Judiciary is an appendage of security agencies – Sowore

The publisher of Sahara Reporters and presidential candidate of the African Action Congress, Omoleye Sowore has knocked the judiciary for allowing itself to be used by the security agencies.

Sowore was reacting to the suspension of his trial till after the presidential election on January, 2027 which was announced by the Department of State Security, DSS, saying they shouldn’t have suspended trial but withdraw and apologise to him.

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Sowore was being prosecuted in Court for calling President Bola Ahmed Tinubu a ‘criminal.’

He said the judiciary has granted requests from the State Security Service to detain him on unsubstantiated allegation, recalling how he was sent to prison for five years that almost ruined his family.

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Speaking on Channels Television on Monday and monitored by CAPITAL POST in Abuja, Sowore said:

“Why in the first place did you have to do this to anyone, not even me? Because we’ve been here before. I was tried for treason in 2019, kept in Nigeria prison for five years.

“They did everything they can within that period. You know, my family was almost completely ruined, and then one day they came and said, We are no longer interested in the case. And when they started this, we also told them the same thing: this is not going to go anywhere. Why would you criminalize free speech in a country of 200 million, in a democracy that we fought for?

“But it’s also important to ask these questions. I’m talking to Nigerians now. It shows clearly what we have always stated about all these security agencies, that they have complete control over the judiciary. The judiciary is an appendage of the security agencies.

“You can’t just wake up in the morning and say, Oh, we’ve been trying Mr. Sowore for a year and a half now, seized his passport. They even took me to prison for missing one court trial for 11 days, where I was detained with over 47 persons that had tuberculosis at Kuje prison in this country. And then he said we want to suspend it for. What right have you to determine for the courts?”

Sowore said the same DSS that asked the Court to suspend his trial till after election rejected their earlier application notifying them of election season and he is a presidential candidate.

“And when we were in court, we made the same application several times. It’s election season, presidential election. They said we recognize that, but we must try and finish the trial before the elections or during the elections.

He said the DSS should withdraw the case against him and apologise for persecuting him.

“We don’t care. Now they have come back and said we want a long, adjournment. We are not seeking for an adjournment. We want you to apologize for doing this to us, and ensure that you compensate people who are wrongfully tried for committing no crime at all, and you must ensure that people who make these kind of decisions are displaced from the system.

“This is not the country that we fought for democracy for, a country where somebody can just wake up because the DG of DSS says, go and arrest somebody, detain them permanently, or disrupts their lives, and then realizes later that you want to suspend.

“You have no right to suspend the trial. You have already started. You should go and withdraw your charges. That is the only way out, and that is the only position left within our law books, their law books, to correct their anomaly.”

“But here they are trying to hide behind one finger. You know, they’re splitting hairs, because this was a disgraceful outing for them. But they don’t want to admit that what they did is wrong. That is the reason why they are looking for loopholes to build themselves out of the situation they found themselves, or they put themselves.”

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