Opinion: I Won’t Cry for Sowore by Badaiki Osighe Nabobcy

I don’t expect that Sowore is not prepared to be in detention, so I’m not too worried about his loss of freedom. That goes with the territory. Being detained should be a minor inconvenience in a democracy. In the old days, a Sowore would have been made to disappear, never to be heard from again. That can’t happen in today’s Nigeria. The only trouble now is that the judiciary and legislature are Buhari’s personal dogs. He considers court rulings as suggestions at best and advisory at worst.

Yet, it was people like Sowore that worked hard with huge financial incentives to bring about a Buhari government back in 2015. They wanted Buhari to be president because they wanted  a ‘strong’ president. Buhari is doing what strongmen do. Just as we warned.

I have no protests left in me anymore. I expended every such energy before the 2015 elections when I warned, cried, shouted, even spent personal funds I barely  had … I did everything to warn Nigerians within my circle against voting a Buhari. I didn’t succeed. So here we are.

Being detained is a small price to pay as restitution for the crime of bringing an utterly inept and backward government. I know Sowore knows that. He should know, if he was ever truly an activist.

So I won’t cry for Sowore.

But I do hope those who’re inclined to do so succeed. What the government has done is wrong. We are a democracy or at least that was our understanding when Buhari sought to be elected in 2015. He didn’t come in through a coup or royal succession. As such, he shouldn’t suddenly pretend that we are a dictatorship. But Buhari is incapable of grasping such fine detail. That’s why he should never have been President. Our institutions are weak and governance takes the shape of the personality of the president. I’m sure Sowore knew this. That’s why he wanted a ‘strongman’ as president. He surely has one now. A brute strong in all the wrong places. But weak in all the places that matter in a 2019 world.

Good luck to those who’ll be going to protest Sowore’s arrest. And  mind the bullets when you do. ‘Strongman’ Buhari is now in Charge.