The Yoruba Summit Group, the umbrella body for all Yoruba groups, has described the continued detention of the publisher of Sahara Reporters, Omoyele Sowore, as an act of lawlessness and a dangerous culture of tyranny.
The group made this known in a statement signed by Chief Gboyega Adejumo and Dr Olufemi Adegoke, its publicity secretary and chairman, Steering Committee, respectively and made available on Sunday.
The group noted that a competent court of jurisdiction had recently ordered the release of Sowore on bail, adding the that the disobedience of the court order was consistent with the emerging culture of arbitrariness and subversion of the rule of law by the Federal Government.
It further said the continued detention of Sowore was akin to what happened to a former National Security Adviser (NSA), Colonel Sambo Dasuki and Shiite leader, Sheik Ibrahim El Zakzaky, who has remained in detention in defiance of various court orders affecting their releases.
“This is a dangerous affront to constitutional order and contemptuous defiance of the rule of law. Sowore has been charged with some offences. He should be allowed to have his day in court, without any abridgement of his constitutional right to liberty.
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“We note, with regret, that unlawful curtailment of personal liberties, as a weapon of repression, has been the handy tactics of the President Muhammadu Buhari administration to suppress legitimate dissent.
“This constitutes an existential danger to the polity and systematic erosion of democratic rights. We condemn this dangerous trend and direct that Omoyele Sowore should be released forthwith and have his liberty restored to answer the spurious charges preferred against him.
“We of the Yoruba Summit Group, have been able to identify six occasions in which the Buhari administration has disobeyed critical orders from the judiciary, an arm of the three which makes up the government in a democracy in which no arm is superior to the other.
“We watch as full-blown tyranny is unleashed on our nation as if we never left the obnoxious military rules of 1983 up to the jackboot rule of the late General Sani Abacha days… And we are saddened.
“We are also saddled with the task of ensuring the adherence to democratic tendencies, lest the inevitable combustion that follows each and every tyrannical rule, here and elsewhere, happens also to this fifth republic,” the group said in the statement.
The group also condemned the comment recently made the Attorney General and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, on the BBC over the continued detention of Sowore and the charged of treasonable offences made against him.
“The whole world watched as the BBC asked the Attorney General some salient questions and it is disturbing to watch him prevaricate, unable to respond to questions about his employer’s previous use of the word “Revolution”, his employer’s previous use of force to come into power,” the group said.
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