On Sowere's Travails

If it is true as alleged by Mr Sowere, a Presidential Candidate of one of the Political Parties in Nigeria that his NIN, his voters card etc are being denied then such an action must be condemned. I am not surprised nor is this impunity new. Indeed I have suffered from similar situation so I should know. I owe it to this generation to explain further by drawing parallels to the continuing 'war' against the youth dating back to my time 1992.

I do understand what they want to do to him. To break his resolve. It is an outflow from an existing criminal policy against the youth.I suffered and still suffer perhaps many more times what Sowere is going through. Our crimes of course are similar.I was the youngest Presidential Aspirant of the defunct Social Democratic Party in 1992.

To stop me they haunded me in all corners. First they banned all aspirants just before primaries since I refused to step down.The fear was palpable that I could sweep the polls if allowed to go further.Then they devised a way to stop me rejoining by introducing the option A 4 which required primaries from ward level( An undemocratic practice for presidential Aspiration).

Then they empowered another young opponent to stop me at the primaries by decieving my people with bags of money not to join my line. The next thing was to legislate and Jack up age limit to 50 years so that I could not participate in future years. I wrote my memoirs published online in America. The next thing they bought over the company and closed down further publication of my book. Then they purchased "Helium" another online that published tens of my articles on the political process in Nigeria.

The idea was to bury the trail blazing political event in the minds of future Nigerians. The political persecution continued because I was literally banned from voting or participating in any event except the one that comes about without notice. When they saw I had turned 60 they started to unban the age restriction but then the next thing would be to surreptiously discourage aspirants above 60. Of course today's youthful aspirants are now critically disabled from building on my experience and so people like Sowere will have to experience in repeat what they should have avoided in their time.