Omoyele Sowore

There is also a story when the police invaded my village in 1981. They carried out an atrocity simply because there was a protest in the market and what they did to the village, decimating the lives of young people and those who didn’t even participate changed my life forever. I was 10 years old and I said if I grow up I will fight oppression to the last. When I got to the secondary school, my first protest was to protest against the principal, to protest against flogging of girls.

He was a sadistic principal, I think he derived a sexual pleasure in that. He had two boys carry the girls, and he flogged them and their under wears would expose, and we had to write an article about it in the press club. I even pasted it and somebody saw me doing it.

What was your offence then?

The school had a mango tree, the mangoes were ripe but we were not allowed to eat them, the school will harvest them and sell them. I shook the mango tree until all the mango fruit fell, students came and ate the mango that afternoon as a way of protesting. They flogged me in the assembly, breaking my pen. I was supposed to write exams that day.

Then, when I got to the university, of course I was lucky to see Falana come to UNILAG to come and address us about the World Bank thing. Before then, I had participated in a protest, but when I finally met with Femi Falana, I just said, where had he been, this is the kind of message my brain should have been fitted with. I started right from there.