You Have No Right To Suspend The Trial You Started – Sowore Blasts DSS

The presidential candidate of the African Action Congress (AAC), Omoyele Sowore, has demanded an apology from the Department of State Services (DSS).

Naija News reports that Sowore made the demand while reacting to the adjournment of the cybercrime case against him until after the 2027 presidential election.

Speaking during an appearance on Channels Television, he demanded an apology and the withdrawal of the case against him.

“We were already in court, and when we were in court, we made the same application several times. This is election season, presidential time, they said, ‘We recognise that, but we must try to finish the trial before the elections or during elections; we don’t care.

“Now they have come back and said, ‘We want a long adjournment.’ We are not seeking an adjournment. We want you [DSS] to apologise for doing this to us and to show that you compensate people who are wrongfully tried for committing no crime at all. And you must ensure that people who make these kinds of decisions are displaced from the system,” the human rights activist said.

Speaking further, Sowore said, “This is not the country that we fought for democracy for, a country where somebody can just wake up because he’s the DG of DSS, go arrest somebody, detain them permanently or disrupt their lives, and then realise that you want to suspend [the case].

“You have no right to suspend the trial you have already started. You should go and withdraw your charges.

“That’s the only way out, and that is the only provision left within our law books, their law books, to correct their anomaly.”

He accused security agencies of controlling “the judiciary; the judiciary is an appendage of the security.”

“Can you just wake up in the morning and say, ‘Oh, we’ve been trying Mr. Sowore for a year and a half now, seized his passport’? They even took me to prison for missing one court trial, detained me for 11 days, where I was kept with over 47 persons. I had to experience prison in this country, and then they say, ‘We want to suspend it.’ What right have you to determine things for the court?

“Well, you know, when an injustice of that scale is done to anybody, what you look at and react immediately to is, ‘Why in the first place did you have to do this to anyone, not even me?’ Because we’ve been here before. I was charged with treason in 2019 and kept in Nigeria for five years. They did everything they could. Within that period, you know, my family was almost completely ruined.”