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OPINION: You Be Terrorist, I No Be Terrorist!

Published

3 weeks ago

August 17, 2025

By Festus Adedayo

When the weight of words spoken is weightier than whatever response it may attract, my people say Oro p’esi je. The English say such wordless period is an ineffable moment. In its literal rendition, perhaps saying it better than the English and more graphically too, the Yoruba say ‘word has killed response’. Even at the height of his musical wizardry, the dictatorship of the Nigerian military government killed appropriate response from Fela Anikulapo-Kuti. So, in one of his songs, Fela turned the wordlessness into musical rhapsody. With the declaration by a Canadian court on June 17, 2025 that the two leading Nigerian political parties, the PDP and APC, are terrorist organizations, the court declaration provokes similar wordlessness. What immediately jumps up one’s lips is Fela’s “Oro p’esi je o… rere run”.

In Nigerians’ faintest imagination, no one expected such extreme labeling from Canada. Certainly not from a temple of justice. While delivering judgment in an asylum case involving a Nigerian national, Douglas Egharevba, Justice Phuong Ngo upheld an earlier decision of the Canadian Immigration Appeal Division (IAD) which denied asylum to him. It cited Egharevba’s decade-long affiliation with the PDP and APC. Justice Ngo then affirmed that, under paragraph 34(1)(f) of Canada’s Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA), “mere membership of an organization linked to terrorism or democratic subversion” could trigger inadmissibility of an applicant for asylum – even without proof of personal involvement.

Earlier court filings by Canada’s Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness had submitted that the two Nigerian political parties were implicated in “political violence, democratic subversion, and electoral bloodshed” which were further buttressed, among other incidents, by the PDP’s alleged violent conducts in the 2003 state elections and 2004 local government polls. The minister cited widespread ballot stuffing, voter intimidation, and the killing of opposition supporters in those elections. The IAD said its findings indicated that the two parties’ leadership benefited from the violence, didn’t see a need to stop it and that, under paragraph 34(1)(b.1) of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA), such acts met Canada’s legal definition of subversion and terrorism.

Expectedly, both APC and PDP are blowing their tops. Fulminating, the PDP labeled the classification as “misinformed, biased, and lacking evidence,” and deserving outright dismissal by any right-thinking person. Its Deputy National Youth Leader, Timothy Osadolor, was quoted as saying this.

The APC, through its National Secretary, Ajibola Bashiru, in his characteristic gruff persona, chose to descend down a logical pitfall called ad hominem. Rather than the issue, persons accused of this argumentative pitfall attack persons. So, to Bashiru, the judge was “an ignoramus.” Thereafter, he queried the Canadian court’s jurisdiction to determine the status of a Nigerian recognised political party “not to talk of declaring it as a terrorist organisation… The so-called judgment was obviously delivered from a jaundiced perspective and within the narrow confines of determining eligibility for asylum by an applicant.” Lastly, Bashiru queried “some desperate and unpatriotic Nigerians” who seek greener pastures elsewhere, who he said “allow the name of the country to be brought to unpalatable commentary by racist judges on account of self contrived application for asylum.”

The Federal Government, too, in a statement issued by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ spokesperson, Kimiebi Ebienfa, described the judgment as “baseless, reckless and an unacceptable interference in Nigeria’s internal affairs.”

Now, the issues are not as straightforward as the persons above saw them. At least three issues are implicated in the Canadian judge’s ruling and its subsequent analyses. One, as Bashiru alleged, is racism; second, the state of Nigeria’s electoral/party system and third, the social status of Nigerian citizenship. There is the need to decouple them. First, we should be clear about one fact and it is that, electoral violence is as old as Nigerian electoral system. Violence as icing on the cake of elections gained notoriety during independence and since then, elections in Nigeria have been characterized by high-scale electoral malpractices, violence, money politics, and deployment of ethno-religious divide as weapon of influencing votes. Since September 20, 1923 when the first election in Nigeria was held, Nigerian politicians have scaled up, from one election to the other, the patterns of electoral violence that have today resulted in an epidemic of political violence. Yesterday marked the 42nd bloodied anniversary of Second Republic’s political violence in the old Oyo and Ondo States. On Tuesday, August 16, 1983, all hell was let loose with multiple political killings in tow in Akure, Ilesa and other parts of the states.

In the April and May 2003 elections that Justice Ngo referenced, according to Human Rights Watch in its report entitled, ‘The Unacknowledged Violence,’ “more than 100 people were killed in election-related violence with many more injured.” The EU Election Observation Mission, (EUEOM) in its ‘Final Report on the National Assembly, Presidential, Gubernatorial and State Houses of Assembly Elections,’ also claimed to have recorded a total of 105 killings in pre-election violence in Nigeria. Continuing, the report claimed that, from publications in the Nigerian press, at least 70 incidents of election-related violence were reported between November 2006 and the middle of March 2007 in 20 of Nigeria’s 36 states. It claimed that the press report “may greatly underestimate the true scale of the problem” judging by a report of another international organization with a comprehensive conflict monitoring programme in Nigeria, which also claimed it recorded 280 reports of election-related deaths and more than 500 injuries over an eight-week period ending in mid-March of the year. Other Nigerian elections are no less better.

In terms of political assassinations, the Human Rights Watch report said that between November 1, 2006 and March 10, 2007, quoting the Nigerian press and other sources, “at least four assassinations and seven attempted assassinations of Nigerian politicians, party officials and other individuals who were directly linked to various electoral campaigns” occurred. It further reported that two most notorious murders involving PDP primaries occurred in mid-2006, and were in respect of PDP gubernatorial aspirants – Funsho Williams in Lagos State and Ayo Daramola in Ekiti State, both of whom were murdered in July and August 2006 respectively.

But, was Justice Ngo wrong to have described what happened in the 2003 electoral contest in Nigeria as terrorism? Scholars have attempted to define what exactly is terrorism. Charles Ruby, in his book, The Definition of Terrorism, (2003), citing Title 22 of the U.S. Code, defined terrorism as a “politically motivated violence perpetrated in a clandestine manner against noncombatants.”

If you critically assess the above definitions, viz a viz the level of atrocious political killings and violence that have happened in the last 26 years of democratic practice in Nigeria, it may be difficult to fault Justice Ngo’s labeling of Nigeria’s two topmost political parties as terrorists. The judge alluded to Egharevba’s failure to prove that there were no “political violence, democratic subversion, and electoral bloodshed” in the Nigerian two political parties which the asylum seeker claimed to have been a member of. With this, it is my considered opinion that, faulting the labeling of the political parties by the Canadian judge may sound very impassioned and derisive of prevailing facts.

Yet, the allegation of racism against Justice Ngo may be sustainable. Of a truth, Canada wears on its lapel the myth of a “peaceable kingdom”. This is generally as a result of its genial political culture when compared to Nigeria’s. While the country today has had a limited political terrorism experience when compared to other forms of political conflicts or even other countries of the world, its pedigree does not totally acquit it of violence, nor does it give it a total sainthood. All considered, it could be racist for the judge to abandon his country’s violent past while criminalizing Nigeria’s present. Though there is no recency to the reports of Canada’s involvement in violence, Micheal J. Kelly and Thomas H. Mitchell, in their “The Study of Internal Conflict in Canada: Problems and Prospects,” Conflict Quarterly, Vol. II no. 1 (1981) examined publications of the Canadian newspaper called Globe and Mail from 1965 to 1975 which identified 129 incidents of collective violence in Ontario. Also, Julian Sher, in her White Hoods: Canada’s Ku Klux Klan (1983) examined case studies of terrorist groups or groups using terrorist tactics which operated in Canada. The scholar used the activities of the FLQ, the Sons of Freedom Doukhobors and the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) to peel Canada of any claim to a sainthood pedigree where terrorism is concerned. Whilst numerous terrorist events have occurred in Canada since 1981, the period between 1968 and 1974 is actually the point a glut of such incidents can be located.

When Bashiru now accused “some desperate and unpatriotic Nigerians” seeking greener pastures elsewhere of allowing “the name of the country to be brought to unpalatable commentary” through “self-contracted application for asylum,” he must have deliberately played the ostrich, apparently for political reasons. This must have blinded him from seeing the peculiar nature of Nigeria’s social crisis. Over the decades, at least in the last 26 years of the 4th Republic, both APC and PDP have literally socially and economically grounded this country. Many of the politicians in the ADC today are also complicit in this. Comfortable existence has become a mirage in Nigeria, yet politicians flaunt ill-gotten wealth. It is so bad that Nigerians desperately seek the citizenship of saner countries. Blaming Nigerians who seek bailouts from this socio-economic Gulag inflicted on them by Nigerian politicians will thus sound misplaced and self-centered.

The story of Egharevba in the hands of the Canadian judge is a replica of the aphorism of the “son” of an orange tree which invites multiple stoning and wood-beating from those who want to pluck it. If Nigeria had met his dreams of a place to live, I doubt if Egharevba would have openly disdained his country as this in the hands of a perceived racial judge and system. But come to think of it, this same “racist” Canada opens its arms wide to embrace thousands of Nigerians who possess legitimate papers!

In looking at the Canadian judge’s ruling, Nigeria should look inwards rather than outwards. First lesson to be learned is that, being a global village, not only is the rest of the world watching Nigeria with its binoculars, information about dissonances in our country are at the tip of the world’s fingers. Because they seek the consistent sanity of their countries, it is natural that countries of the world would want to guard against importation of social frictions into their territories. It was the lesson that same Canada was trying to pass across when it denied our Chief of Defence Staff visa last year.

Are Nigerian elections truly devoid of violence of the terrorism hue? The answer is No. As lawyers say, res ipsa loquitur; the facts speak for themselves. Our political parties have the notoriety of gangster violence pre, during and after elections. We shouldn’t be surprised if, very soon, a citizen is penalized, in a manner similar to Egharevba’s, over our country being where there are no consequences for negative actions. A country that reverses punishments and rules within few hours intervals, just because a street ally of the president is trapped in a criminal loop, cannot but receive the excoriation of a sane world.

Today, Nigeria is on the radar as a country where rule-breakers are garlanded. Rather than gripe and wail ceaselessly like a witch accused of killing her husband, we should rather embark on self-introspection because, in the words of Socrates, an unexamined life is not worth living. Another election season is coming. Will Canada and the world see a different Nigeria? If Fela were alive today, he probably would inflect his previous track and sing, “You be terrorist, I no be terrorist/Argument, argument, argue…” to explain this cacophony of denials between the APC, PDP and a Nigerian government which willingly leave the footpath and walk blindly in a maze of shrubs.

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OPINION: Jonathan’s Betrayal And Askaris In Nigerian Politics

Published

5 hours ago

September 7, 2025

Editor

By Festus Adedayo

Poor Goodluck Ebele Jonathan! Last Thursday, at the 70th birthday of his ex-Chief of Staff, Chief Mike Aiyegbeni Oghiadomhe, in Benin, Edo State, the former Nigerian president revealed the underbelly of Nigerian politics. At that event, Jonathan opened up a wound he had nursed since he lost the 2015 presidential election. It was his ordeals in the hands of political Askaris. “Politics in the Nigerian standard is about betrayals. I have witnessed a lot of betrayal during 2015 election,” he said.

Apart from politics, in liberation struggles, betrayers and betrayals are rife. During South Africa’s apartheid era, a number of former activists, or “comrades” who formed a bulwark of resistance against white minority rule, turned coat. A sedimentation of betrayals could be found in the Azanian People’s Liberation Army (APLA) and the African National Congress (ANC’s) military wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK). Either bought or forced through torture, “Comrades” of the struggle morphed into operatives for the Apartheid regime, squealing on their ex-comrades and acting as police agents. Many even participated in death squads against their former allies. They were then given the derogatory label of Askari. Initially a moniker for police in Swahili, ‘Askari’ stuck on Apartheid era turncoats.

My first opportunity of meeting Jonathan, the man who would be president of Nigeria, was in 2005 at Idah, (I guess) Kogi State. Ostensibly seeking ties to the apron strings of then PDP National Chairman, Dr. Ahmadu Ali, Jonathan had come to Idah for Ali’s child’s wedding ceremony. It was at the thick of the crisis of Diepreye Solomon Alamieyeseigha who was subsequently removed by the Bayelsa State House of Assembly.

The Jonathan I saw at Idah was as harmless and peaceful as the white pigeon, a mythical bird Yoruba call Adaba. The people even deified Adaba with an ancient tag which holds that if she perches on your rooftop, peace had made it its hibernation.

In Idah that day, Jonathan appeared to me as wearing the innocence of a child. He cut the visor of a man alien to the scorched-earth hearts of Nigerian politicians. Over the years however, I presumed Jonathan’s participation at the highest echelon of Nigerian politics had sufficiently scarred his heart. My assumption was predicated on an ancient saying of my people, to wit that, until you acquire the status of the elderly, you will constantly frolic with children who then stomp on you like one desecrating a sacred shrine, (B’á ò nínkàn àgbà, bí èwe l’àárí).

Last week however, Jonathan seemed to have come of age. He wore the full plumage of Nigerian politics. The truth is that, in Nigerian politics today, at least since the First Republic, there has been a confetti of betrayals. It has got to an epidemic level, so much that trust, tired of abuse, developed wings and flew out of Nigerian politics. Politicians laugh at anyone who expresses surprise at serial betrayals among them. The situation today is that men and women of honour take a flight from it.

In the Yoruba society and in the people’s everyday life, trust and betrayal are very fundamental as well. Virtually all of their relationships are woven round trust, for cohesion, peace and societal stability. Because experience showed them that deviants exist who break the cord of trust, covenants called Ìmùlè, literally meaning ‘drinking (from) the water of the earth’ and Májèmú, whose literal translation is, ‘drinking from a calabash bowl’, are used to suborn agreements. In both agreements of Ìmùlè and Májèmú made between parties, the earth – which Yoruba Apala bard, Ayinla Omowura, in a deployment of a Hausa epithet, called, ‘gidan kowa’ – home of all – is invoked to witness and ensure abidance.

When either of the parties reneges from these covenants, the Yoruba say, Ó dalè. The one who wrongs the other is then the Òdàlè, or in translation, “betrayer of the earth”. The consequence of betrayal in Yorubaland isn’t benign. Either said during the agreement process or not, the phrase, “whosoever betrays the earth will disappear with the earth” (enit’óbá dalè, á báilè lo” is a poignant reminder that silent as the earth, the witness, may be during agreements (verbal or non-communicated) the earth is a dangerous mystical personality which reserves punishment for violation of agreements made while standing on it – “ilè ògéré af’okó ye’rí, alápò ìkà”.

In social or political relations, some deviants have however had a history of undermining the concept of trust by attempting to put a lie to land’s mystical personality. On many occasions when they did that, they have been recipients of catastrophic comeuppances. While there are so many examples in individual social relations, political examples will aptly illustrate the trust deficit which Goodluck Jonathan said was as rare as the teeth of a hen in Nigerian politics.

Take for instance the experience of Chief Obafemi Awolowo. While the political successes of this Yoruba people’s recent ancestor have remained legendary till today, seldom is a dig done into the betrayals that dogged his political career. When he chose to vacate Western Nigeria to contest to be Nigeria’s Prime Minister, unable to secure the needed votes, one of his associates said this of him, as recorded by Awolowo himself: “I warned him when he was going to contest the Federal Elections – ‘Do not go to the Federal House, sit down like the Sardauna of Sokoto in the Northern Region, sit down like Dr. Azikiwe in the East.’ He would not listen, he wanted to become the Prime Minister. Now he has failed and since his failure the man has become insane. Since his failure, the man has become sick. So I appeal to the Prime Minister to put him in an asylum.” The man was one Chief E. O. Okunowo, representing Ijebu Central of the Western Region, at the First Republic Federal House of Representatives. You will find it on page 167 in Awolowo’s The travails of democracy and the rule of law (1987).

Awo’s closest political allies plotted his political ruin and death. They sent him to jail and gloated about the loss of his first son. Their plan was for him not to return from the Calabar prison. During the second republic, the stench of betrayal did not abate. Some of his closest allies had even begun angling to run for presidency in the proposed 1987 election.

Chief Ayo Rosiji, Awolowo’s main lieutenant and one of the founders of the Action Group, also gave him the Julius Caesar’s Brutus stab. This brilliant engineer and lawyer resigned his position as Publicity Secretary of the Action Group and ported to the opposition party. Rosijiit was who told his biographer, Australia-born historian, Dr. Nina Mba, in the biography, Man With Vision, of another betrayal that could have assumed Nigeria-wide shock. According to Mba, Rosiji told her that sometime in late 1958, Nigeria’s Prime Minister, Tafawa Balewa, was about to betray his political godfather, Ahmadu Bello, the Sardauna of Sokoto. Writes Mba, “According to Rosiji,… Balewa confided in him that he was fed up with being prime minister and of being harassed by the Sardauna, and that he was thinking of resigning.” Rosiji said he then attempted to convince Balewa to, rather than dump Bello and return to his teaching job as he threatened, join Awolowo’s Action Group. While Balewa thought that was an outlandish suggestion, Rosiji asked him to “think about it.”

S. L.Akintola is another. Till today, the reason for the schism between him and Awolowo remains mythic. While Chief Bola Ige, in his People, politics and politicians of Nigeria (1995) said the reason was trust deficit as Awolowo “(left) in charge of his base a deputy and Premier whom he did not quite trust and who was not his choice,” some scholars like Bill Dudley and EghosaOsaghae said it was ideological differences.

In Jonathan’s lamentation of betrayal in Nigerian politics, there is however the need to draw a line between the wickedness of godfatherism and self-liberation of godsons cloaked as betrayals. As I wrote in the piece, “His Excellency the godfather” (June 24, 2018) what is termed political betrayal in 4th Republic Nigerian politics is actually godfatherism gone sour. In 2003 Anambra State for instance, Chris Uba, the barely literate but stupendously wealthy businessman, exposed the destructive phenomenon. He had financed the election of Chris Ngige to be governor, pulling him by the nape of his trousers to the Okija shrine to swear by an oath of abidance. When it was time to start drawing from his “investment,” Ngige reneged, details of which became a global embarrassment to Nigerian politics.

MORE FROM THE AUTHOR:OPINION: You Be Terrorist, I No Be Terrorist!

After the 2007 handover to lackeys by the 1999 governors set, the cookies began to crumble. Some of the cookies were immediate while many took longer time. In Lagos’ Bola Tinubu and the trio of Raji Fashola, AkinwumiAmbode and JideSanwo-Olu, what many earlier saw was a matrimony worthy of an example. Tinubu continued to reap the dividends of his ‘investments’ in his handpicked successors. He determines the political barometer of Lagos politics and holds the lids of its finance. Not until the re-election campaign of Fashola and Ambode and Sanwo-Olu’s alleged cash gift to Tinubu’s political enemies did the cracks begin to be noticeable. Tinubu himself is said to parade a graveyard of those who betrayed him.

In many other states subsequently, the matrimony became a bedlam almost immediately. In Enugu, for instance, Sullivan Chime was still a governor-elect when he started to undo all that his mentor and godfather did. Orji Kalu suffered same fate in Abia, where his erstwhile Chief of Staff, T. A. Orji eventually emerged governor. Orji spent his years in government firing ballistic missiles at Kalu who had spent billions of state funds to skew the process in his favour. This ‘betrayal’ has since then been replicated in virtually all the states, with anointed godsons, having mutated to become godfathers themselves, attempting to foist their own godsons too as successors. In Anambra, Peter Obi, while shopping for a godson, walked into the supposedly sane banking hall as he searched for an urbane, corporate world executive. He got Willie Obiano, a mirthless character. Less than a year after, the strange, somber-looking Obiano transmuted from the gentleman who couldn’t hurt a fly into a stone-hearted political pall-bearer who strenuously attempted to preside over Obi’s political funeral. It was same story in Kano State where Umar Ganduje, erstwhile Rabiu Kwankwaso’s lickspittle, became a hydra who sought to swallow his ex-boss.

The list is endless. The most recent is the stench of the Nyesom Wike-SiminalayiFubara ‘betrayal’ claim in Rivers State. In all these however, a few have remained true to their predecessors, like the Kogi State governor. This is regardless of the predecessor’s betrayal of the people of his state.

The chestnut I’m pulling out of the fire today is that, from the Goodluck Jonathan betrayal story of last Thursday, you cannot get a morality tale in which the lines between heroes and villains are clearly drawn. Jonathan himself betrayed some political appendages when he went into bed with Tinubu in the 2015 elections. Tinubu the godfather also betrayed his party’s presidential candidate, Nuhu Ribadu, for Jonathan. Ribadu, as a result, won only Osun state for his ACN party. The morality of judging who is the betrayer between a godfather and godson becomes even dud when you ask whether the money used to finance those elections that birthed “the betrayers” were not stolen wealth of the people. In which case, the people’s prayer is that, like the “eni” – the dew that hangs on leaves by bush-part sidewalks in the morning – the amity of the godfather and godson must never last beyond sunrise.

The dilemma of this surfeit of betrayals is however that, unless Nigerian politics becomes an engagement of honesty, trust, truth and fidelity, decent people will continue to flee from it. In all the betrayals, the grand betrayal I see is the one against the Nigerian people whose lives have backtracked in 26 years of the 4th Republic.

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Strike: IPMAN National Distances Self From Western Zone’s Position

Published

6 hours ago

September 7, 2025

Editor

The National Leadership of the Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria (IPMAN) on Sunday distanced itself from a strike called by the Western Zone of the association.

The Western Zone had said it was backing the Petroleum Tanker Drivers’ opposition to Dangote acquiring trucks to transport its products to users.

The Western Zone in a press statement signed by its Chairman and Acting Secretary, Basorun Joseph Akanni and Mr. Adeleke Adeoye, said Dangote’s intention contravenes the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA), and urged its members to begin a strike on Monday.

But a statement by the National Ex-Officio, Douglas Iyike on behalf of the National Executive Council (NEC) of IPMAN, urged its members to disregard the strike.

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Sowore Vows Not To Delete anti-Tinubu Tweet

Published

8 hours ago

September 7, 2025

Editor

Human rights activist and presidential candidate of the African Action Congress in the 2023 elections, Omoyele Sowore, has vowed not to delete a tweet critical of President Bola Tinubu, despite a reported request from the Department of State Services to X, demanding its removal.

Sowore disclosed this in a post on his X account on Sunday morning, revealing that the social media platform had formally contacted him about the DSS request.

Sowore, a human rights activist, journalist, and publisher of Sahara Reporters, is known for his outspoken criticism of successive Nigerian governments and advocacy for good governance.

He contested the 2019 and 2023 presidential elections under the African Action Congress and has been at the forefront of several pro-democracy campaigns.

The PUNCH earlier reported that the DSS had written to X Corp., demanding the immediate takedown of Sowore’s post, claiming it disparaged Tinubu and posed a threat to national security.

Vowing not to play to the DSS’ gallery, he wrote, “This morning, X (formerly Twitter) officially contacted me about the despicable threat letter they received from the lawless DSS over my Tweet on Tinubu. One option I will NOT be taking is deleting that Tweet. Thank you, @X,” Sowore wrote.

He also shared the message sent to him by X, which confirmed that the platform had received a legal request from the Nigerian secret police concerning his post.

The message read, “Hello @YeleSowore. In the interest of transparency, we are writing to inform you that X has received a request from the Department of State Services regarding your X account, @YeleSowore, that claims the following content violates the law(s) of Nigeria. @YeleSowore, we have not taken any action on the reported content at this time as a result of this request.

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“As X strongly believes in defending and respecting the voice of our users, it is our policy to notify our users if we receive a legal request from an authorised entity (such as law enforcement or a government agency) to remove content from their account. We provide notice whether or not the user lives in the country where the request originated. This page provides more information: https://help.x.com/en/rules-and-policies/defending-and-respecting-our-users-voice.

“We understand that receiving this type of notice can be an unsettling experience. While X is not able to provide legal advice, we want you to have an opportunity to evaluate the request and, if you wish, take appropriate action to protect your interests.

“This may include seeking legal counsel and challenging the request in court, contacting relevant civil society organisations, voluntarily deleting the content (if applicable), or finding some other resolution. For more information on legal requests X receives from governments worldwide, please refer to this article on our Help Centre and our biannual Transparency Report: https://help.x.com/en/rules-and-policies/x-legal-faqs https://transparency.x.com.”

The PUNCH reports that Sowore has frequently accused the DSS and other government agencies of clamping down on dissent and free speech, insisting that his criticism of the Tinubu administration falls under constitutionally guaranteed rights.

The DSS, Nigeria’s domestic intelligence agency, has in the past been accused by rights groups of targeting dissenting voices and clamping down on free expression. Sowore himself was arrested by the DSS in 2019 over his “RevolutionNow” protest movement and was detained for several months despite court orders granting him bail.

RESA ALSO:JUST IN: DSS Writes X, Wants Sowore’s Account Deactivated Over Tweet Targeting Tinubu

X (formerly Twitter) has a stated policy of notifying users when it receives legal demands from governments requesting the takedown of content. The platform has also faced pressure in Nigeria before — most notably during the 2021 Twitter ban by the Federal Government, which accused the company of undermining national security after it deleted a tweet by then-President Muhammadu Buhari.

Sowore’s latest confrontation with the DSS highlights the ongoing tension between government authorities and citizens’ digital rights, particularly regarding criticism of public officials online.

His insistence on keeping the tweet online could spark renewed public debate on freedom of speech, government surveillance, and the limits of dissent in Nigeria’s democracy.