This archive report was first published on 15 December 2019.
December 15, 2019
Opposition figure Omoyele Sowore was re-arrested in a dramatic courtroom brawl just a day after being freed by a court order, sparking international condemnation and accusations of an authoritarian drift towards dictatorship against President Muhammadu Buhari.
The re-arrest of Sowore, a vocal critic of Buhari's government, has sparked widespread outrage and concern over the increasing detention of journalists and opposition figures since Buhari took office in 2015.
According to eyewitnesses, armed men, some wearing hoods, forced their way into the high court in Abuja, where Sowore was on trial, and tried to drag him away. A crowd of supporters rushed to his defence, and in the ensuing chaos, the chief judge had to be evacuated by a side door.
"It was DSS agents who tried to re-arrest my client," Sowore's lawyer, Femi Falana, told AFP. "Once they had promised to release him after questioning, he had driven Sowore to the DSS offices himself," he added.
More than a week later, Sowore is still in custody. In a press release, DSS spokesman Peter Afunanya blamed Sowore's supporters for the courtroom chaos, claiming that Sowore had promised "to sow anarchy in the country" at a meeting the day before.
However, Sowore's lawyer, Adeyinka Olumide-Fusika, said that nobody had told Sowore why he was being held, and that his health was a concern after almost five months in solitary detention.
"He looked his ebullient self," Olumide-Fusika told AFP after visiting his client.
The re-arrest of Sowore has sparked a backlash from the country's media, with newspapers such as The Punch denouncing the "autocratic" drift of the president.
"From now on, we will refer to Buhari using the rank he held as a military dictator in the 80s, Major General, and refer to his administration as a regime, until they purge themselves of their insufferable contempt for the rule of law," The Punch announced in a scathing editorial.
International condemnation has also poured in, with US Democratic senator Cory Booker denouncing the re-arrest as "a shocking affront to the country's rule of law" and calling on Nigeria to cease its attacks on freedom of expression.
