FG Charges Sowore For ‘Causing Insult, Enmity, Hatred’ Against Buhari

The Federal Government has finally charged the 2019 presidential candidate of the African Action Congress (AAC), Omoyele Sowore, for ‘conspiracy to commit treason’ and ‘causing insult, enmity, hatred and ill-will” against the person of President Muhammadu Buhari.

The government filed the suit on Thursday, September 19, 2019, at the Federal High Court in Abuja.

The Department of State Services (DSS) had arrested Sowore, who is the publisher of Sahara Reporters, on August 3 after he announced plans to stage what he called the “RevolutionNow” protest against insecurity and bad governance in the country.

The government had been under pressure to charge him to court after the DSS obtained a court to detain the publisher for 45 days after previously spending 5 days in their custody.

In the charges it filed against Sowore, the government also charged him with offences bordering on money laundering and cyber-stalking.

“You knowingly sent messages by means of press interview granted on ‘Arise Television’ network which you knew to be false for the purpose of causing insult, enmity, hatred and ill-will on the person of the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria,” the suit read.

In the suit, the government said Sowore in April 2019 “transferred by means of swift wire, the sum of $19,975 from his UBA account credited by City Bank, New York into Sahara Reporters Media Foundation GTB account with the aim of concealing or disguising the illicit origin of the funds”.

The government also claimed  that the publisher did a similar transaction for the sum of $16,975 in July 2019, which it said contradicts section 15 (1) of the Money Laundering Prohibition Act, 2011.

The government said Sowore’s planned #RevolutionNow protest amounted to a “Conspiracy to commit treasonable felony, contrary to Section 516 of the criminal code act, cap. C38 Laws of the Federation of Nigeria, 2004 and punishable under the same section of the act.”