Presidential candidate for the African Action Congress (AAC), Omoyele Sowore, claims he is being persecuted for defending his rights and those of all Nigerians.
Sowore was interviewed on Friday on “The Morning Brief” on Channels Television.
After being granted N200 million in bail in a defamation lawsuit brought by the government against him for allegedly calling President Bola Tinubu a “criminal,” the activist was recently released from the Kuje detention facility.
“I’m not being tried for any definition or any bloodlines between free speech and criminal definition. I am being punished by people in power for standing up for my right and that of other people. It didn’t start today.
“They have a historical anger against me. It’s an issue between me and the ruling class in Nigeria that have been destroying the country. They said I have stood in their way of corruption and impunity.
ALSO READ: How Yemi Osinbajo Clashed With DSS Over Sowore’s Detention
“Our security agencies and their leaders as well as those in power are the people fighting me. Forget about what they said is the reason they arrested me.
“What was the reason they gave for seizing my NYSC certificate? That I discussed politics in 1996 when the military was in power. What was the reason I was expelled from the University of Lagos? It’s because I participated in protest,” Sowore said.
In September 2025, details on how former Vice President Prof. Yemi Osinbajo clashed with the Department of State Services (DSS) over its refusal to release Omoyele Sowore despite a subsisting court order have been released online.
The details are tucked inside a new book by veteran journalist and rights activist, Richard Akinnola, titled I Write What I Like, which documents political flashpoints between 2017 and 2025.
According to Akinnola, Osinbajo was deeply unsettled by the DSS’ open defiance of a subsisting court order directing Sowore’s release in 2019.
The book narrates how the then Vice President, himself a professor of law and former Attorney-General of Lagos State, felt it was unthinkable to sit in office. At the same time, the country’s secret service mocked judicial authority.
