Criss-crossing the nation, activist, publisher and presidential-aspirant Omoyele Sowore has been described as the “voice of New Nigeria.” Among other things.
But this energetic, pro-democracy, corruption-revealing, government-challenging, marathon-running, up-and-coming New Jersey/Nigeria-living, insults and slings and arrows-dodging, married man and father told the Amsterdam News in an exclusive interview at our Harlem offices that he has a 10-point plan to make Nigeria the powerhouse nation it should be.
After three years in office, current president Muhammadu Buhari of the All Progressives Congress is running again—alongside 78 other candidates.
Sowore is unfazed.
“It is time for someone to run who has got a good head on their shoulders to rule Nigeria, and someone who is capable, has intellect,” he said.
Born in ilaje, Ondo State, in southwest Nigeria, Sowore studied geography and regional planning at the University of Lagos, and in New York he earned a master’s degree in public administration from Columbia University. He also taught Modern African History at the City University of New York and Post-Colonial African History at the New York School of the Art.
This academic and activist has picked as his VP the very experienced medical doctor Dr. Rabiu Ahmed Rufai (Jigawa State).
Although mainstream Nigerian news focuses on frontrunners of the All Progressives Congress and Peoples Democratic Party, Atiku Abubakar notwithstanding, few have garnered the grassroots groundswell of Sowore.
Yet, he and his brand-new African Action Congress has been excluded from the Jan. 19, 2019, presidential debate organized by the National Election Debate Group. They are currently in court fighting that decision.
Sowore has been a constant thorn in the side of many Nigerian administrations. For years, he has been known for being physically confronted by the Army and police. Since his days as a student at the University of Lagos, he has criticized government policy failure and corruption.
In Manhattan in 2006, Sowore started Sahara Reporters, the online investigative media outlet focusing on exposing corruption, political failings and abuses of power that negatively affect the people of Nigeria. People took notice of the outlet, which was able to bring otherwise unreported and under reported incidents and news to the public.
On Nigerian television, on social and in print media, Sowore is portrayed as a Fela Anikulapo Kuti-style renegade. Uncontainable enthusiasm for him is shown for him not only by thousands of everyday people who have come out to rallies in 32 (so far) of the 36 states in Nigeria but also in places such as Australia, Germany, and the U.K.
People relate to him.
“My father was a teacher,” he said. “He’s late now. I grew up in a polygamous home. Three wives. I was the first child of what was 20. And now there are 16 of us left, eight boys and six girls.”
Sometimes he had to take of the younger children by himself sometimes. On occasion, they were crying, sick and hungry.
“I didn’t know where to find them food, and our parents went to farm,” he said. “It was tough. So that’s the type of experience I had growing up. I grew up also in the Delta region of Nigeria, where most of the oil wealth comes from. So we have seen devastation done to the environment, and how the part of Nigeria that was supposedly laying the golden egg, was the poorest.”
This life experience influenced the man who wants to be president of Africa’s most populous country of almost 200 million.
“The dysfunction and the oppression—and the oil companies taking advantage of everybody … I don’t think Nigeria has a government,” he said. “We just have multinational corporations who have their prefects running the country on their behalf.”
Is the Neo-colonial legacy still in play?
“It is, and it is also commercial, and the nature of multinational business dealings that is what is more important,” he said. “It is not the people, but the product.”
He keeps hearing that he is such a young man taking on the career politicians of Nigeria.
“I don’t think I am young,” he said. “I am youthful! The same guys who are running Nigeria now started early in life. [Muhammadu] Buhari was president of Nigeria the first time in 1983 at the age of 42. Atiku [Abubakar] ran for president in 1992 at the age of 42. [Olusegun] Obasanjo, who was first president of Nigeria when he was in his 30s. [Yakubu] Gowon, who was the first military leader of Nigeria, was 32 years old when he was head of state. So, what they have done is to deprive all these young people of the opportunity to even have a chance at leadership. So by the time we woke up, we find out that we are already old, but they have not given us any chance to grow. If Buhari who was president in 1983, is still the president in 2018, where would I get the experience from? They never left.
“They want to make it look as if we are running a gerontocracy, for them power is social security. They are not accountable to anyone. That’s how they make their money. It’s how they secure their retirement.”
His beef and his motivation is that in the nation he loves, the basic infrastructure, hospitals and schools are not as good as they used to be, and job and food security are dire.
Sowore lived in Nigeria until age 27, and then came to the U.S. in 1999. So he has experienced and lived in what he calls the “the global West and the Global south,” and knows the benefits and pitfalls of both, having also been schooled in both places.
In New York he became known for disrupting the annual October Nigerian Independence Day celebration at the Consulate General of Nigeria.
“It came to the point where the NYPD knew me and they would say ‘What do you want this time around again?’” he said. “I couldn’t just stand the fact that these dignities would come in front of people every year to celebrate the independence that they—we—don’t have.”
He added, “Explain what is independence when you cannot control your resources? Your people are poor. The people who [pretend] to give you independence have not left your currency, have not left your country, they still control your resources. They still control the government. They dictate who becomes … who, where and when. I was really appalled that some dignitaries would leave Nigeria with the [litany of problems] and come and celebrate Nigerian independence in New York. It was hypocrisy. I knew it was also corruption. So I needed to shame them, and we only stopped when they stopped coming.”
It was compared with what is called the Fela effect, recognizing the similarities with the musical activist icon Fela Anikulapo Kuti.
Sowore’s defiance embolden people to protest and challenge the authorities. Recently, he drove past a situation in which armed soldiers were abusing citizens on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway.
“I stopped on the road and I rescued them from the army,” Sowore said. “I know how helpless I have been in the past. I have been a victim of torture. I have been beaten up by the Army and the police when I was an activist. Everyone thought I was crazy stopping in front of the Army. They could have shot me. The part most people didn’t see was they pointed a gun at me.”
Was he not afraid?
“For me I have gotten passed that point where I am afraid of anything,” he said, “I know what I signed up for. But some people have to make the sacrifice to [turn out] the place, and I happen to be privileged to gain the acceptance and support of people.”
He is the confrontational candidate, questioning why the country is not adequately dealing pollution, corruption, unemployment (23.1 percent), poverty and food insecurity. He has been a consistent combative critic since 1989.
“I have engaged in and fought against the system using different platforms,” he said. “I started as a student activist in 1989, and our problems in those days were both economic and political. We had the Structural Adjustment Program imposed upon Nigeria by the World Bank and the IMF, and so 30 years later, these guys are apologizing that they had the wrong economic prescription for Nigeria.”
He continued, “I was still a teenager when I did my first protest against the World Bank. We were beaten. We were jailed. We were expelled from the university. There was military rule. Gangsters in power. So I had to go to school with an armored tank pointed at my class. I was tortured by the police and army. So I suffered a lot before I came to the U.S. But eventually in 1999 that paid off. We had democracy. But we had the same problem with young democracy on the continent of Africa. The president who won the election in 1999 served two terms and didn’t want to leave. And using Sahara Reporters, we drove him out of power, and followed by that was a president who was sick and refused to disclose it, and we had to use Sahara Reporters to expose all the gimmicks and shenanigans and had to reveal that he was brain-dead when nobody knew that he was. Eventually that paid off and we had, for the first time in Nigeria, a minority person become president.”
He was still on a mission.
“My next engagement was to ensure that we had free and fair elections,” he said. “These are ways that democracy gets consolidated. If an election is free and it doesn’t elect good leaders … is it fair? That’s when I started thinking I should get involved.”
Videos of his arrival in Nigeria have gone viral, resulting in massed chanting crowds shutting down airports, and authorities responding with tear gas.
“I knew we needed to have an assessment tour,” he said.
At press time he had been to 32 of 36 states, including Kano, Abuja-FCT, Katsina, Delta, Akwa Iboh, Edo, Lagos, Ekiti, Kaduna, Sokoto, Enugu and Rivers State.
“I needed to be creative, and that is why engaging and interacting directly with people became necessary,” he said, “And that is what brought about the town hall meetings. It surprised everybody that I could have over 100 town hall meetings in eight months, and I traveled to 32 out of 36 states in such a short time, including places that had been deemed inaccessible and unsafe. I drove passed a place on the way to Plateau where the blood of victims of violence by herdsmen had not even dried. And we didn’t have security. We just had young people who were determined and followed us everywhere because they are ready for the change, and they said ‘Oh, you are the Sahara Reporters guy. You’ve always been fair about us and you’re not this ethnic jingoist.’”
He noted, “At the town hall meetings people asked questions. That’s how they formed the program. We couldn’t find a party which accommodated our big and lofty ideas … so we formed our own called the African Action Congress.
“We had a slogan which they loved: ‘Take It Back … which everyone was using as an empowerment tool, meaning whatever you lost with this old system you ‘Take It Back.’”
Sowore offers a manifesto called SPICER-HEAT, that is, security, power, infrastructure, economy, restructuring, health, education, agriculture and technology, and he explains in detail how to achieve success in all areas.
“We have 10 different programs that will pull Nigeria out of poverty and put it on the path of progress, peace and prosperity,” he said. “One is security, second is power, electricity, infrastructure, anti-corruption, economy, restructuring, health, education, agriculture and food security and tourism.”
As he views the Nigeria general elections Feb. 16, 2019, he said, “Nigeria is ripe for the revolution we are promising. … People should not vote for people who destroyed the past. They cannot promise you a better future.”