By Abraham Ogbodo
Omoleye Sowore has a fairly robust history in what he does so well – activism. But his had been mainly a campus business, thriving within the precincts of the University of Lagos (Unilag) in Akoka, Lagos. Until the event of June 12, 1993 and the chain of events that subsequently followed, Sowore was, at best, the active President of Unilag’s Students Union Association. His performance on that beat was never evaluated for national rating. It was when Chief M.K.O Abiola was stopped from becoming President after winning the June 12, 1993, presidential election, that Sowore assumed a scale that attracted national attention. He became a key partner in the struggle for the realization of the June 12 mandate freely given to Chief Abiola by Nigerians, but aborted by the military under Gen. Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida.
Various reports have chronicled Sowore’s travails on account of his radical positions on national issues. He has his own idea of an ideal society. And this is not unusual. Every student leader or activist does. This was more so in the days when the old Soviet Union ran infinitely parallel to the West on the ideological highway. Marxism was integral part of campus culture. Every student had a way of imbibing lessons on communism from the Political Science Department of the university. The Communist Manifesto was a compulsory companion. Protest scholarship and leftist inclinations were very fashionable among students and teachers. Any conversation that did not promote the economics of Karl Marx over the economics of Adam Smith did not enjoy acclamation. Spartan lifestyle and a disposition that scorned wealth in both symbolism and substance provided an edge.
With students, the status quo is never fair enough at all times. The operating rules are always seen as enhancing the system against the collective will of the students. Every status quo is oppressive. Thus, the history of student activism is also the history of an unending battle to offset the status quo for good in the ivory towers and by extension, the larger society. Those who came before Sowore in Unilag and elsewhere, Like Labaran Maku, Dino Melaye and Godswill Akpabio, fought the same fight. Those who came after him and I guess, these should include, Michael Opeyemi Bamidele and Philip Shuibu, also did. And those who are there now are also fighting the fight to change the status quo. But the status quo both in the campuses and in bigger Nigeria has refused to shift. Almost in all cases, these fighters have a way of graduating from the campus reality to a new reality where victory is no longer certain and therefore ill-advised to continue with the struggle to offset the status quo.
I confess that, in content and character, Sowore didn’t appear different to me in the beginning. I have become used to a horde of circumstantial ideologues who shift with their real-life experiences. They change in colour and character. It is the reason, for instance, that Bamidele Opeyemi as a student leader and Bamidele Opeyemi as the Senate Majority Leader cannot converge peacefully in a personality. Also, Adams Oshiomhole as a comrade and soldiering labour leader and Adams Oshiomhole as a successful politician represent unbridgeable differentials in characterization.
When they held the short end of the stick, they decreed equity without recourse to the given circumstances. To student leaders and similar crusaders, other factors like competence, risk-taking and character should not count in the appropriation of advantages. They would say that all men (and women too) are born equal but would forget to add that at birth and through growth, the equal births are endowed differently by nature and nurture to manifest differently in the journey of life. They are not driven by conviction but a desire to gain a visibility that would position them for competition. They naturally push beyond student politics and activism into partisan politics in search for political positions that offer undue economic advantages. They lack the skills and temperament for personal drive. They must hold tight to politics and political appointments to survive. At this point, fighting to change the status quo assumes a personal meaning. It means free-loading of public resources to change status and escape from material poverty.
But here is a Sowore that has struggled to maintain a different outlook in spite of the flowing opportunities to join the fray. He may have created doubts somewhere along his rough journey. And I think I know when this happened to him. He had worked hard at revalidating June 12 which didn’t come through but facilitated the debut of the Fourth Republic on May 29, 1999. The same Sowore lost his essence and worked hard to bring about Buhari on May 29, 2015. It was an embarrassing display of ideological cross purposes. That is, after an unsuccessful battle to enthrone a democrat in 1993, Sowore, 22 years later, lent himself to a vicious propaganda machine that clinically marketed and sold an autocrat as a democrat to the nation. It was a contradiction that betrayed a conflicted and feeble mind that could be easily manipulated by opportunists and fortune hunters for their gains. It was a tactical misstep that almost led to the strategic collapse of Activist Sowore. The good news is that he has managed to remain on steady recovery since that misadventure.
I am here today to announce that the man has made good progress. He has done enough to be completely restituted. He has reconnected with his calling to defend the defenceless and offer a voice to the voiceless. I am impressed. Perhaps, Sowore had not read Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein when he decided to join in creating a ‘monster’ in 2015. If he had, he would have known that once created, the monster would burst boundaries and roam freely to create anguish. The containment of the beast would task the creativity of the creator who equally faces the fearful prospect of being consumed by it.
And that, precisely, was what happened to Sowore. His honeymoon with President Mohammadu Buhari and the APC did not last. He suddenly realized that he had been deceived into following a false prophet to damnation. He found himself at the dinner table with Lucifer without a long spoon. He chose to walk away. But Sowore did not walk away quietly because it is not in his character to exist alliances quietly. He made so much noise out of it that offset the serenity at the dining table. For doing that, he was made to be going in and coming out of detention almost at the same frequency that he went and came out of the bathroom to have his bath.
Since President Bola Ahmed Tinubu had promised to continue from where Buhari stopped, the expectation was for Sowore to remain properly guided. But like a life crab, he has refused to remain within wraps. His motivations are stronger than his fears. He has been back and plying the same trade that has only paid him trouble and so much of it. Everything considered, it is difficult to situate any personal benefit for Sowore in the risks he takes relentlessly to speak truth to power in Nigeria. He is neither seeking to be recognized nor cultivated. He already has recognition and means. Actually, he lives in the US and only works in Nigeria. His job is very risky. It entails doing battle with ill-trained armed security men who prioritise regime protection over the defence of the constitution and the citizenry. And he works for people who cannot even pay him a small salary to buy food and eat. He operates that risky beat free of charge. Some of his employers do not even appreciate the work he does for them. They abuse him on top of his travails.
Such is the sorrow of Sowore. He has however stayed the course to define his cause. And I want to propose that the man, at this point, deserves his flowers. He is not a pretender. He is real. What he has gone through in the hands of successive regimes since the dawn of this Republic is too far reaching to be called sports or attention seeking. Nobody undergoes such pains to prove a style. Agreed, at some point, his fellowship with con men had got his cause confused into a curse. We may attribute this to his desire to align with any voice that professes progressivism to fast track his dream of a better Nigeria. In other words, in a hurry to arrive at destination, Sowore had taken proclamation for manifestation and followed faithfully witches and wizards into coven.
Coven is not a tourist destination. It is not a place to visit and return to base to tell the experience just like that without deep scars. Initiation follows upon arrival in coven. Apparently, Sowore, knowing what was involved, refused to be initiated. By rules of engagement, that was an unspeakable affront that can only mitigated by absolute liquidation of the agent provocateur. This was Sowore’s dilemma. He signed a pact with the devil without inserting a vitiating clause. Everything he has suffered is the consequence of his refusal to discharge a sinister obligation arising from the pact. This is why the elders advise against having dinner with the devil even with a very long spoon.
Sowore cannot stand alone in this battle. He represents positivity. The people and angels shall work with him as he fights to live his mission.
