– Blank NEWS Online (NIGERIA) – By Austen AKHAGEME:

Citizen Omoyele Sowore was never my delight; not with the too many controversies and litigations sorrounding him, especially in his most fiery days, during the Goodluck Jonathan’s administration.

To me, he was the loudest trumpeter of the perceived woes of the Jonathan’s administration. From the accusations of financial misappropriation of public funds to the outright embezzlement of the same; from the accusation of executive filthiness and illiteracy of the erstwhile first Lady, to the alleged drunkenness of GEJ such that he could not stand up to address an international audience, Sowore and his Sahara Reporters were in their element, hauling stones at the Goodluck Jonathan’s regime all to the sweet grin, approval and comfort of the then Gen Mohammadu Buhari and his teeming supporters.

So, bringing any real or imagined enemy down to the advantage of Gen Buhari then, was a task that must be done. Thus, Omoyele Sowore became the towering predator while the taciturn President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan was the weepy victim.

And so, President Jonathan left the saddle glowingly, but with his tail tucked between his legs, headed for Otuoke, his country home to lick his wounds. Omoyele Sowore became disillusioned with the first tenure of his paymaster and decided to try his luck, floated a political party to contest against his preferred candidate of yore. He failed.

Then his benevolent gods gave him a good idea and a people’s delight. But he took the strategy of his malevolent gods and declared ‘a revolution’ against a state headed by an experienced coupist- turned politician. This was the ‘suicidal mission’ that became his greatest undoing.

The above story has become the reason why some folks erroneously thought Sowore should be allowed to carry his cross until he gets to Golgotha. And this is wrong. To say that Sowore deserves the ill human treatment meted to him by the DSS and the establishment against judicial pronouncements to the contrary is patriotism turned upside down.

The battle is no longer that of Sowore alone. To understand and accept this is to tow the lonely path of reason, justice, humanity, love and Patriotism in a time when the jackals hold sway. Sowore, just like Dino Melaye, may be ‘rascals’ of different shades and genre, but the shock treatment they received exposed the hidden shenanigans and the underbelly malfeasance of the state and her apparatuses.

The Nigerian Bar Association described it as “exhibition of primitivity, thuggery and insane passion for lawlessness” by the law enforcement agents who invaded the Holy precincts of Justice Ijeoma Ojukwu’s High Court in Abuja.

This outcry, as exemplified by the NBA, is what everyone should do and not to gloat at Sowore and his predicament while standing aloof to the ugly future steering at us in the face. Raising our collective voice against oppression and lawlessness is not in any way, a tacit support to Sowore’s action and that of his co-travellers. It is time to look beyond Omoyele Sowore to the looming doom and the deliberate emasculation of the inalienable rights of all Nigerians in all its ramification.

*Austen AKHAGEME is a columnist to Blank NEWS Online