Omoyele Sowore had a voice that could wake the dead—or at least, that’s what people said. He was the man with fire in his eyes, the journalist who took on presidents and made them bleed ink on the pages of Sahara Reporters. He exposed the mighty, mocked the corrupt, and wrapped himself in the flag of rebellion.
But in politics, noise isn’t always truth. Sometimes it’s cover.
The first whispers came after 2015. A few insiders swore Sowore’s fire was never random—it had a direction. Every flame he lit seemed to burn only one camp: Jonathan’s. The ashes of that presidency cleared the road for Bola Tinubu’s men to stroll into Aso Rock, clean shoes and all.
“Coincidence,” Sowore’s followers said. “Strategy,” his critics whispered back.
By 2023, the pattern had turned into a habit. Every time the opposition found rhythm, Sowore found his microphone. He’d tear into Peter Obi one day, Atiku Abubakar the next, like a man allergic to any challenger but oddly merciful toward the seat of power itself.
“Funny thing about rebels,” a political fixer told me once over pepper soup and cheap whisky. “Some of them are paid to scream so the real thieves can sleep.”
Then came the protests—those street performances of anger and courage. The police showed up, cuffs ready, cameras rolling. There’d be noise, tension, a few broken signs, then nothing. No blood, no movement, no change. Just Sowore, walking free again, smiling for the lenses.
They called it activism. The old hands in the capital called it rehearsal.
When the DSS picked him up in 2025, everyone held their breath. But the drama fizzled faster than a wet matchstick. A few statements, a few trending hashtags, and the storm vanished. The man was back online before his followers finished shouting “Free Sowore!”
That’s when the penny dropped for many. Maybe he wasn’t a prisoner of the state. Maybe he was its most valuable employee.
He went after David Hundeyin next—another loud one, another distraction. While the two men traded punches online, the economy gasped for air and the real culprits smiled from their convoys.
In the corridors of Lagos and Abuja, they say every government needs its own rebel. Someone who makes enough trouble to look dangerous but never enough to cause damage. Sowore, some believe, plays that role perfectly.
Maybe he believes his own script. Maybe he doesn’t. But in this country, truth isn’t what’s spoken—it’s what’s protected. And the man who shouts “revolution” too often might just be making sure it never comes.
Linus Anagboso
( D-BIG PEN)
