•Explains why he’s in politics
•Say ‘election winners in Nigeria will not win in their households
if elections were free and fair’
By Dickson Omobola
Presidential candidate of the African Action Congress, AAC, in the 2023 polls, Omoyele Sowore, in this monitored interview, spoke on his lawyer’s recent encounter with a judge in the court, where he was told to kneel down. Excerpts:
Starting with the case in court for which you are being tried for cybercrime. Give us an update, not necessarily speaking to the substance of the case, but tell us what transpired that may have caused the judge to ask your lead counsel in that case to kneel…
I was in the dark, and I must tell you that I was shocked. I’ve been in court a lot. I’ve been in court in the US, Nigeria and I’ve witnessed court trials online and on TV before. I’ve never seen what transpired on that day between that judge and our lead lawyer, a very vibrant, young lawyer, Abubakar Marshall, or Marshall Abubakar. He was making a point that he wanted to properly cross-examine the DSS witness, who apparently didn’t want to be helpful. He was brought in as the only witness, and he was asking questions, and we had a litany of questions and the judge kept interrupting him.
At a point, the judge first made a comment, an opinion that I thought could have even ended the case. He said, well, I just want to warn you, if you over-cross-examine this witness, you will lose your case. I’ve never heard that before, that proper cross-examination of a witness will make you lose a case.
So, Abubakar, being a very thorough and tenacious lawyer, kept cool at it and said, my lord, you have to give me the chance to complete my cross-examination, because it’s very key to this question. At one point, he got emotional and said, my lord, you all are planning in this kangaroo process to jail Sowore, and the future of this country relies on people like him. The judge took umbrage at that.
After a while, we had an argument over adjournment, and I stood up and spoke to the judge and said, my lord, you know that elections are coming in May, and you can’t just give us an abrupt adjournment. We need time to prepare for this trial. You have to take into consideration the political calendar of the country.
And he said, no, he doesn’t care. Abubakar stood and said, please, we need a date that gives us enough time to prepare for a no-case submission. And the judge insisted on April 13.
That was the point at which Abubakar spoke again to him and said, my lord, this is unfair, we need adequate time to prepare to respond, because we knew what they were up to. They want to quickly rush the case.
By the way, they had told us that they were bringing in Reno Omokri as a witness to the federal government, but suddenly they decided that they were not bringing any more witnesses. So, we needed time to prepare, and that was the point at which the judge said, well, I told you to stop this cross-examination, and you are not stopping. You are getting on my nerves.
You should come over here and kneel down in front of me. The lawyer didn’t even flinch. He said, my lord, asking me to come and kneel down before you for contempt of court is unknown to law.
And I think it dawned on the judge at that point that there were other lawyers who were pleading. You know, lawyers always say that they’re at peace with whatever a judge says, even when the judge is wrong. It’s their language. Then the judge, upon realising that he actually messed up rules and left the courtroom abruptly, had adjourned the case to protect him. That’s what happened.
Your activism has won you court cases. Your activism has produced results in the area of EndBadGovernance. We have seen you actively work for the people of Makoko, just to mention a few. But we are wondering why your activism has not produced results in the area of elections and what difference that would make. Are you putting more attention on activism in defending human rights and less in the area of your politicking?
No. The activism that you have always identified me with is such that the country can get better at the initial stages, but it got to the point where it is beyond just getting better. We can get better if we don’t get rid of certain practices, if we don’t get rid of certain political tendencies or political people. I am not saying physically getting rid of them. I am talking about their tendencies, their prebendalism, and the fact that they have nothing to offer. That’s why I was radically involved in seeking a revolution since 2019. When people talk about elections, I have stated that we participate in elections not because we know that elections by themselves can resolve Nigeria’s problem, but elections are opportunities for people’s eyes to open to the fact that maybe elections don’t work either, but because my activism started as a pro-democracy and human rights activist, so you would understand that I look higher on defence of human rights. But what is politics supposed to be about in general? Is it not supposed to defend human rights, social, economic, and physical security of the people and the integrity of your country, your culture, your language, and provide welfare for the people? That’s what politics is all about.
But when we talk about politics in Nigeria, people even forget the definition of politics, the textbook definition. We only think of politics in the realm of how to grab election ballot boxes, beat and kill people, and then sway people who did not win these elections. Until these elections really happen, democratic elections, you can’t have democratic development and you cannot have real people participate and win elections when you don’t organise elections the way they are supposed to be organised.
This is what I have persistently told those of you asking this question. There’s no difference between fighting for human rights and running for office. In fact, in running for office, you are there to advance administratively the rights of people to get what they need. That is what running for office ought to be. So our participation is not limited to just running for elections. I have stated this to many people in the media over time, that my involvement in politics is not for the election calendar.
It is for the greater good, a higher goal and an opportunity for Nigerians to see the difference between what I stand for and what their current situation is in the country. I can’t come here and keep lamenting that we didn’t win elections when you and I know that we are not organising elections as they should be organised. Last time, we talked about the electoral act, where we took one step forward and we are taking 10 steps backward.
How do you expect results to reflect the will of the people when you deny them the transparency to even see the results of the election in which they participated as soon as it should have been done, which is the global best practice right now?
How can the AAC transit from advocacy on the streets and activism to actively getting into elective office as soon as possible so that we’ll get some formidable opposition?
Well, we cannot predict that because you have to understand that you can’t jump the hoop of electoral malfeasance. You have to discuss it. It is important that we discuss how people get elected into office. When you see us on the streets, we are the ones advancing the argument and advocacy and even the struggle for transparent elections because we know that the moment we have transparent elections, the moment people’s votes count in this country, so many of these people that you parade as political strategists to win elections cannot even win the elections in their own households. That is why we are on the street. We are not on the street for the sake of it.
We are on the street to ensure that we expand the democratic space wide enough so that people’s votes can count. When we get to the point where your votes count, then you can come back and challenge us if we don’t win elections. But as long as you don’t organise elections or you rig elections before they happen or you don’t allow public participation in the democratic process, you kill people, you grab ballots, you bribe judges with houses so that they can determine for you election results that you didn’t win, then we cannot have this argument and be fair to anybody.
The argument has to start with having democratic elections, transparent elections, free and fair elections, credible elections. Nobody is asking for perfect elections, but we are asking for elections, not selections.
The post Sowore bemoans day judge told lawyer to ‘kneel down’ in court appeared first on Vanguard News.
