Ogbonnia was reacting to the arrest and detention of Omoyele Sowore, over the call for revolution.
DAILY POST earlier reported that Sowore, the presidential candidate of the African Action Congress, AAC in the February 2019 election, had called for a nationwide protest against what he described as a bad governance.
The protest he tagged “Revolution Now was planned to take place on Monday, August 5.
However, his arrest by personnel of Department of State Services, DSS, was announced in the early hours of Saturday.
A Federal High Court in Abuja on Thursday granted request filed by the Department of State Services (DSS), seeking an order to detain Mr Omoyele Sowore.
Reacting to the development in a piece he forwarded to DAILY POST on Thursday, Ogbonia said, “Most of us who held our noses to support President Muhammadu Buhari again in the last election had hoped for true change, if he was re-elected.
“Two months into the second tenure, while it may appear as if though Buhari is indeed incorrigible, it is definitively clear that he has forgotten why and how he became democratic president in the first place.
“If that were not the case, there is no way Buhari’s regime would be colluding with the courts to detain Omoyele Sowore, the presidential candidate of African Action Congress (AAC) in the last election without bail.
“Flash back to how we got here. The 16-year reign of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) was an embarrassing failure. Yet, the then ruling party was boasting that it would rule Nigeria for 60 uninterrupted years whether we “like it or not.”
“Elections had become mere charade. Though the country was in dire need of change, the change appeared impossible.
“Many prominent politicians aspired to wrestle power from the center during that era, but none was more consistent that General Muhammadu Buhari (rtd) who had always garnered massive votes from northern part of the country by tapping into a visceral anger provoked by gross misrule by the PDP under southern leaders.
“Yet, Buhari needed broader opposition to win the presidency. One of the patriots that answered that call is the publisher of the New York-based Sahara Reporters, Mr. Omoyele Sowore, a globally celebrated anti-corruption advocate, well-known for speaking truth to power.”
“Armed with an activist pedigree, Ivy League education, and a cult-like army of social media warriors, Sowore became a torn in the flesh of various PDP regimes. Together with his popular tabloid, Sowore keyed into the vanguard of the political revolution that made it possible for Buhari to make history by unseating an incumbent president in Nigeria.
“Even though they had ideological differences, Sowore saw Buhari’s anticorruption record as a common ground. More essentially, removing PDP from power was an ultimate compromise.”
