"Puluma is coming!" some little Apoi children scream with excitement as they run.
"Puluma is coming?" some wide-eyed women in the town want to be sure. Those who have let their wrappers fall below their breasts quickly gird them up.
"Puluma, eh?" an old man, encircled by a group of geriatrics, spritely abandons the game of draft he is playing as his opponent looks on bemused.
"Puluma is coming!" continues to reverberate into many of the Apoi communities and reaches a crescendo when it gets to Kiribo (Sowore's hometown in Ondo State).
For more than 60 days, the President Muhammadu Buhari regime has kept the pro-democracy activist, Omoyele 'Puluma' Sowore, in a detention facility run by its brutal secret police, the Department of State Services (DSS).
Why?
On August 3, some Gestapo-styled DSS operatives arrested Sowore in Lagos ahead of a planned nationwide #RevolutionNow protest. The pro-democracy activist later described his arrest as an “abduction” during an interrogation session with the security operatives.
“I was abducted in the middle of the night,” Sowore was recorded to have told the DSS, according to a transcript of his interrogation exclusively obtained by SaharaReporters.
For almost 48 hours after his arrest, the Nigerian secret police kept mum on the reason Sowore forcibly taken away from his apartment to an undisclosed location.
He was later transferred to the DSS headquarters in the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, where he has remained to date.
The DSS approached an Abuja federal high court with an ex parte order to detain Sowore for 90 days in other to investigate allegations of
terrorism against him.
Justice Taiwo Taiwo granted the order on August 8 but permitted the DSS to hold the Nigerian activist who is based in the United States of America only for 45 days.
A day before the expiration of the 45 days, the DSS filed a seven-count charge bordering on treason, cyberstalking and money laundering against the human rights advocate. However, the Nigerian secret police failed to produce him in court for arraignment.
Justice Taiwo, who had granted the security agency the detention order, subsequently ordered that Sowore be released into the custody of his lawyer, Femi Falana. The court also gave, as a condition of his bail, that Sowore's passport must be deposited with the court's registrar.
The judge's order was not obeyed by the DSS and Sowore continues to languish in detention.
Yesterday (September 30), the security agency again arraigned Sowore in court. This time before Justice Ijeoma Ojukwu. The case was adjourned until October 4 when a fresh bail application for Soworewould be heard.
What are the specific charges against Sowore?
The Charges
The Nigerian government arraigned Sowore alongside Olawale Bakare (also called Mandate) on a seven-count count charge.
The first two counts of the charges claimed that Sowore and Bakare, alongside others, said to be at large, allegedly conspired and committed a "treasonable felony" by staging a protest.
While the offence of conspiracy to commit a treasonable felony is said to be contrary to section 516 of the Criminal Code Act, Cap, C38 Laws of the Federation of Nigeria (2004), the actual allegation of treasonable felony contravenes Section 41(c) of the same Act.
In count three, the government accused Sowore, who is also the publisher of SaharaReporters, of cyberstalking President Buhari.
“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 charge partly stated.
The last four counts accused Sowore of money laundering, an offence that contrary to section 15(1) of the Money Laundering (Prohibition) Act, 2011. Instances of wired transferred from Sowore’s bank accounts were listed. The government said the transfers were for the purpose “of concealing or disguising the illicit origin of the funds”.
The Planned Revolution
A couple of months after Buhari was sworn in as Nigeria's democratically-elected president for a second time, Sowore became the arrowhead of a planned nationwide protest organised by CORE.
The protest, slated for August 5, 2019, was tagged, #RevelotionNow.
According to the organizers, the protest was to demand better governance and high standards of living for all Nigerians.
“There is no socio-political justice in this country for anyone,” Sowore had said in Lagos (Nigeria's commercial capital).
“The series of matches and rallies will continue until we have the Nigeria of our dreams. There is no respect for our dignity as a people and for you to get back that dignity, do as they are doing in Hong Kong; do as they are doing in Algeria...”
In another instance, Sowore called Nigerians to come out in their numbers to demand good leadership and improved quality of living.
Those calls are being (mis) interpreted by the Nigerian government as a treasonable felony.
Malachy Ugwummadu, the Chairman of the Committee for Defence of Human Rights (CDHR), said a call for protest is not criminal neither can it be tagged "treasonable".
“Nobody plans a bloody revolution and comes out to advertise it and give the date of the protest. Revolution in the sense that we cannot begin to accept the status quo as it is. We must find a way of alerting the political calculation in the country, in a manner tha retrieves power and hand over power to the people such that their rights to dignity as guaranteed by the constitution are restored,” Ugwummadu told SaharaReporters.
Is “insulting” Buhari a criminal offence?
Monday Ubani, a former Vice-President of the Nigerian Bar Association, said it is “unknown” to any law for the government to charge citizens for criticizing its policies and demanding good governance, adding that such is “alien to the Nigerian constitution”.
Ubani said: “If you feel your character has been assassinated by the speech or writing of that citizen, what you do is to seek redress in a civil court and that is in case of libel and not to charge them with sedition.”
Also, Yinka Odumakin, the spokesman for the Pan-Yoruba group, Afenifere, said it was unheard of that a citizen would be accused of criminal wrongdoing over criticism of the government.
“We were in this country in 2014 and 2015 when daily attacks were launched against one president, who at every campaign rally of the APC he and his wife were abused regularly.
Nobody was arrested or charged to court for it. APC’s rally was like a festival of insults against (former) President Jonathan and his wife,” said Odumakin.
What does the money laundering act say?
Section 15(1) of the Money Laundering (Prohibition) Act, 2011, under which the Nigerian government is charging Sowore for money laundering, clarifies the instances wherein a person would be held to have committed the act.
According to the section, the diverted or transferred sum must be proceeds of unlawful activities.
The section holds that: “Any person who- (a) converts or transfers resources or properties derived directly from: “(i) illicit traffic in narcotic drugs and psychotropic substances, or “(ii) participation in an organized criminal group and racketeering, terrorism, terrorist financing, trafficking in human beings and migrants smuggling, tax evasion, sexual exploitation, illicit arms trafficking in stolen and other goods, bribery and corruption, counterfeiting currency, counterfeiting and piracy of products, environmental crimes, murder, grievous bodily injury, kidnapping, illegal restraints and hostage-taking, robbery or theft, smuggling, extortion, forgery, piracy, insider trading and market manipulation and any other criminal act specified in this Act or any other legislation in Nigeria relating to money laundering, illegal bunkering, illegal mining, with the aim of either concealing or disguising the illicit origin of the resources or property or aiding any person involved to evade the illegal consequences of his action”.
The onus probandi is on the Nigerian government to prove their allegations beyond a reasonable doubt.
However, those close to the Presidency said the purpose of arresting and detaining Sowore -even charging him to court -is not to prove that he is a criminal.
"They are committed to giving him the Sambo Dasuki (Dasuki was a former national security adviser during the Jonathan regime) treatment. They'll keep him out of circulation as long as is possible."
In fact, a spokesman for the president, Femi Adesina, said it would be "too early" after more than 60 days of illegal detention for Buhari to "intervene" in Sowore's illegal detention.
While lies and propaganda are regarded as sprinters, truth is a marathoner: only time will tell what the outcome of the legal drama will be.
In the distance, one can hear little children and their parents still talking about Puluma. The subdued excitement in their voices.
They know, one day, Puluma is coming again.
Sowore too believes.
Shortly before DSS operatives viciously bundled him out of the courtroom on Monday, the rights activist said: "I am happy people are staying strong...I have no doubt this will come to an end in favour of the Nigerian people."
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