₦airaland Forum

I Am Not A Comedian Or Content Creator - Sowore. Shares Throwback Photo
https://www.nairaland.com/8769991/not-comedian-content-creator-sowore

Some tweeps are attacking him but this is his response.

Senator Ajibola Bashiru Ph.D., BL @DrSRJ_

Still laughing at the hilarious skit!

https://x.com/DrSRJ_/status/2113054361177731528

Senator Ajibola Bashiru Ph.D., BL @DrSRJ_

Yele, you are outrightly dishonest writing that: "We provided them with an enabling environment to apply to re-enter the university, gain admission, and study Law at the University of Lagos @UnilagNigeria."

I did not have any relationship with you before I got admitted to the University of Lagos. In fact, I got 310 in my UTME exam to gain admission to the University of Lagos and that was the best score for all applicants to the law faculty the year of my admission. So I was admitted on merit. It is outright falsehood to say you or anyone provided me with any enabling environment to get admission to the University of Lagos.

I honestly mean my statement that you are a comedian as I do not believe you yourself believe you have any chance in winning the contest for president of Nigeria, at least for now.

Leave your sanctimonious harangue to the unsuspecting young people you are lying to that you are a revolutionary or freedom fighter.

https://x.com/DrSRJ_/status/2113053119403717030

Previous thread

AAC Demands Use Of Aso Rock Villa For Campaign Council Inauguration
https://www.nairaland.com/8769938/aac-demands-use-aso-rock

Seun Okinbaloye asks APC secretary Dr Ajibola Bashiru whether the president will allow Sowore to hold his campaign council inauguration at the Aso Rock Villa.

Dr Bashiru says that he doesn't work for the president, he works for the party.

Seun asks him again and Dr Bashiru says, "Sowore is a skit maker. You know he is my friend? We were in the trenches together. He is a skit maker. Let him struggle to get even a seat in the house of assembly, then people will begin to take him seriously.

Even rejected ballot paper had more votes than his political party in the 2023 elections. That means that rejected ballot paper is more popular than his party. So he's just making skits.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtSQGpn0-lw?si=TG8eDJ2eRpcAYB0c


Omoyele Sowore @sowore

I watched an interview on #PoliticsToday* on @channelstv, anchored by @seunokin, in which the @OfficialAPCNg National Secretary, Ajibola Basiru (@DrSRJ), called me a “skit maker” and “comedian.”

I am presenting here a photograph I took with Ajibola in 1998, when I led the Congress of Progressive Youths (COPY), and we were both in the trenches fighting against military dictatorship.

What eventually happened to COPY offered an early indication of what Ajibola has become today, but that is a story for another day.

His premise is that because Bola Ahmed Tinubu @officialABAT was declared "winner" by @inecnigeria in the deeply flawed 2023 presidential election, those of us who contested against him should somehow be ashamed of losing.

Ajibola @DrSRJ came to the University of Lagos after he was expelled from the University of Ilorin in 1992 for student activism.
I received him alongside Kunle Adegoke, popularly known as “K-Rad,” who is now a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN). We provided them with an enabling environment to apply to re-enter the university, gain admission, and study Law at the University of Lagos @UnilagNigeria. Both eventually graduated with flying colours and went on to accomplish great things.

The struggle for justice, democracy, freedom and the preservation of human dignity is neither skit-making nor comedy.
Ajibola knows this because he was once part of that struggle and benefited from the solidarity of those who refused to surrender to military tyranny.

It is unfortunate that he has become so carried away by the fleeting privileges of his current political position that he now ridicules the very struggle that helped shape his own future.

But Ajibola should know better. Political appointments are temporary. Tinubu's regime will come and go, just like the military regimes we confronted in our youth.

The principles we fought for in 1994 remain as relevant today as they were then.

Our commitment to justice has endured for decades and will outlast his present political appointment.

The struggle for freedom is not comedy. What is truly comical is watching yesterday's beneficiaries of resistance become today's defenders of the very oppression they once fought against. #RevolutionNow

Source

Omoyele Sowore @sowore

BREAKING: @aacparty Writes Tinubu, Demands Presidential Villa for Campaign Council Inauguration, Feeding and Logistics for 5,000 Supporters

The African Action Congress (AAC) has formally written to President Bola Tinubu, requesting permission to inaugurate its Presidential Campaign Council for its Presidential candidate @sowore at the Presidential Villa, Aso Rock, Abuja, on November 11, 2026.

In a letter dated October 21, 2026, and signed by its National Secretary, Oshiokhue Philip Ikpeminoghena, the party also demanded food, drinks, and logistical support for 5,000 participants from Nigeria and abroad.

The AAC said its request was based on the principles of multiparty democracy, political inclusiveness, and equal treatment, citing similar arrangements reportedly extended to the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC).

The party insisted that public institutions must serve all Nigerians without partisan discrimination and challenged the Tinubu administration to demonstrate its commitment to fairness and equal access. #AACOurParty #Sowore2027

Source

GloriousGbola:
@naptu2 thank you for the detailed post

My pleasure.

October 13th.

ONCE AGAIN, THIS WAS THE ORIGINAL TWEET

Breaking news : Another distress call from Libya; another girl rescued , but — pic.twitter.com/TzwjND7Pa7

— abikedabiri (@abikedabiri) September 1, 2025

AND THESE WERE THE REPLIES

October 13th.

There is no insult or ethnic slur that they have not used.

My post from October 13th.

These attacks have been on for a long time, even before she became chairman of NIDCOM, but they got worse when she became chairman.

There is no insult or ethnic slur that they have not used on her, yet the people that are trying to censure her or act outraged were quiet.

My post from October 13th, 2026.

THE ATTACKS ON ABIKE DABIRI EREWA

As I've told you before I totally blame Mrs Dabiri-Erewa for these attacks. She has suffered what in the military is called mission creep.

The job of officers is to manage, plan and organise. When soldiers are given a mission they are given the scope of the mission and the time frame. That is, they are told what they are to do and when to do it. Mission creep occurs when the soldiers need to go beyond what they are told to do and when they take longer than they are meant to take.

This could lead to an endless mission that takes too much resources and is impossible to accomplish. This is the problem that Abike Dabiri is experiencing and her attackers know this which is why they are putting extreme pressure on her to make her fail.

Diaspora affairs

I told you that this issue of diaspora affairs began during the tenure of President Olusegun Obasanjo. At that time the role was properly defined and we knew what the goal was.

The idea was that there were a lot of Nigerians living abroad and the government wanted to see how they could use their skills, knowledge and experience to help Nigeria grow. That was the idea.

So, for example, I told you that Governor Bola Tinubu was pushing the idea of a hospital and then a medical park for Lagos. Well the Federal Government was also pushing the idea.

The idea was that Nigerian doctors in the diaspora would spend some months at the medical park and perform surgeries, etc.

Later the idea was expanded to include telemedicine. That is, Nigerian doctors in the diaspora could stay abroad and direct surgeries at hospitals in Nigeria via video and internet links.

You need to also remember that Obasanjo's government had people from the diaspora like Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Ambassador Oluyemi Adeniji, Professor Charles Soludo and Amina Az Zubair (Amina Mohammed) serving in it.

So the idea was to assist Nigerians in the diaspora to return to Nigeria and aid the country's development.

Usually when the executive branch of the Federal Government creates an agency, position or new area, the legislature also creates committees to perform oversight functions on them.

President Olusegun Obasanjo launched the Nigerians in Diaspora Organisation in the year 2000 and appointed Mrs Bola Ogunrinade as his special adviser on diaspora affairs in 2005. The Senate and House of Representatives subsequently created committees on diaspora affairs.

Abike Dabiri-Erewa

Abike Dabiri was elected into the House of Representatives in 2003. She became the chairman of the house committee on information (and thus became the spokesperson of the House).

There was a reshuffle of committee chairmen and she was moved from the information committee to the committee on diaspora affairs.

Mrs Abike Adbiri-Erewa was in the House of Representatives from 2003 to 2015 and she was chairman of the House Committee on Diaspora Affairs for a large chunk of that time.

NIDCOM

President Muhammadu Buhari made Mrs Dabiri-Erewa his special adviser on diaspora affairs in 2015. In 2018 he made her the first ever chairman of the Nigerians in Diaspora Commission (NIDCOM).

Foreign Ministry

Mrs Dabiri-Erewa is very active on Twitter and so any time a Nigerian had problems abroad they would tag her and she would assist. This became a routine thing.

However, as I said, this is not her job, it is the job if the Foreign Affairs Ministry.

The Nigerians in Diaspora Commission only has an office in Nigeria. Its staff are also in Nigeria.

The Foreign Affairs Ministry is in Nigeria, but it is like a headquarters and the branches are the Nigerian embassies all over the world. The Foreign Affairs Ministry has staff in those embassies all over the world.

It is the duty of those embassies to provide consular services. This means that they are expected to care about the welfare of Nigerians in their host countries. They should help them get legal representation, approach the host government on their behalf, etc.

The Foreign Ministry has the resources to carry out these functions, NIDCOM does not. NIDCOM should be helping Nigerians abroad to invest in Nigeria and to contribute to its development. That is the job of NIDCOM, that is what they have resources for.

However, anytime a Nigerian is in trouble abroad (that is, when a Nigerian has been arrested or stranded, etc) people would tag Abike Dabiri and she would raise the issue with the Foreign Ministry and get them to act.

Targetted attacks and harassment

It seems like the trolls realised that Abike Dabiri was doing a job that she did not have the resources to do. This made her an easy target. They therefore directed unbelievable insults and attacks at her.

There is no insult or ethnic slur that has not been directed at Mrs Dabiri-Erewa. Many times these attacks begin after she has done something good like secured the release of a Nigerian from prison.

It was very clear to me that the goal of these targetted attacks was to provoke her to the point that she would get angry and say something that she shouldn't. I have seen this done to many people in the past. Trolls have even tried the same tactic with me but they have failed spectacularly.

There are two or three tactics that the trolls use.


⚫️ Commendations

Mrs Abike Dabiri-Erewa still did her job of identifying Nigerian talent abroad and seeing how they could cobtribute to the development of the country. She often tweeted commendations of Nigerians that had achieved great things abroad (for example, she tweeted commendations whenever a Nigerian sports star won major titles abroad, when a Nigerian student or academic achieved great things abroad, etc).

However the trolls attacked these commendations. Despite the fact that she has commended Nigerians from all ethnic groups, the trolls developed a narrative that she only commends Yorubas and they began haranguing her any time that a non-Yoruba achieved anything great.

The very second that they hear that a non-Yoruba has achieved something they would immediately begin alleging that Mrs Dabiri-Erewa would not commend the person because he or she is not Yoruba. They won't even give her time to react.

Rescues

As I said, Mrs Dabiri-Erewa has come to the aid of very many Nigerians that have run into problems abroad. She has rescued Nigerian girls that were trafficked into prostitution in Ghana, Guinea, Libya, Equatorial Guinea, etc, she had worked to evacuate Nigerians that were trapped in Sudan during the war there, she has come to the aid of Nigerians that were affected by xenophobic attacks in South Africa and she has worked to get amnesty and rescue Nigerians that were jailed in Asia for various crimes, despite the fact that many of them were guilty of the crimes.

She has tweeted details of these interventions, but she is often accused of tribalism whenever the rescued people are non-Yorubas.

For example, Mrs Dabiri-Erewa undertook a tour of Asia to visit Nigerians in prison there and to negotiate for amnesty for them. She said that at a particular jail in Indonesia she was told that of the 23 Nigerians on death row for drug offences, 22 were from a particular state. That's all she said.

Mrs Dabiri-Erewa was not responsible for the situation, she did not tell these people to traffick drugs, she did not make up the statistic, it was the Indonesians and the Nigerians in the prison that told her this, yet she was attacked and accused of tribalism.

However, Governor Charles Chukwuma Soludo repeated the same statistic (because Anambra State officials were part of the Nigerian delegation during the tour) and revealed that of the 23 Nigerians on death row for drug offences in Indonesia, 22 were from Anambra State. The same people that viciously attacked Mrs Dabiri-Erewa and called her a tribalist were silent when Governor Soludo made that revelation.

The main message was lost. The real reason that both Mrs Dabiri-Erewa and Governor Soludo revealed that statistic was because they were appealing to Nigerians to obey the laws of their host country when they go abroad. Yes the government will try to assist them, but there is little that the government can do when the evidence that they actually committted these crimes is overhwelming.

Years of abuse

As you will see in the screenshots below, the attacks on Mrs Dabiri-Erewa began when she was the chairman of the Diaspora Committee of the House of Representatives, but they got a hundred times worse when President Buhari made her chairman of NIDCOM.

Accounts like Voice of Igbos and Harry The Big ot have dedicated time to tweeting vile slurs at her. The goal is to provoke a response and then broadcast the response all over. The people that accuse Mrs Dabiri-Erewa of all kinds of things are silent when these people tweet extreme hate at her.

When they can't provoke her to respond in kind, they mabufacture false outrage.

Mrs Dabiri-Erewa tweeted about a Nigerian girl that had been rescued from Libya. The trolls began attacking her again. Wale Akerele told her to ignore the trolls because they were monkeys and gorillas. He tagged Voice of Igbos (that had been attacking her) and told the account to see the good work that Mrs Dabiri-Erewa had done.

Mrs Dabiri-Erewa replied with smiley emojis.

All of a sudden they claimed that Mrs Dabiri-Erewa had called all Igbos monkeys and gorillas. How?

My post from April 25, 2023.

Abike Dabiri's mission creep

One of the two main reasons why Mrs Abike Dabiri-Erewa is having problems on social media is because she is doing another person's job and that is a job that she does not have the resources to do. It reminds me of the Civil Defence. The Civil Defence was set up for a particular reason, but they lost their way and began doing the Police's job. Now some people are asking, "What is the point of the Civil Defence when you already have the Police"? People will soon ask, "What is the point of NIDCOM"?

I'll explain by answering that question.


The whole idea of diaspora engagement started during the Olusegun Obasanjo era (1999 - 2007).

You see, Nigerians have always moved abroad (it's now called japa). This was the case in the 1950s, '60s and even in the 1970s (during the oil boom era). It got worse with the economic collapse of 1982 and this led to the famous "Andrew no check out" advert of 1984 (starring Enebeli Elebuwa).

The 1982 economic crisis and the SAP problem of the 1980s significantly increased the emigration. People thought that was bad, but it was nothing compared to the Abacha and June 12 era. It now seemed like everybody must emigrate and people were ready to do anything just to move abroad. By the time that Nigeria returned to democracy in 1999, very many people had moved abroad.

President Olusegun Obasanjo felt that this was a resource that needed to be tapped. I have already explained a bit of this. It was felt that, for example, a medical park should be set up in Nigeria, so that Nigerian medical doctors who were based abroad could come home during their holidays and practice in these medical parks, in order to improve the quality of care and number of doctors in the country. Nigerians wouldn't need to go abroad for healthcare, rather they could go to the medical parks. It was also felt that Nigerian medical doctors and professors of medicine that were based abroad could teach Nigerian students based in Nigeria through telemedicine. As Professor Bola Akinterinwa explains:

In this regard, efforts were first made by President Olusegun Obasanjo, GCFR, to bring together Nigerians in the Diaspora in September 2000 when he held a meeting with 3,700 Nigerians in Diaspora in Atlanta. He asked them to prepare ‘to participate fully in the process of visioning, planning and pursuing the political well-being, the economic development and the sound governance of their country. As further explained by Dr. Bashir Obasekola, the Chairman of the Nigerians in Diaspora Organisations Europe (NIDO-E), President Obasanjo said that ‘we can tap the knowledge and skills of many of our fellow Nigerians, wherever they are,’ and had therefore called for the establishment of a mechanism ‘to establish structures and networks that will promote the use of special skills of Nigerians in the Diaspora. It is against this background that the formation of NIDOs began in 2001 in the United States and thereafter in 2002 in Europe.

https://www.thisdaylive.com/index.php/2020/12/20/engagement-of-nigerian-diaspora-for-national-development-the-challenge-of-structural-re-alignment/


If I remember correctly, President Obasanjo was the first president to have a special assistant on diaspora affairs. The duty of the special assistant on diaspora affairs was to make it easy for Nigerians abroad to relocate to Nigeria or, if they wanted to stay abroad, to invest in Nigeria and contribute to her development.

Whenever the executive creates a position, the National Assembly also creates a corresponding position. Mrs Abike Dabiri was initially made the spokesman of the House of Representatives and chairman of the House Committee on Information, but later on, she was made the chairman of the House Committee on Diaspora Affairs.

President Muhammadu Buhari then made her his special assistant on diaspora affairs. As I said before, "The duty of the special assistant on diaspora affairs was to make it easy for Nigerians abroad to relocate to Nigeria or, if they wanted to stay abroad, to invest in Nigeria and contribute to her development". However, Mrs Dabiri-Erewa is very active on Twitter, so people began tweeting at her whenever a Nigerian was in trouble abroad. She wanted to be helpful, so she started rendering assistance in such cases and replying such tweets. The problem is that this is not her job and she is not equipped to handle that job. I'll explain further.


The special assistant to the president on diaspora affairs, or as it now is, the chairman of the Nigerians in Diaspora Commission (NIDCOM) has no staff or office outside Nigeria. She has no resources whatsoever to help any Nigerian abroad. This is no surprise because it is not her job. This is the job of the Foreign Ministry!

Nigerian ambassadors all over the world report to the foreign minister. They take instructions from the Foreign Ministry. They are extensions of the Foreign Ministry. The foreign affairs minister can issue orders to them. It is the job of the embassies to render consular services to Nigerians abroad who are in need of help. NIDCOM has no resources to do any of this. It can only appeal to the Foreign Ministry.

Basically, Abike Dabiri has to route all those complaints and requests through the Foreign Ministry. So why don't people approach the Foreign Ministry directly?

In military terms this is what is called mission creep. It is when you start doing other things that are different to the mission that was assigned to you. It could force you to abandon or neglect your original mission, to fail in achieving your aims or to get criticised for attempting to do someone else's job and to go over budget or run over time. It never ends well.

Wotowotoman:
You hear say Ebola Dey town and you still dey talk Brandy in Detty December? Wetin be this?

He has escaped again!

Time to send him back.