A poet, Professor Niyi Osundare, on Wednesday, joined the call on the Federal Government to release the convener of revolutionnow, Omoyele Sowore, currently being detained over the protest.
He said Sowore was not the type of enemy that the Nigerian government needed at this point in the history of the country.
Osundare, in a note to President Muhammadu Buhari, which was made available to Tribune Online, said Sowore was a wrong prisoner being kept behind the bar.
According to him, the publisher of Sahara Reporters, was not an enemy that the Nigerian government should fight, adding that the real of enemies of the country were allowed to be working freely without harassment.
He said the federal government looked the other way and was dining with the people that are looting the treasury and squander the hopes of the nation.
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Osundare said it was unfortunate Sowore used his Sahara Reporters to contribute to the success of the 2015 election that brought the All Progressives Congress (APC) to power was a subject of attack by the same government.
He said: “No dreamer, no change agent, no genuine patriot has ever taken human progress to the next level without dwelling in this liminal space and its daunting complexities.
“No country that takes its future seriously; no country unafraid of truth, no country genuinely sincere about the war against decay and corruption will keep the likes of Sowore in prison. Our prison cells should be yearning for those kleptocrat and political scoundrels who pillage our nation’s treasury, who squander our hopes and keep Nigeria in that perpetual state of the Big-for-Nothing country.
“Omoyele Sowore is not the enemy the Nigerian government needs or should want to fight. The real enemies are out there; hunger and grinding poverty of the masses in the country of a few dubious billionaires, widespread insecurity of life and property, a creeping loss of faith in the very unity and corporate existence of the country, political leadership that does not know how and where to lead.
“This is why ‘revolution’ has suddenly become a scare word, and the current waver of that verbal red flag has been clamped down in custody. But let us remind ourselves of that common but no less significant axiom: you may imprison the man, but you can never imprison his ideas.”
He told Buhari that Sowore was a wrong prisoner being allowed to languish in detention and should, therefore, be released.
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