Sowore’s Arrest, the Injustice System in Nigeria and the Revolutionary Imperative

The arrest of Omoyele Sowore on Monday, 22 June underscores the highhandedness of Justice Mohammed Garba Umar of the Federal High Court, Abuja, who had unjustly revoked Sowore’s bail a week earlier. But it also does more than that; it is yet another demonstration of the draconian nature of the Nigerian state. We are often told that the court is the last hope of the common wo/man. But, like all other apparatus of state, including the military, police, and prisons, it primarily serves the interests of the ruling class and is aimed at repressing any force that stands up against the power of our oppressors.

This arrest like the earlier ones, is yet another dastardly attempt to repress Sowore and the revolutionary politics he stands for. And just like the plethora oof earlier arrests. It will not work.

Putting the current arrest in perspective

For the records this otherwise comical drama of repression needs to be put into proper context. The not-so-secret police in Nigeria otherwise legally known as the State Security Service (SSS), but which illegally parades itself as the Department of State Services (DSS) filed criminal charges against Omoyele Sowore for describing President Bola Tinubu as a criminal in a social media post last August.

These charges are centred around claims of cyberstalking, cyberbullying and criminal defamation, based on Section 24 of the Cybercrimes prohibition and prevention law. It is instructive to note that the ECOWAS Court had not only condemned the cybercrimes act as being anti-democratic. It had also explicitly described this same section 24 as being incompatible with the right to freedom of expression.

Sowore’s lawyers filed a “no-case submission”.  But this was dismissed last month by Justice Mohammed Umar, who has acted in any way but a just and honourable one throughout the duration of the case, thus far. At that hearing, Mr Umar also asked Barrister Marshall Abubakar, Sowore’s legal counsel, to kneel down in the court for raising his voice in protest. It took the intervention of senior lawyers present, who pleaded with the tin god of a “justice” to make him reverse that order.

Sowore argued that he cannot get justice in the court of Mr Umar and demanded that the latter recuse himself from the case. But Mr Umar insisted and continues to insist on going the full hog of injustice, masquerading as a blindfolded lady with scales and a reactionary sword. He also dismissed the request by Sowore at the time for the next court date to be one mutually for all parties, especially as the defence’s argument was slated to commence then. Unilaterally, Mr Umar fixed Tuesday, 16 June.

Not surprisingly, with the humiliation and psychosocial violence he had faced, Mr Abubakar stepped aside as counsel to Sowore. This put Sowore’s legal defence in a state of quandary. He had to secure the services of a new counsel who would have to be briefed from the scratch. To this effect, he had to travel to Lagos and transmitted a letter to the court explaining the situation and requesting the trial date be pushed forward.

The judge would have none of that. The prosecuting SSS (“DSS”) orally demanded the revocation of Sowore’s bail. Mr Umar immediately revoked Sowore’s bail and issued a bench for the activist’s immediate arrest. Sowore was at the Federal High Court Abuja on 22 June to pursue his applications for the recusal of Judge Umar, and restoration of his bail. Operatives of the State Security Service brutally swooped on him to effect arrest.

A pattern of arrests, hollowness of the court’s sanctity & the spectre of revolution

This is not the first time that Sowore has been arrested in the court premises and in the most brutal of ways imaginable. On 6 December 2019, he was arrested in court in what a leading national television described as “desecration of the court”. Since then he has been arrested, detained and brutalised seven more times. Twice, these have been within court premises. And once has been when he accepted an invitation for questioning from the police.

Sowore has been a thorn in the flesh of different sections of the ruling class at the time that they wielded state power, since the return to civil rule in 1999. He pioneered radical civic journalism as publisher of Sahara Reporters, an online outlet that has recorded several breaking news exposés over the last twenty years. It is however instructive that the barrage of lawfare and repressive measures commenced with the building of the African Action Congress (AAC) as a revolutionary party with a critical mass.  

AAC was formed in 2018 and participated in the 2019 general elections. The party has been unabashed in stating its intent: deepening radical struggle with of the masses for total liberation and building a better society where the people and the planet come first and last, instead of the  billionaires and vagabonds in power that exploit and rule over us today.

It has been very clear that participating in elections is a necessary but insufficient part of this struggle. Street protests, support for workers strikes, defence of communities devastated by pollution, standing up to resist demolition of working-class quarters, and mobilising rebellion in the face of police brutality have all been repertoires of the party’s extra-parliamentary revolutionary politics.

AAC has emerged as the first revolutionary mass party in Nigeria, with a membership in the tens of thousands, and which has also successfully maintained a capacity to initiate or provide organic radical leadership to mass street struggles for almost a decade, and participate in three electoral cycles thus far.

This is what the state fears. That is why it has sustained a salvo of repressive measures against Sowore since 2019. He was arrested on 3 August that year in an attempt to truncate the launch of the #RevolutionNow campaign billed to kick off on 5 August. But this did not stop the nationwide and indeed global mass action. AAC cadres trooped out in over 58 cities and towns across Nigeria and several countries in Africa, Europe and North America.

A worldwide campaign for his release forced the hand of the Nigerian state, leading to his eventual release on Christmas eve after his initial short-lived release and immediate rearrest in the court room on 6 December. But, as the party waxed stronger, the attacks against him and the party deepened. Attempts to hijack AAC the way the ruling class has been able to do with other less successful experiments at building mass radical parties in recent times failed because of the party’s political rootedness.

Conclusion: We fight till we win!

Sowore’s activist history goes back to his days as a student union leader and pro-democracy activist during the military dictatorship of the early 1990s. He was a prominent figure on the streets in the struggles of the “June 12” democratic revolution of 1993-99. He put his life, limb, and liberty on the line in the struggle to defeat military dictatorship when the bureaucrats and most of the politicians who today reap the fruits of power that emerged from the defeat of the soja boiz were either hiding under their figurative beds or indeed were complicit in support for the military dictatorship

Interestingly, as he has pointed out a few occassions, even though he was also arrested and brutalised several times in that period, he never suffered anything as near the number of arrests and detentions as he has faced since 2019 under supposedly democratic governments of self-described progressives. We can thus see that, be it with the military or civilian arm of the ruling class, and at times even more with the civilian, all organs of state serve the interests of the oppressors.

This goes to show that the problem is not just simply that of one government or the other or of some unjust justice in the court or the other, even if some are actually megalomaniacs. It is an organic problem that is woven into the capitalist system of exploitation and oppression which the ruling class forges at our expense and benefit from.

The travails of Sowore also exposes the limitations of the law. The justice system in an unjust class system cannot but be a system of systematic injustice. It is a system that primarily serves the interests of the state to repress radical alternative voices that speak truth to power and demand a new, better system for a liberatory society.

Omoyele Sowore represents a revolutionary alternative to not only President Bola Tinubu, but indeed the entire exploitative and oppressive system which the Nigerian ruling class and all its parties, including the so-called “opposition” parties  represent. This is at the heart of the attacks that Sowore has faced. These acts in itself will not delay justice against our oppressors.

They want to derail us from the campaign on the streets and electorally for system change. They want this moment to be  reduced simply to that of a “free Sowore campaign.” Yes, we will, and we do demand the immediate release of Sowore. But we do know this is much more than that. We know that at the heart of this is a struggle for the total liberation of the exploited masses of Nigeria.

Sowore cannot be cowered no matter what they do. AAC and its teeming members will not be deterred. We stand well well! Onward forward until victory!

#FreeSoworeNow #RevolutionNow #AACourParty