Less than 100, 000 Nigerians bothered about Sowore’s plight ~ Presidency

Less than 100, 000 Nigerians are actually complaining about the re-arrest and continued detention of the duo of Omoyele Sowore and Olawale Bakare, the special adviser to the Nigerian president on media said on Monday.

Sowore, who is the convener of the #RevolutionNow protest and Bakare, are standing trial for treasonable felony charges at the Federal High Court, Abuja.

Femi Adesina, who appeared at the Sunrise Daily Programme aired by Channels Television, said millions of Nigerians are not bothered about the defendants’ treatments in the hands of the Department of State Services (DSS).

The presidency had also insisted on Sunday that Sowore’s antecedents and actions make him a person of interest to the secret police.

Another senior media aide to the president, Garba Shehu, said in a statement in Abuja that the DSS does not require President Muhammadu Buhari’s permission before carrying out its constitutional roles of preventing crisis and breach of public peace in the country.

And Adesina re-echoed his colleague’s sentiment on Monday, and told the Channels TV reporter that just a few Nigerians are unhappy with the re-arrest and continued detention Sowore and his co-defendant.

He also insisted that the Presidency stands by the DSS claim that the video that had gone viral on the internet did not truly reflect what actually transpired in court on that day.

He said: “I don’t particularly agree with you when you say a lot of Nigerians (are not happy) with Sowore’s re-arrest. You know that all this noise has been coming from less than 100,000 Nigerians. And the noise will be so loud that you think it is the whole country.

“It is a country of 198 million people. When just 100,000 are making noise in the social and traditional media, you would think the whole country is in an uproar. There are millions and millions of people who are not bothered.

“There are millions of people who know what the issues are. So, you cannot just seek the opinion of a local minority and then conclude that the country is in an uproar.”