Publisher of Sahara Reporters, Omoyele Sowore has denied campaigning for President Muhammadu Buhari in the 2015 presidential election.
Sowore said this in an interview published by Sunday Punch.
In 2020, Reno Omokri, a former social media aide to ex-President Goodluck Jonathan released a video purportedly showing Sowore saying that Buhari rode on his back to the presidency in 2015.
However, asked if he campaigned for Buhari in 2015, Sowore challenged anyone with evidence of his so-called campaign for then-opposition candidate Buhari to publish it.
“That is not correct. If you or anyone could provide just one evidence of where I appear in a campaign for Buhari, either a video, or where I spoke on radio, wrote an article, granted an interview, or engaged in any of the processes that could be regarded as a campaign – where I campaigned for Buhari, please, publish it as a journalist,” he said.
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On his expectations for Buhari in 2015, Sowore, who himself contested for the presidency in 2019, said, “Since I was admitted into the University of Lagos as a freshman, I have taken a position to fight against oppression, and ensure democracy, and that is why a lot of people refer to me as a pro-democracy activist.
“So, when elections come, or even before elections when most people are sleeping, or during elections, I always take a permanent position to ensure that people who are elected into office perform their duties, and when they don’t, I turn against them.
“I organise and campaign against them, protest against them, because my expectation is for democracy to continue to be positively relevant in the lives of people, not for democracy to become a burden to the people. When the Buhari regime came, people had expectations of him that he would do better, and those of us who are always at the barricades started fighting against him immediately the same way I fought against the government of Goodluck Jonathan when he was engaging in corruption. The same way I fought against (Umaru) Yar’Adu when he was sick and the cabal was trying to impose him on Nigerians.
“That was the same way I fought against the (Olusegun) Obasanjo regime when he was planning a third term. It was the same way I fought against the regime before him and I was arrested in 1998 at the Nigerian Universities Games when I led a protest against the military over the expulsion of students, and it was the same way that I fought against the (Sani) Abacha regime when he tried to force political parties in the country to endorse him as the only candidate, and that was the same way I fought against the Ibrahim Babangida regime when he refused to hand over power to late Chief MKO Abiola in 1993.
“So, is anything different in terms of my consistency and character in fighting for good governance?
“It is not true that I campaigned for Buhari; I have never campaigned for any presidential candidate. The only candidate that I have ever campaigned for in my life was myself when I ran for office between 2018 and 2019. Also, I have never voted for anyone else. Since I was born, I voted for the first time in 2019.”