Nigeria’s Presidency has clarified that the Presidential Candidate of the African Action Congress (AAC) in the February 2019 elections, Omoyele Sowore was detained in Nigeria not on the basis of the fact that he is a journalist.
Reacting to some international news outlets which have mistakenly been describing his detention and release today, December 24 as that of a journalist, the presidency insisted that Muhammadu Buhari administration has never, since coming into office in 2015, detained a journalist, never seized copies of newspapers or shut down a medium of information.
A statement by the senior special assistant to the President of on media and publicity, Malam Garba Shehu, said that Sowore called for a revolution to overthrow the democratically elected government of Nigeria, adding that he did so on television and from a privileged position as the owner of a widely read digital newspaper run from the United States of America.
“He founded an organisation, Revolution Now, to launch, in their own words, “Days of Rage”, with the publicised purpose of fomenting mass civil unrest and the elected administration’s overthrow. No government will allow anybody to openly call for destabilization in the country and do nothing.
“The government believes strictly in observing the rule of law but must safeguard public security and will not allow trouble makers to incite the public and cause a breakdown of law and order.”
