A human rights activist, Femi Falana (SAN), has vowed that the first person he would call as witness if Omoyele Sowore is charged to court, would be “some people in government”.
According to him, one particular person would be his first witness because he called for revolution in 2011.
Though Falana, who is Sowore’s lawyer, did not directly mention Buhari’s name as the person that called for revolution in 2011, but facts show that he did so.
As the presidential candidate of the defunct Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), Buhari had in a statement by his then spokesman, Yinka Odumakin said:
“The Egyptian pro-democracy campaigners defied all odds to achieve their set goal of terminating the 30-year old grip on power by Mubarak. Their tenacity has again confirmed the truism that no force on earth can stop a people determined,”
Apparently in recognition of that, Falana, who spoke on Tuesday at an event organised by the Chartered Institute of Bankers of Nigeria (CIBN), consider that it would be a stupid thing for a Buhari government to charge Sowore to court on the argument he called for revolution.
He said, “I do hope that the government will not be stupid to charge Sowore. In fairness to them (Department of State Security), they gave him a telephone to phone me. Of course I knew they were monitoring the phone, and I told him I hope they won’t charge you, because if they do, some of the people in government will be our witnesses.
“You know why? One of them, I won’t mention his name. In 2011, he asked Nigerians to learn from the Egyptian revolution and be ready for a revolution in Nigeria. So, he will be my first witness.
“The late Chief Gani Fawehinmi and four other people were charged with treasonable felony by the Ibrahim Babangida junta. I was one of them. We were detained in Kuje prison for two months. We were taken to the court, and what was the offence? I think we went beyond Sowore. We posted thousands of posters across the country, that Babangida must go. That was the treasonable felony.”
Sowore, a journalist and presidential candidate of African Action Congress (AAC), was arrested last Saturday by the DSS ahead of his August 5 planned RevolutionNow protest.
He has remained in the custody of the DSS.
