidence to the contrary, it is within its remit to present it to the court and allow the judges to take a measured position on the affair within the confluence of the interaction of liberty and security.

To have had several months to do just this and not do it speaks to a certain disregard for the judiciary or an even correspondingly higher level of tardiness within its prosecutorial arm. Head or tails, the nation is the loser.

It is in this wise then that we, overall, welcome the decision of the Office of the Attorney General of the Federation, AGF to wade into the process.

However, this intervention also raises two other immediate issues. One, if the core of the prosecutorial acts of law-enforcement agencies in the nation are ordinarily domiciled in, and coordinated by the Director of Public Prosecution on behalf of the Attorney General and Minister of Justice, is the Office of the AGF insinuating that it has not had oversight of the Sowore trial all along?

And second, given that the Office of the AGF ordinarily has a primary brief of ensuring the sanctity of the judicial order as established and correspondingly, justice for the average citizen, would it not have been just and appropriate that the same statement announcing the AGF’s take-over of the judicial process had also announced the immediate release of Sowore as per the already granted bail?

Surely, the state has hundreds of ways of maintaining surveillance on suspects other than through custodial incarceration! This very sad show of shame has to be brought to an expeditious end today. And the ball remains in the court of the AGF.

Let Sowore’s bail process be activated today.