Sowore’s march of folly: Reckless opportunism vs. justice in Nnamdi Kanu’s case, by Bukola Oyeniyi

Introduction

Omoyele Sowore’s latest crusade – a “historic” march to Nigeria’s Presidential Villa demanding the release of detained separatist leader Nnamdi Kanu – is as dangerous as it is audacious. With combative fervor, Sowore presents himself as a champion of liberty, calling on all and sundry to join his #FreeNnamdiKanuNow protest. But behind the grandstanding lies a reckless political opportunism that tramples on justice and the rule of law.

This essay is a scathing rebuttal of Sowore’s campaign, exposing how his demand to free Kanu without due process amounts to an unconscionable whitewashing of heinous crimes. It delves into Sowore’s political history of perpetual agitation and failed power-grabs, and confront the violent legacy of terror associated with Nnamdi Kanu’s IPOB (Indigenous People of Biafra) and its militant arm, the ESN (Eastern Security Network). From the hijacking of the #EndSARS protests in 2020 to the gruesome murders of police officers and ongoing terror in Nigeria’s Southeast, the facts are unequivocal: Kanu’s movement has left a trail of blood and destruction that cannot be excused for political expediency. Justice and rule of law must supersede mob demands; anything less would betray the countless victims of IPOB’s violence.

In no uncertain terms, Sowore’s actions are condemned here as a dangerous gambit that elevates personal and ethnic politics over national peace. I argue, justice must not only be done but be seen to be done – and that means Nnamdi Kanu facing trial for his alleged crimes, not being released as a political pawn. The moral stakes could not be higher. If Nigeria bends to Sowore’s pressure, it risks sending a chilling message: that terror and insurrection can be rewarded. This essay will demonstrate why such a path is utterly unacceptable, drawing parallels (where evidence supports) to the kind of hate-driven violence seen in history’s darkest chapters. Sowore may relish playing the revolutionary, but on this issue he is marching in folly – and we, as a nation, must not follow.

Sowore’s agitator playbook and political failures

Omoyele Sowore is no stranger to the politics of protest. For decades, he has fashioned himself as a perpetual dissident – from his days as a student union firebrand in the 1990s to his founding of the muckraking Sahara Reporters. Agitation is Sowore’s default setting, the “adrenalin that drives” him. To his limited credit, he has exposed corruption and stood against military dictators in the past.

However, Sowore’s activism has often been couched “in shades of populism and opportunism”. When democratic Nigeria emerged, he struggled to redefine himself beyond being an enfant terrible. Instead of building consensus or constructive politics, Sowore repeatedly reached for the most confrontational tactics to stay relevant.

After an unsuccessful bid in the 2019 presidential election – where he garnered a mere 33,953 votes (barely 0.12% of total votes) despite his online notoriety – Sowore infamously launched the “#RevolutionNow” protests. Just three months after that electoral drubbing by millions of Nigerians, he took to the streets in August 2019 calling for mass uprising against the newly re-elected government.

The authorities arrested him on charges of treason for allegedly attempting to incite an overthrow of the government, painting him (perhaps clumsily) as an “enemy of the state”. Sowore revelled in the drama; in fact, observers noted how the clumsy clampdown only burnished his radical credentials, turning him into a “hero” in some eyes and an embarrassment for the government. But Nigerians at large were unconvinced – Sowore remained a fringe figure.

In the 2023 presidential election, he fared even worse, finishing 16th out of 18 candidates with only about 14,608 votes nationwide. These abysmal electoral results speak volumes: Sowore has virtually no popular mandate. His repeated failures at the ballot box have seemingly only hardened his resolve to seek relevance through provocations rather than persuasion.

Sowore’s history is littered with controversy. He has been accused of staging attention-grabbing stunts and crying foul whenever outcomes don’t favor him. When confronted with his minuscule 2023 vote tally, he flatly rejected reality, insisting the figures were “concocted and manufactured” by a fraudulent system. It’s a familiar refrain – nothing is ever Sowore’s fault; it’s always a grand conspiracy against him and “the people.” This pattern of denial and deflection is precisely what we see again in his championing of Nnamdi Kanu.

Having failed to galvanize Nigerians on his own platform, Sowore is opportunistically latching onto the cause célèbre of Kanu’s detention to grab headlines. He frames it as a principled fight for human rights, but the cynicism is apparent. Even Reuben Abati, a veteran journalist who once sympathized with Sowore, noted that Sowore’s convictions are often “couched in… opportunism”. Now, by calling a march to “Aso Rock Villa” (the seat of presidential power) for Kanu’s freedom, Sowore is once again reaching for a megaphone, hoping to cast himself as a revolutionary savior for a cause that is fraught with violence and illegality.

This is not genuine solidarity or principled dissent – it is political theater. Sowore is effectively taunting the new administration and attempting to piggyback on separatist sentiment to regain relevance. Notably, he even challenged prominent Igbo politicians – like Peter Obi and Governor Charles Soludo – to “step up and join in person” for the march, as if to corner them into his spectacle.

Tellingly, most of those leaders ignored his calls; some, like Governors Soludo and Alex Otti, didn’t even take his phone calls. They likely recognize a reckless stunt when they see one. Yet Sowore soldiers on, now buoyed by the public support of former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, who naively calls Kanu’s continued detention “an open sore on our nation’s conscience”. Atiku’s argument – that Kanu should be released or given a swift trial – at least invokes rule of law.

But Sowore’s campaign, as framed in his own words, tilts heavily toward unconditional release as a political concession. He has blasted the government for “defying court orders” on Kanu, painting Kanu as some sort of innocent prisoner of conscience, while conveniently ignoring the mountain of atrocities associated with Kanu’s name. It is here that Sowore’s gambit crosses from mere rabble-rousing into morally repugnant territory.

To demand freedom for Nnamdi Kanu without acknowledging the grave crimes he’s accused of is to spit on the graves of those slain and maimed by IPOB/ESN’s terror. It is an affront to justice.

Kanu’s violent legacy: Crimes and atrocities under IPOB/ESN

Nnamdi Kanu, the self-proclaimed leader of IPOB and founder of the pirate Radio Biafra, is not detained on a whim or for peaceful advocacy. He is facing serious terrorism charges – and with good reason. Under his leadership and inspiration, IPOB and its armed wing ESN have waged a campaign of violence that has engulfed Nigeria’s Southeast in bloodshed and fear. Any honest discourse about Kanu must confront this violent legacy head-on. Yet Sowore’s campaign glosses over it entirely, so it falls on others to spell out the truth. Let us examine, point by point, some of the documented violent crimes committed under Kanu’s leadership:

Inciting mayhem during #EndSARS protests

The #EndSARS protests of October 2020 began as a peaceful youth-led movement against police brutality. But in Lagos, those protests ended in flames and chaos – a tragically hijacked revolt. While countless patriotic Nigerians were peacefully demanding justice, Nnamdi Kanu saw an opening to advance his own violent agenda. From his perch abroad, on October 20, 2020 – the very night of the infamous Lekki Toll Gate shooting – Kanu went on air via Radio Biafra and directed his followers to exploit the chaos. In a broadcast admitted as evidence in court, Kanu called on protesters to “cause mayhem in Lagos” and specifically ordered the assassination of then-Lagos strongman (now President) Bola Tinubu.

He labeled Tinubu “a traitor and an evil man that should be taught a lesson,” instructing his loyalists to kill him. Kanu’s recorded words leave no ambiguity: he openly urged mass violence, inciting followers to burn down Lagos. “Burn every Federal Government property in Lagos,” he commanded, listing targets: the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, the NITEL telecom building, and “all police stations”. This was a direct exhortation to arson and anarchy in Nigeria’s largest city at the height of a national crisis.

The results were as horrific as Kanu intended. By the next day, October 21, 2020, Lagos descended into an orgy of coordinated arson attacks. Mobs – later identified by officials as armed thugs who hijacked the protests – torched landmark institutions. The Television Continental (TVC) station, linked to Tinubu’s family, was firebombed and burned. The Nation newspaper’s offices (another Tinubu-linked property) were attacked. Dozens of government-owned buses at terminals were reduced to charred hulks. Over 17 police stations across Lagos were razed by fire during the mayhem. In one state alone, 25 police divisions were completely or partially burned, including stations at Orile, Ajah, Onipanu, and others. Police officers were lynched; their blood literally flowed on the streets they once patrolled. Nationally, at least 22 police personnel were murdered by rampaging thugs during the EndSARS riots, according to the Inspector-General of Police.

A staggering 205 police stations and security facilities across the country were torched in that period. Lagos, being the epicenter, bore a huge brunt of that destruction. It is no coincidence that the targets of the Lagos attacks mirrored Kanu’s hit list: media houses and assets associated with his enemies, police outposts symbolizing state authority, and infrastructure that would paralyze the city.

Though Kanu later denied “responsibility for violence” during EndSARS, the evidence says otherwise. The Nigerian government has explicitly accused him of inciting the Lagos unrest, pointing to tapes of his broadcasts. Even a Department of State Services (DSS) official testified under oath that Kanu’s rhetoric “incited the public” during EndSARS, fanning the flames of anarchy.

These are not empty allegations; they are now part of the court record in Kanu’s ongoing trial. When the Federal Government played Kanu’s own taped words in court – “Go and burn down Lagos”, essentially – Kanu reportedly confirmed making those broadcasts. This is the man Sowore wants released unconditionally: someone who allegedly seized on a legitimate protest against injustice and twisted it into an opportunity for ethno-political violence and revenge.

By drawing a moral parallel, one could argue that Kanu’s hate-fueled broadcasts during EndSARS have an echo of Rwanda’s dark propaganda radio – inciting followers to see certain people as traitors or less than human, marking them for death. On October 20, 2020, Kanu essentially created his own Mille Collines moment, urging mass arson and murder.

In Rwanda, such incitements led to genocide; in Nigeria, we narrowly avoided a larger bloodbath in Lagos, but paid dearly in lives and property lost. Justice demands accountability for those who stoked that carnage.

Coordinated attacks and assassinations under Kanu’s watch

The violence associated with IPOB was not confined to Lagos or to hijacked protests. Under Nnamdi Kanu’s watch, IPOB and ESN militants launched a wave of targeted attacks across the country, particularly in 2020–2021. Kanu’s rhetoric painted virtually any symbol of the Nigerian state or opponents to Biafra as fair game. Court evidence reveals he even placed a bounty of ₦100 million on the head of Governor Nyesom Wike of Rivers State, effectively soliciting an assassination. He told his followers that Wike “does not deserve to live” and should be killed for allegedly betraying the Igbo cause. Likewise, Kanu’s broadcasts urged violence against Governor Hope Uzodimma of Imo State, culminating in the burning of Uzodimma’s country home by armed attackers in 2021.

Perhaps most chillingly, the federal government presented evidence that Kanu’s broadcasts incited the murder of Ahmed Gulak, a prominent politician and former presidential adviser. Gulak was shot dead in May 2021 while on a visit to Imo State, dragged out of his vehicle and executed on the roadside. The circumstances of his assassination bore the hallmarks of IPOB’s modus operandi: he was a northern Muslim figure killed in the Southeast in a period when Kanu’s acolytes were aggressively targeting “outsiders” and government allies.

The Attorney General’s letter to the DSS, read in open court, explicitly linked Kanu’s agitation to Gulak’s killing. In other words, a man’s life was brutally snuffed out on the pavement because he belonged to the “wrong” camp in Kanu’s eyes – a crime with obvious ethnic and political undertones.

Another victim of IPOB’s terror campaign was security infrastructure at large. Between January and June 2021 – the peak of IPOB/ESN’s insurgency in the Southeast – armed militants launched at least ten attacks on public buildings including police stations and prisons. In one notorious incident in April 2021, an IPOB/ESN unit attacked the Owerri Correctional Prison and a police headquarters in Imo, freeing over 1,800 inmates and leaving destruction in their wake. The police accused IPOB of being behind that attack (IPOB cheekily denied it, as they deny every atrocity attributed to them).

But the pattern was clear: police outposts were being systematically targeted. In early 2021, a conflict in Orlu (Imo State) erupted into what can only be described as a low-level insurgency led by ESN militia, prompting the Nigerian Army to deploy helicopter gunships in a counter-offensive. This was a domestic security meltdown triggered by Kanu’s “military wing.” By the government’s count, by mid-2021 dozens of security operatives had been killed by IPOB/ESN attacks. In Imo State alone, 21 police officers lost their lives in just a three-month span to suspected IPOB attacks, as confirmed by the state Police Commissioner. These are staggering figures – each number a human being: a father, a mother, a son or daughter in uniform, slaughtered because Nnamdi Kanu’s mob deemed them “enemies.”

WOULD SOWORE STILL BE ADVOCATING FOR KANU’S RELEASE WITHOUT TRIAL IF THE PEOPLE WHOSE LIVES KANU AND HIS FOLLOWERS DESTROYED WERE HIS OWN FAMILY MEMBERS?

WOULD HE HOLD THE SAME POSITION IF THE VICTIMS WERE HIS FATHER, MOTHER, BROTHER, SISTER, SON, OR ANY OF HIS RELATIVES?

IT IS EASY TO ARGUE FOR “FREEDOM” WHEN THE PAIN IS BORNE BY OTHERS. BUT TRUE JUSTICE DEMANDS CONSISTENCY—THE WILLINGNESS TO STAND BY THE RULE OF LAW EVEN WHEN ONE’S OWN EMOTIONS OR POLITICAL INTERESTS ARE INVOLVED. NO ONE, HOWEVER POWERFUL OR POPULAR, SHOULD BE ABOVE ACCOUNTABILITY FOR HUMAN LIFE.

In many cases, these were not remote firefights; some were brazen assassinations. Police at checkpoints or in patrol vehicles were ambushed and gunned down. Nigerian Army soldiers, too, came under deadly attack; at least a handful were killed in separate incidents in 2021 and 2022 by separatist gunmen enforcing Kanu’s edicts.

The depravity of these attacks cannot be overstated. In one incident from November 2021, IPOB’s ESN militants abducted three police officers (two Inspectors and one Assistant Superintendent) who were on duty in Ebonyi State. What happened next belongs to the annals of horror. Two of the officers were executed in the most gruesome manner – they were beheaded, and their killers didn’t stop there. A video surfaced online showing young men, purported ESN members, jubilation over the severed heads of the policemen by a fire in a remote area. In the footage, the killers speak in Igbo, laughing and even cannibalizing the remains – a scene so barbaric and medieval that it shocked even a conflict-hardened nation.

They taunted the dead, saying one head looked like that of a “Fulani” man (profiling the officer by his features), and implying that this made his fate justified. This is pure, unadulterated evil – reminiscent of the ethnic mutilations in places like Rwanda or Liberia’s darkest days.

The Minister of Information, Lai Mohammed, confirmed the incident, labeling it “horrific, barbaric and cannibalistic” and “an unacceptable attack against the Nigerian state”. The culprits, he said, were acting under the command of an ESN leader named “Gentle” (how ironic) and one Chinonso Okafor (alias Temple), the ESN commander for Imo and Anambra states.

These officers were targeted specifically because they were security agents, and the government vowed to bring the killers to swift justice. It’s crucial to note that Lai Mohammed directly tied this atrocity to the debate on Kanu’s fate – questioning how anyone could call for a “political solution” (i.e., Kanu’s release) when such appalling murders of security personnel were ongoing.

He pointed out the hypocrisy of leaders lobbying for Kanu’s freedom while staying silent on the slaughter of policemen. Indeed, the Northern Elders Forum (NEF) at the time implored President Buhari not to even consider releasing Kanu, arguing there were “no safe or informed grounds” to do so given IPOB’s violent record.

The NEF warned that terminating Kanu’s trial would only reward extremism and encourage more bloodshed.
How prophetic those warnings sound now, as Sowore beats his chest and demands Kanu’s freedom! Let us be clear: when Sowore marches “peacefully” to Aso Rock calling Kanu a victim, he is implicitly exonerating monsters who roasted the heads of policemen.

He is willfully ignoring the anguished families of men like ASP Francis Idoko and Inspector Emmanuel Akubo (two of the beheaded officers, identified by name). Each time Sowore chants “Free Kanu,” he effectively spits on the graves of these officers and the memory of Ahmed Gulak and so many others cut down by IPOB’s campaign of terror.

Terror in the Southeast: Violent “Sit-at-Home” enforcement

Perhaps the longest-running nightmare unleashed by Kanu’s movement has been the so-called “sit-at-home” orders in the Southeast. Starting in August 2021, after Kanu’s arrest, IPOB declared every Monday a day of shutdown in the Igbo-speaking states to demand his release.

What might have remained a non-violent protest (staying at home) quickly turned into a regime of fear and blood, especially once Kanu’s direct control waned and more radical elements took over enforcement. A Finland-based acolyte, Simon Ekpa (alias “Samuel Ekpa”), emerged as a chief enforcer of these orders from abroad. Ekpa, styling himself the “Prime Minister” of a phantom Biafra government in exile, routinely uses online broadcasts to incite violence in Kanu’s name. In one chilling instance, Ekpa publicly claimed responsibility for the cold-blooded killing of four policemen at a checkpoint in Imo State on July 29, 2024.

That ambush occurred during one of the enforced sit-at-home “curfews,” and the attackers (whom Ekpa dubbed the “Biafra Liberation Army”) shot the officers dead in their vehicle, with only one driver barely escaping. Ekpa then went on X (Twitter) to brag about the massacre, gloating that his fighters “recovered weapons from the terrorists after neutralising them”, cynically referring to Nigerian police as “terrorists”. This Orwellian inversion – calling police officers “terrorists” – is standard fare for IPOB/ESN propagandists when justifying their killings. It is exactly the kind of dehumanizing rhetoric that paves the way for atrocities; after all, if the legitimate security forces are cast as foreign “terrorists,” who will mourn them? To IPOB’s hardcore, murdering a policeman or soldier is not a crime but a heroic act. The result: an unending stream of bloodshed. In mid-2023, for example, armed separatists enforcing a “Biafra Day” lockdown killed at least four Nigerian soldiers in cold blood. In another incident that year, gunmen enforcing Ekpa’s orders shot up a busy road in Imo, killing a young point-of-sale merchant and randomly wounding civilians simply to terrorize people into staying home.

The cumulative toll of this forced “stay-at-home” terror campaign is nothing short of catastrophic. An intelligence report by SBM Intelligence (a Nigerian consultancy) revealed that over 700 people have been killed in the Southeast in the past four years as a direct result of IPOB’s sit-at-home enforcement and related clashes. Let that sink in: seven hundred Nigerians – many of them innocent Igbo civilians – dead because of a policy ostensibly meant to show solidarity with Nnamdi Kanu. IPOB’s enforcement tactics include “arson, looting and targeted assassinations,” creating a climate of fear that has crippled the region’s economy and society.

Those who dare to step out on a Monday risk being shot, beaten, or having their businesses burned. In one case, a mechanic was killed in 2021 for simply going to work on a sit-at-home day. In another, a family in Abia State lost their ailing mother because they couldn’t transport her to the hospital on a lockdown day; the poor woman died as a result. Enforcers have burned vehicles with travelers inside as punishment for defying the order – a level of savagery that defies belief.

The economic damage is also massive: losses of over ₦7.6 trillion (nearly \$5 billion) in the region, per the SBM report cited above, as businesses remain shuttered in fear. Meanwhile, Simon Ekpa sits in Finland raising funds from gullible sympathizers – over \$100,000 in one month – to finance more violence back home. (Notably, Finnish authorities finally arrested and jailed Ekpa in 2023 for inciting terrorism, showing that even abroad his conduct was too egregious to ignore.)

What does Sowore have to say about this campaign of terror unleashed ostensibly in Kanu’s name? Nothing. Not a single word of condemnation for the murders of ordinary people in the Southeast, or the targeting of schoolchildren (schools have been attacked for holding exams on sit-at-home days), or the assassinations of local officials and traditional rulers that have occurred amid the chaos. By advocating Kanu’s release, Sowore effectively gives a free pass to all this brutality.

He utterly ignores that IPOB itself has been designated a terrorist organization under Nigerian law since 2017, due to its violent activities. As far as he’s concerned, Kanu is just a “prisoner of conscience” and the blood of 700 Nigerians is a footnote. This is moral bankruptcy. Justice – true justice – demands that the perpetrators and masterminds of these crimes be held accountable. That includes Nnamdi Kanu, whose cult of personality and directives spawned this terror.

Reckless opportunism vs. rule of law

Sowore’s push to “Free Nnamdi Kanu Now” is not some noble stand for civil liberties – it is a reckless affront to the rule of law, fueled by cynicism and opportunism. In Nigeria’s constitutional democracy, even the most heinous offenders are entitled to due process, and indeed Kanu has been in court facing charges. But Sowore isn’t really demanding a speedy trial or day in court for Kanu (that would be reasonable); he is essentially demanding political intervention to release Kanu unconditionally, bypassing the judicial process. This is the same Sowore who incessantly preaches about government obeying the rule of law.

The irony is glaring: by calling for Kanu’s extrajudicial release, Sowore is asking the government to subvert the legal process in favor of political expediency – the very definition of rule of law’s collapse. Even Atiku Abubakar, in supporting Sowore’s campaign, urged that Kanu be either released or given a fair trial. Of course, Kanu must get a fair trial – and indeed the wheels of justice, however slow, are turning. But to release him without trial (which is what an “unconditional release” means) would be to declare him above the law. It would mean no accountability for the grave allegations against him.
What message would that send? It would broadcast to every would-be insurgent or demagogue that if you create enough chaos – if your followers burn enough cities and kill enough people – the government will eventually kneel to negotiate and let you walk free. It is a strategy of blackmail by violence. Freeing Kanu under duress would validate it. Today it’s IPOB; tomorrow another militant group (be it ethnic secessionists elsewhere or religious extremists) will take note and say, “If we terrorize the public sufficiently, the government will yield.” Nigeria cannot afford to set such a dangerous precedent. The moral hazard is enormous. This is precisely why Northern Elders and other patriots opposed any political “solution” of releasing Kanu – they recognized it would do “more harm” by rewarding violence[39][40]. The only acceptable solution is a legal one: let Kanu have his day in open court, where evidence of his broadcasts and deeds are examined, where his lawyers can defend him, and if found guilty by a competent court, let him face the penalties prescribed by law. That is justice. That is also deterrence – it shows that no one is above the law, no matter how loud their propaganda or how fierce their mob.

Sowore, however, acts as if Kanu is some freedom fighter akin to Mandela. Let’s dispel that illusion right now. Mandela did not preach hatred or orchestrate the mass murder of civilians; Nnamdi Kanu did. Mandela spent 27 years in prison but emerged to preach reconciliation; if Kanu were freed today, based on his track record, he would likely go right back to spewing bigotry on Radio Biafra, possibly igniting an even more violent phase of the conflict. In fact, Kanu’s detention since 2021 is arguably the only thing that prevented a full-blown civil war in the Southeast. Sadly, even from detention his influence (through successors like Ekpa) has continued to wreak havoc, but one shudders to imagine how much worse it could be if he were out, commanding loyalty in person.

To release him unconditionally would also demoralize Nigeria’s security forces. How can any police officer or soldier put their life on the line to protect Nigerians when they see that the very instigator behind their colleagues’ killings is allowed to walk free as a political concession? It would be a slap in the face to those brave men and women who have died combating IPOB’s insurgency.

Let us confront a stark comparison: In 1994, Rwanda learned in the hardest way what happens when hate speech and extremist leaders go unchecked – radio broadcasts there labeled a whole ethnicity as “cockroaches” to be exterminated, leading to a genocide. While Nigeria’s situation is not Rwanda, the ethnic hate and violent incitement propagated by Kanu bear a disturbing resemblance. He has variously referred to Nigeria as a “zoo” and Nigerian leaders as “animals”; his followers in that beheading video literally justified cannibalism by saying one victim “looked Fulani” – as if that made him less human.

This is proto-genocidal language. If the law does not hold Kanu accountable, we risk normalizing such rhetoric and its attendant violence. The rule of law exists precisely to prevent societies from sliding into the abyss of revenge and ethnic bloodletting. By insisting on Kanu’s prosecution, Nigeria is asserting that we will not allow another Rwanda here; by contrast, Sowore’s agitprop is flirting with disaster, whether he realizes it or not.

One must also call out the sheer hypocrisy of Sowore’s stance. This is a man who has lambasted government officials for ignoring court orders and acting with impunity – yet here he is demanding the executive override judicial proceedings in Kanu’s case because it suits his political narrative. Sowore rightly fought for his own rights when he was detained unjustly in 2019 (indeed, courts ordered his release on bail, which the DSS initially ignored, causing outcry). But Sowore was an activist facing questionable charges for speech – Kanu is an individual facing weighty charges of terrorism, incitement to violence, and treason.

Equating the two is intellectually dishonest. Moreover, courts have not unequivocally freed Kanu as Sowore suggests. Yes, one appellate ruling in October 2022 discharged Kanu on a technical point (declaring his extraordinary rendition from Kenya illegal), but that did not acquit him of the charges. The government has appealed and also cited national security as a basis to keep him while new charges are filed. It’s a complex legal situation, but to thunder that Kanu is being held “in defiance of court orders” oversimplifies the matter.

Sowore’s interest isn’t really in the niceties of the law; it’s in stoking public sentiment. He calls Kanu’s detention “a stain on our belief in the rule of law”, ignoring that the real stain on the rule of law would be letting an accused terrorist evade judgment because of political pressure.

Conclusion: No peace without justice

Omoyele Sowore’s planned march on the Presidential Villa is not an act of patriotism – it is an affront to every Nigerian who believes in justice, peace, and the sanctity of human life. By championing Nnamdi Kanu’s unconditional release, Sowore aligns himself with reckless political opportunism over principled justice. He effectively seeks to erase the horror of what has happened under Kanu’s leadership: the murdered police officers (some beheaded and mutilated), the lynched and burned innocents, the billions in property destroyed, and the pervasive fear that haunts the Southeast. This essay has laid out the grisly evidence from court records, mainstream news, international reports – all of which converge on one truth: Nnamdi Kanu and his IPOB/ESN have wrought a campaign of terror that must be answered by the law. Anything less would be a travesty.

Justice and the rule of law must supersede political expediency. We cannot sacrifice justice on the altar of some short-sighted “peace deal” or to polish someone’s activist credentials. A nation that rewards terror with amnesty is sowing the seeds of anarchy. As the old adage goes, justice must not only be done, but must be seen to be done. The victims of IPOB’s violence – the slain, the maimed, the bereaved – deserve to see justice served transparently in a court of law. They deserve to see the Nigerian state assert that their lives mattered, that the crimes against them will not be swept aside because a loud activist demanded it.

Conversely, if Kanu truly believes he is innocent of ordering violence, the courtroom is where he can prove it. What are Sowore and Kanu afraid of? If the evidence of incitement and conspiracy is so “flimsy,” let it be tested in trial. But Sowore isn’t interested in that; he prefers the drama of mob pressure to the diligence of legal process.
In the final analysis, Sowore’s crusade is a dangerous distraction at best and a cynical incitement at worst.

Nigeria stands at a crossroads on this issue. We can either uphold the principle that no one who sheds blood or incites hatred can escape accountability, or we can capitulate to the noise and set a perilous precedent. This essay’s stance is unequivocal: Sowore is wrong. Releasing Nnamdi Kanu without due process would be an insult to justice, to national security, and to our collective moral conscience. It would hand a victory to violent separatism and deal a blow to every law-abiding citizen. Justice must prevail over opportunism. The blood of the fallen – from Lagos to Owerri to Enugu – cries out for redress, not for their killer’s freedom march.

Omoyele Sowore may fancy himself a revolutionary, but in this matter, he is on the wrong side of history and morality.

The true patriots are those insisting on accountability and the rule of law, not those bargaining it away. Let us reject Sowore’s folly and instead march in solidarity for the cause of justice – for a Nigeria where grievances are settled in courts and ballots, not by bullets and burnings. Only then can we begin to heal the wounds Kanu’s campaign has inflicted. Only then will justice be seen to be done, and only then can enduring peace be attained.

Bukola Adeyemi, Oyeniyi
Dept of History, Reynolds College
Missouri State University
Email: [email protected]