27 January 2025
Rights activist and African Action Congress Party presidential candidate in the 2023 general election, Omoyele Sowore, on Monday, rejected a revised bail condition imposed by police operatives at the Force Intelligence Department, FID and preferred to remain in detention.
The Deputy Inspector General of Police (DIG) of the FID, Dasuki Galandachi, interrogated Sowore at the Intelligence Bureau over a video he posted alleging that the police on Airport Road in Lagos engaged in extortion.
Sowore, had in a viral video, disobeyed some police operatives who stopped his vehicle and asked him to park, but instead recorded and posted the video with the caption, “Operation Resist @PoliceNG extortion on Nigerian highways! #RevolutionNow”.
He announced in a post he shared on his official X account on Monday that Galandachi informed him that he would be granted bail.
Sowore said he was ordered to deposit his international passport and provide a level 17 civil servant as a guarantor for bail, but he declined the conditions and opted to remain in police detention.
Providing an update on his X handle, Sowore said that his bail condition had been reduced but he chose to decline it.
According to the activist: “The PoliceNG team assigned to my case has informed me that the DIG of FID, Dasuki Galandachi, has reevaluated my bail conditions, necessitating the production of a level 16 civil servant and the surrender of my international passport, a condition I have declined outright”.
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He stated that he refused to participate in any arrangement that undermines his personal reputation and integrity.
Sowore also posted the response of his lawyer, Femi Falana (SAN) to the request of the Nigeria Police.
“Dear Hon DIG, Thanks for reducing the bail condition of Mr. Omoyele Sowore to a surety of level 16, “However, I wish to point out that such bail condition has been declared illegal by the Court of Appeal in the case of Dasuki V. Director-General, S.S.S. [2020]10 NWLR PT.1731 PG. 136-143 where Adah JCA (now JSC) held as follows:
“Let me quickly say that of concern it is to us that as a court we must be ready and sensitive enough not to allow or do anything that will run foul of the law.
“The issue of involving civil servants or Public Officers in the Public Service of the Federation and the State in bail of people accused of criminal offences has never been the practice in Nigeria or any part of the civilized world.
“It was an oversight on our part to allow it in. Our Civil and Public Service Rules do not have any room for it. Expecting a Level 16 Servant to own property worth N100,000,000, will be running counter to the Public Service Rules and by extension the war against corruption.
“It is in this respect that I will act ex debito justitiae to ensure that the aspect of involving serving Public Servant below the status of Level 16 Officer in either the state or Public Service of the Federation or any of its agencies be removed and I so order.”
