Sowore and Tinubu Nigeria’s president Governor Seyi Makinde South Africans versus Africans for African universities Nigeria’s human capital Nigeria’s insecurity Nigeria’s war against Iran’s war trials of Nasir El Rufai
Before his latest court appearance on 6th July, Omoyele Sowore spent about two weeks in custody, following the order of a Federal High Court in Abuja remanding him at Kuje prison on 22 June 2026. His remand followed the revocation of his bail on 16 June, after he reportedly failed to appear for trial and the court issued a bench warrant for his arrest. The case itself dates back to social media posts in which Sowore allegedly referred to President Bola Tinubu as “a criminal” on his social media accounts, prompting the Department of State Services to bring cybercrime-related charges against him. Sowore opened his defence on 6th July 2026, but reports indicate that the prosecution is continuing to press the court to keep him in custody.
There is something deeply troubling about this, whatever one thinks of Sowore’s politics, his methods, his temperament, or the language he deploys in public engagement. Sowore is not a stranger to controversy. He has built a political and activist career on confrontation and relentless opposition to power. That is precisely why a democratic state must be careful in how it responds to him. The measure of a government’s democratic maturity is not how it treats praise-singers, courtiers and friendly critics. It is how it treats those who appear to irritate it, embarrass it, mock it, defy it, and sometimes say things that the establishment finds deeply offensive.
I am not a lawyer, and I do not pretend to settle the technical legal questions now before the court. If President Tinubu, or anyone else, believes that Sowore defamed him, there are civil remedies available in a constitutional democracy. Reputation matters. Falsehood can wound. Public speech should carry responsibility. But there is a moral and democratic gulf between seeking civil redress for reputational injury and deploying the coercive machinery of the state to criminalise insult, remand a citizen, and turn political speech into a matter of national security theatre. Even where the state believes it has a case, wisdom sometimes requires restraint. Law is not merely about what power can do. It is also about what a mature state should refuse to do.
That is why this matter is such bad optics for the federal government. Nigeria is bleeding from graver wounds. Across the country, kidnappers, bandits and armed gangs continue to ravage communities, abduct citizens, destroy livelihoods and mock the authority of the state. Families are negotiating with criminals while governments issue statements. Villages are emptied while security agencies find time and energy to pursue an activist over harsh words directed at the president. This is where state priority becomes a moral question. A government that appears more provoked by insult than by insecurity sends a dangerous message about the hierarchy of its anxieties. In a republic, the dignity of the president cannot be more sacred than the liberty of the citizen, nor should the bruised ego of power outrank the broken bodies of the people.
But it is also where optics becomes more than optics. In a democracy, the appearance of repression can itself become a political injury. A government may insist that it is merely enforcing the law. Its lawyers may cite statutes, bail conditions, court orders and procedural rules. But citizens are not fools. They understand the difference between a state calmly protecting public order and a state deploying its coercive machinery to punish irritation. When the full weight of the security establishment is brought to bear on an activist because of words directed at the president, the public message is difficult to miss: power has thin skin, and the citizen’s voice must travel under threat.
That message is especially dangerous in Nigeria because many of the current occupants of power draw part of their democratic legitimacy from the pro-democracy struggles of the military era. They belonged, or were connected, to a generation that confronted dictatorship, resisted annulment, defended June 12, challenged Abacha, endured exile, arrests, surveillance, intimidation and brutality. Some of their comrades paid with their lives for the simple offence of saying no to military rule. That history ought to impose a special burden of restraint on today’s civilian government. Those who once fought jackboots should be the last to reproduce, in civilian dress, the instincts of the barracks.
The danger is not merely that Sowore is being prosecuted. The deeper danger is that the state appears unable to distinguish between reputational injury and criminal threat, between insult and subversion, between political provocation and national insecurity. If a president believes he has been defamed, the civil courts exist. Let him test his claim there, as a citizen among citizens, however exalted his office. But when criticism is pushed into the criminal arena, and when incarceration becomes part of the drama, the state begins to look less like the guardian of order and more like the armed custodian of presidential pride.
That is a grave injury to democratic legitimacy. Authority is the legal power to command. Legitimacy is the moral permission citizens grant that command. A democratic government can survive criticism, mockery and even insult; it cannot easily survive the perception that it fears them. The moment citizens begin to see little difference between the reflexes of military government and the reflexes of a civilian administration, democracy loses something precious. It loses the moral distance that separates elected authority from naked force. It loses the claim that power now belongs to the people rather than merely sitting over them.
History is full of warnings for democratic governments that mistake legal authority for moral immunity. Indira Gandhi did not lose moral authority merely because she declared an Emergency. She lost it because Indians saw civil liberties suspended, opposition figures jailed, the press censored, and the state turned into an instrument of political survival. Jacob Zuma’s South Africa offers a different but related warning. He did not fall merely because of one scandal, but because the public came to see a democratic government captured by private interests, public institutions bent to personal survival, and the moral authority of the liberation movement squandered in full view.
The lesson is clear: democratic power begins to decay when it uses the tools of the state to protect itself from embarrassment, criticism, and accountability. A government may win a legal argument and still lose the moral confidence of the people. It may secure a remand order and still damage the republic. It may punish a critic and still expose its own fear. The tragedy of power is that it often believes repression shows strength, when in truth it reveals weakness.
This is why the Sowore case is bigger than Sowore. It is a test of statecraft. Nigeria is facing existential security threats: kidnappers, bandits, armed gangs and terrorists are ravaging communities, humiliating the state and turning ordinary life into a daily negotiation with fear. In that context, the spectacle of government investing energy and resources in criminalising harsh words against the president is not only disturbing; it is a profound misreading of national priority. A government that wants to be taken seriously must show that it is more offended by the captivity of citizens than by the insolence of critics. That is the minimum moral requirement of democratic power.
That is the poverty of power: when a government facing kidnappers, bandits, hunger, fear and despair finds its deepest irritation in the insolence of a citizen. A state confident in its legitimacy does not need to imprison every harsh voice. It answers falsehood with truth, insult with restraint, and criticism with performance. The Nigerian government must recover that discipline. For in a democracy, power is never proved by how firmly it can silence the citizen. It is proved by how wisely it can listen, how humbly it can learn, and how faithfully it can turn the restless voice of the people into a resource for national renewal.
