Samuel Fasua
An Ondo State pressure group, the Sunshine Liberation Movement (SLM) has urged the federal government to set free detained politician, journalist and rights activist, Mr. Omoyele Sowore, in obedience to a court order that admitted him to bail.
Speaking for the group, its president, Mr. Dipo Ajidahun, told THISDAY that the government should not lose sight to the fact that we are in a democratic dispensation and as such, should not treat court orders with levity.
Ajidahun said, “Nobody is saying the government should not prosecute anyone suspected to have committed any crime but the government cannot also be the judge in its own case. Since a court had justified that he should be admitted to bail, having met all the conditions attached to his trial, there is no basis for the government to assume that it knows more than the court.
“Sowore is just an individual and we all know his antecedents as a former students’ union leader, human rights activists, journalist, and lately, a presidential candidate.
“Much as we are not making a case for him, the fact that he had not been recorded in the past to bear arms or launch any physical attack on anyone or institution should make it convenient enough for the relevant authorities to admit him to bail, as directed by the court,” Ajidahun urged.
Meanwhile, the SLM president has drawn the attention of the federal government to what he described as long years of neglect of Ondo State in the scheme of things in Nigeria.
“In the first place, all the federal roads that course through Ondo State have been abandoned and these roads had claimed many precious lives.
“We don’t have any functioning industry that can assimilate our teeming jobless young graduates, thus complicating serious social problems for the government itself.
“Besides, politicians from the state who are even in the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) are not strategically placed to make useful contributions to the development of the state. Often, the best we get in terms of ministerial appointment is minister of state. So it is time for the government to consider our dear state and help bring us developmental projects and industries, to raise our standard of living,” he pleaded.