Omoyele Sowore

What were you persecuted for?

In that instance I was working as a TV producer doing a show for corpers on Adamawa TV. When Ken Saro Wiwa was killed in November 1995, I did a show saying that the government murdered Ken Saro Wiwa and they immediately came for me.

What about your days as a student union activist in UNILAG?

When I was at the University of Lagos I was the leader of, not only the university of Lagos students, I was also a vibrant leader of NANS, and I was part of the Campaign for Democracy that fought several military regimes to a standstill, providing the prodemocracy groups an army of student activists for major street protests, sometimes, thousands upon thousands of students. I was also managing the youth student alliances particularly in Lagos. You can go back and recall that I was the person that gave the eulogy during Abiola’s burial because I mobilized forces that prevented the federal government delegation from attending Abiola’s burial. They couldn’t come, they were at the airport, they couldn’t go near the burial place of Abiola. We prevented it from happening, so this has been the trajectory.

In a particular instance when I was expelled, Rear Admiral Mike Akhigbe was the second in command of the military dictator then, Abubakar Abdusalami, and he was a Law student at the University of Lagos, who had not been attending classes. So we protested against him that he had not been attending classes, he doesn’t deserve to graduate and when I was expelled from the university, I was not allowed to write my exams, students were mobilized to his class.

I studied Geography and planning but Akhigbe was studying evening Law, we went to the Law faculty, and we walked into his class and said sir you have not been attending classes, and now we have been expelled, even though we attend classes but you have not been attending classes, and you are allowed to write your exams. Of course, we heard that the school authorities were providing them help to pass his exam. So we say, we go to classes, we study, you don’t study, you don’t attend classes but you are passing, now this is over and protesting students approached him and tore his exam papers.

What about the protest at NUGA in 1998?

There was this Nigeria University Games at the University of Lagos and Akhigbe again was the guest of honour and we paralysed the game. I was now invited as the leader of the students protesters to come and address the students so that they can let the games hold since Akhigbe and Buba Marwa promised to intervene. Akhigbe called me and said, tell your boys to leave, come and see me in Abuja. I said No sir, I am not coming to see you in Abuja, we have to address this issue right here, there has to be a commitment to absorb all these students who were politically victimized. During the course of my speech, I mentioned that when I was the students union President, Akhigbe was a student under us, and he can tell you my history and he left his chair to come and wrestle the microphone from me and in the process he nearly fell, so his guards rushed me on the stage.

There were about twenty guns pointed at me at once, as I was on the floor and then they dragged me, as they were dragging me away from the sports center, the students were surging. Lagos Police Commissioner, Abubakar Tsav, was leading me out of the stadium, he was in mufti, there was one girl Yemisi Ilesanmi from OAU, she is in London now, she said no, you can’t take him away and she was taunting them and they slapped her and she must have slapped Tsav as a result at the stadium and there was badlam.

That was how they dragged us out of the place, they had to forcefully take us to the Special Anti Robbery Squad at the police HQ in Ikeja, we were detained with armed robbers that night and I eventually spent two weeks at SCID Panti.

What happened that the magistrate dismissed the case?

And when we were brought before a magistrate court, the judge did not know that the Nigerian penal code does not allow you to arrest and prosecute somebody if the commotion is in the stadium. When Ebun Adegboruwa who was my lawyer from Gani Fahanmi chambers said, my lord you are trying a case that does not exist and the judge said what do you mean, what are you trying them for? Conduct likely to disturb public peace. The law says my lord, that you cannot disturb public peace in a stadium because the stadium is already in a state of commotion. You cannot do that in a theatre. And the judge said, oh, can I see you counsel and that was the end of the case. It was after that, that I left Nigeria to go to the US.

Please permit this one. Many people will like to describe you as an “ipata” (rascally man), what actually drives you apart from those things you have mentioned? Is radicalism part of your ancestry…

I don’t know of any notable activist globally who has never been described as unruly or rascally. Truth is that you can’t fight opression without a disruptive rascality.

You know, when people were taken across the Atlantic as slaves, there are histories of slaves revolting in the middle of the sea saying instead of becoming a slave, we will die here, and they jumped voluntarily into the sea. There is a history in Mississippi of the first internal revolt of slaves in the US was carried out by the Igbos and there was a lake where they had to cross and they sank the boat in the middle between those two islands, saying we are not going to take this. Africans have always resisted oppression, so it doesn’t need to be in the ancestral line.