There are moments in the life of the republic when the question before citizens is no longer whether they agree with the words of an accused person, but whether they are prepared to defend the conditions that permit those words to be spoken without fear of official reprisals. The present ordeal of Omoyele Sowore belongs squarely in that category. Sowore returned last week to Kuje Prison by order of the Federal High Court in Abuja, in proceedings arising from allegations stemming from his description of President Bola Tinubu as a criminal in social media publications, with the prosecution conducted by the State Security Service. Reports indicate that the court dismissed his application seeking the trial judge’s recusal and ordered his remand pending further proceedings.

Every constitutional democracy must preserve the distinction between personal injury and public injury. Once that distinction collapses, the coercive powers of the state become available to settle political discomfort and personal offence. That danger becomes more pronounced where criticisms of the President are transformed into matters pursued by an intelligence agency whose statutory importance ought to lie elsewhere.

One need not admire Sowore’s lifetime works to recognise the danger he faces. He has built a public reputation around provocation, agitation and confrontation. He has accused governments of bad faith and has repeatedly chosen language that attracts resistance rather than accommodation. Those characteristics are not crimes. They may irritate the powerful, offend the cautious, and exhaust those who prefer gentler politics, but democracy was never designed to protect agreeable speech alone. The disturbing feature of this episode is therefore not merely that a citizen who insulted the President faces prosecution, it is that the state appears willing to expend intelligence resources, prosecutorial energy and judicial time in pursuing a man over political speech while vast stretches of Nigeria continue to endure violent insecurity, abductions and the routine degradation of human life. 

The State Security Service is not an ordinary litigant. It is an agency maintained with public resources for matters touching national security and state protection. Citizens are entitled to ask whether this is the highest and best use of that mandate. Across forests and rural communities, families continue to wait for abducted relatives; communities remain exposed to organised violence, and criminal networks retain territorial confidence in places where the state ought to dominate. Against that backdrop, it is difficult to ignore the symbolism of directing the machinery of national security towards the dissident publisher and activist. 

That symbolism becomes even heavier because the alleged target of the offending words is not an anonymous citizen lacking means or access. President Tinubu occupies the most powerful political office in the country. The presidency commands institutional authority, public platforms and legal avenues available to every citizen. If the President believes his reputation has suffered actionable injury, why should the republic itself become the complainant in substance and appearance? Defamation has long been a private remedy in common-law traditions because reputation is ordinarily personal. Courts are available, counsel can be retained to file a writ on Tinubu’s behalf, evidence can be tested, and damages can be awarded. A private writ exists precisely to prevent the coercive power of the state from becoming indistinguishable from personal vindication.

History offers a clear example that should trouble those who celebrate this prosecution. During the military era, the late General Murtala Muhammed pursued his grievance against the late Professor Obarogie Ohonbamu through private legal process after allegations of corruption, rather than deploying state security institutions to prosecute dissent as an offence against official dignity. Whatever one thinks of military governments, that distinction carried a fundamental constitutional significance, recognising that rulers are not owners of the state. 

The courts, too, must exercise care when political prosecutions arrive before them. Judicial authority rests not simply on legal power but on public confidence that liberty is never treated casually. Where there is visible hostility between a judge and an accused person, restraint becomes essential because justice must preserve the appearance of fairness as carefully as it preserves fairness itself. Public disagreement with judicial conduct does not excuse contempt, and criticism from a defendant does not automatically require recusal. Equally, courts should resist actions that create the impression that their judicial authority is being used to answer political insolence. When a judge and a litigant appear to be in open conflict, any harsh or restrictive order made by the judge may be perceived by the public as personal, retaliatory, or influenced by that conflict, even if the order is legally justified.

Sowore’s request for recusal may succeed or fail according to the law. His language may be defended as political speech or rejected as defamatory expression. Those are legal assertions that can only be tested in adjudicatory proceedings. Prison, however, carries a political message that extends beyond the litigants in court. It tells every critic that a confrontation with power may end with confinement before conviction and that institutions designed to secure the republic may be redirected by power towards securing the dubious reputations of power holders. That should concern Nigerians across political divides, including those who cannot stand Sowore’s radical politics.

Today’s target is an activist. Tomorrow’s target may be a journalist, an academic, a lawyer, a labour activist, a cleric, a leading presidential candidate, or an ordinary citizen whose words offend power at the wrong moment. Democracy weakens when criticism becomes a criminal spectacle and institutions appear eager to protect officeholders from insult while citizens negotiate insecurity in the time of mass poverty. Sowore’s liberty should not depend on affection for his politics; it should rightly depend on the constitutional promise that power is restrained, prosecution is proportionate, and that the state does not convert disagreement into a security project.

That promise deserves stronger guardians than what Nigerians are presently witnessing. Is the hounding of Sowore by the State Security Service not a shame?

Abdul Mahmud, a human rights attorney in Abuja, writes weekly for The Gazette