Rights activist and AAC presidential candidate Omoyele Sowore has insisted that he will not pay the police any bail for an offence he did not commit, just as officers desperately scoured the internet to pinpoint the exact location and coordinates where the alleged crime occurred.

Mr Sowore honoured the police invitation on Monday alongside his lawyers Marshall Abubakar and Deji Adeyanju, where he was questioned about footage showing uniformed officers asking his driver to park on the road to the airport.

In the footage captured by Mr Sowore, officers randomly stopped his vehicle and asked the activist’s driver to park. Mr Sowore claimed the random stop was done in a manner akin to how most Nigerian police officers often extort airport-bound vehicle owners and those arriving in the country.

Mr Sowore posted the video on X and captioned it: “Operation Resist @PoliceNG extortion on Nigerian highways! #RevolutionNow”

The video angered senior police officers who accused the presidential candidate of trying to stoke unrest and insurrection. This led to an invitation to question him, the same one Mr Sowore honoured on Monday flanked by his attorneys.

But it appears the police want to detain him and have already asked him to pay bail. Mr Sowore declined and insisted that he was not guilty of any offence. 

“They’re on Google trying to find the location of the alleged crime,” Mr Sowore told Peoples Gazette Monday afternoon. “I committed no crime, and I am not going to accept any bail when I didn’t do anything wrong.”

The presidential candidate is demanding an unconditional release, insisting on his innocence. 

“I want an unconditional release,” he said.

Mr Adeyanju argued that the police, the plaintiff, should have referred the case to another agency to show their non-bias for his client, who has had several run-ins with security agencies for criticising the government and organising protests.

“The police should have referred this case to another agency since they’re involved in the matter to show impartiality and neutrality,” Mr Adeyanju told The Gazette on Monday. “The police must show that they have no malice and release him on self-recognisance.”

Mr Sowore, publisher of Sahara Reporters newspaper, said he would choose detention over agreeing to conditions that would “compromise my innocence, dignity, and integrity.” 

“I have also advised the DIG that in accepting ‘bail’, I will not agree to conditions that compromise my innocence, dignity, and integrity. If such unreasonable conditions are imposed, I will choose to remain in detention until I am charged to court. Even then, I know that there is no crime defined or to be investigated; it is just the impunity that has become the hallmark of the  @PoliceNG hierarchy,” he wrote on X Monday afternoon. 

Force spokesperson Olumuyiwa Adejobi did not immediately return comments on whether Mr Sowore would be released unconditionally or charged to court since he is refusing bail.

Mr Sowore, a harsh critic of former President Muhammadu Buhari’s regime, was imprisoned by the State Security Service for five months in 2019 for sponsoring a protest to bemoan the cost-of-living crisis in his tenure.

The Buhari regime mounted a case of treason charges against Mr Sowore and seized his passport for five years, which kept him from visiting his family based in the U.S.

President Bola Tinubu’s administration withdrew all charges against Mr Sowore in February 2024 without compensation.