Bukola Oyeniyi’s “Sowore’s march of folly”: Reckless opportunity vs justice in Nnamdi Kanu’s case, by Christopher Chidera

1. The crawling of the Ignorant and the hungry: It seems that the Western Post newspaper has opened its gates to all manner of government-funded crawlers to emerge from their DSS-sponsored burrows. Bukola Oyeniyi’s write-up, pompously entitled “Sowore’s March of Folly,” reads like the lamentation of a paid propagandist, not a thinker.

How can anyone with a brain cell left in their skull stand against the release of a man who has been discharged and acquitted by a Court of Appeal? Only those who eat from the crumbs of tyranny can pretend not to understand what finality in criminal law means. Yet, Oyeniyi and his Western Post handlers are now parading themselves as intellectuals while spreading ignorance that would embarrass even a first-year law student.

The same media that sees no evil in the daily atrocities of imported Fulani Sahelian terrorists suddenly finds courage when it’s time to demonize an unbought Igbo man fighting for freedom. The hypocrisy stinks to high heavens.

2. The Folly in “March of Folly”: Oyeniyi accuses Omoyele Sowore of “reckless opportunism.” But what exactly is reckless about demanding the enforcement of a valid appellate judgment? What is opportunistic about calling for obedience to the law?

It is Nigeria’s security cabal that is reckless — detaining a man who has been discharged by a superior court, in total defiance of both the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (1999, as amended) and the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights.

Oyeniyi’s article exposes not Sowore’s folly but the moral bankruptcy of a rent-seeking intelligentsia that sells its conscience for pocket change. When a people’s conscience has been bought, even the truth sounds like rebellion.

3. Legal reality: Why Kanu cannot be re-tried by Justice Omotosho: Let us educate Oyeniyi and his editors at Western Post before they embarrass themselves further:

The Court of Appeal’s judgment (13 October 2022) in FRN v. Nnamdi Kanu was not a procedural slap on the wrist, it was a jurisdictional discharge that terminated the entire proceedings.

Under Section 36(9) of the Constitution, once an appellate court discharges a person on a substantive criminal ground, double jeopardy protection is activated. This means no court, not even the Supreme Court, can revive or re-try the same cause.

The Supreme Court’s limited review cannot transform a terminated cause into a living one; it can only pronounce on points of law, not resurrect a case whose jurisdiction has been nullified.

In criminal jurisprudence, finality attaches to discharge, not to the opinion of a superior panel. That is why the appellate discharge is self-executing and automatically bars any further proceedings.

Therefore, Oyeniyi’s attempt to justify Kanu’s continued detention is an open confession of legal ignorance.

4. Britain’s shadow and the local enforcers: Every arsenal, both online and mainstream. is being deployed by the owners of Nigeria — the same British architects of this colonial contraption — and their black caretakers in DSS uniform to keep Mazi Nnamdi Kanu caged. They fear him not because he is violent but because he cannot be bought or silenced.

Writers like Bukola Oyeniyi are useful tools in this neo-colonial orchestra — providing English grammar to justify injustice. They rant about “national security” while terrorists roam freely. They call Sowore reckless for demanding justice, but salute the state that kidnaps a citizen from Kenya in violation of international law.

5. The real recklessness: State Impunity: The real recklessness is executive disobedience — the government’s open defiance of the Court of Appeal’s discharge. The real opportunism is media collaboration with illegality — when newspapers like Western Post lend their pages to state propaganda instead of defending constitutional order.

A lawful state obeys judgments; a lawless one manufactures writers like Bukola Oyeniyi to confuse the public.

6. Truth vs treason: History will remember those who spoke truth to power, not those who wrote for their supper. Sowore’s call for a peaceful march is not folly — it is fidelity to justice. Bukola Oyeniyi’s article, on the other hand, is a monument of ignorance — a desperate attempt to dress tyranny in academic robes.

Mazi Nnamdi Kanu has been discharged and acquitted. He has no case to answer, no law-binding him to captivity, and no moral stain upon his conscience.

Let those who sold their pens for crumbs keep barking — the tide of truth is already risen.

CHIDERA is public analyst & human rights lawyer.