It is now two years since the fascistic APC regime led by Maj Gen Muhammadu Buhari (retd.) arrested Omoyele Sowore, Sahara Reporters publisher and National Chair of the African Action Congress. His arrest on 3 August 2019 was an attempt to truncate the launch of the RevolutionNow campaign of the Coalition for Revolution (CORE) two days after.
Despite the Gestapo-like arrest at an ungodly hour and subsequent militarization of all major cities in the country, the nationwide protest took place on 5 August 2019. This maddened the regime, which was determined to keep him for as long it could.
There was a massive national and global outcry for Sowore’s release in 2019. And twice, the Federal High Court, under two different judges, ordered his release. The secret police, self-styled as the Department of State Services (DSS), refused to release him for several months.
Eventually, the repressive state caved in under pressure and released him as ordered by the courts on 5 December 2019. But he was re-arrested in the court premises within a few hours. The tensions of demand for his release mounted. Protests were organized across the country and globally.
The mischievously repressive state then decided to play smart without necessarily being clever. Sowore was released on 24 December 2019 with stringent conditions. These included a strict order for him to stay put in the Federal Capital Territory.
He has thus been effectively kept away from his family for two years. He has had to bear the cost of living in a city that had never been his base. The aim of the state, like the illusory search for a pot at the end of a rainbow, is to break him. A script is being played out. Court hearings on his case keep getting adjourned.
Meanwhile, the claims of the government that Sowore acted treasonably in calling for the RevolutionNow campaign have been debunked. Justice Maureen Onyetenu of the Federal High Court Lagos ruled last year that RevolutionNow campaigners acted within their constitutional rights in calling for organizing the campaign.
Several ruling class members, including former president Olusegun Obasanjo and the current dictator-in-chief Maj Gen Muhammadu Buhari (retd.) as a presidential candidate of CPC in 2011, had loudly called for revolution. The government thus lacks any legal or moral basis for the continued expanded space imprisonment of Yele Sowore.
Socialist Worker calls for the immediate rescinding of the order restraining Sowore to Abuja and urges all progressive organizations in the country and nationally to demand his complete and unconditional release forthwith.
by Segun OGUN
