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Omoyele Sowore, a human rights activist and former presidential candidate, says he was detained five times in 2025, but he did not allow the experience to discourage him.
He disclosed this in a recent interview, where he reflected on decades of arrests and political confrontation while delivering an assessment of President Bola Tinubu’s administration.
“My arrests have mostly been restricted to police stations. But of course, last year I was sent to prison. Was that the first time? I think so officially. But I’ve been to places you could call prison. There’s a place in Ikoyi, where I was the youngest person detained under the military regime. It was the kind of place where they kept alleged coup plotters in those days. I spent about two weeks there,” Sowore said.
“Kuje is officially the first prison I was booked into, but it was the second time I was sent to prison, because I also spent time in Kuje in 2021. I spent five months in DSS detention and solitary confinement in 2019. Then in 2025, I was arrested and imprisoned four, actually five, times by the Nigerian police. It happens so frequently that I sometimes don’t even remember which year it was.”
Sowore said even a single night in prison could feel worse than months in detention because of the stench and harsh environment, with nights that seemed endless.
He added that such experiences fuel his strong opposition to police brutality, saying the unjust detention of innocent people deeply angers him, especially when arrests are driven by personal connections rather than crime.
“From my experience, detention is primarily used to silence and deter. When they want to punish people like me, they make a public spectacle of it, cutting your hair, humiliating you, and ensuring the message spreads far and wide. The aim is to discourage you and others. But it has never discouraged me. Each time I’m arrested, maltreated, or tortured by the state, it hasn’t broken me,” Sowore said.
“If you look at the data, harsh prison conditions do not make people better. That’s why prisons are now being renamed correctional centres, to sell the idea that they are meant to reform you. But there is nothing in prison that truly corrects you. You meet others who are innocent victims of the state.”
Sowore also said detention reflects deep social inequality, noting that detention and harsh punishment in Nigeria are also class issues.
“They are targeted at the poor. I did research on that. The rich and powerful are rarely treated harshly. Even when they are arrested, they are treated differently. Some sleep in special offices or have private accommodations created for them. I’ve visited prisons where inmates had cable television in their rooms. Some prisoners don’t even sleep in prison. They are taken out to hotels at night and brought back the next day,” the activist said.
“There is even a hospital facility in Abuja, an extension of Kuje prison, used for VIP inmates. They only need to produce a medical report, and instead of staying in regular prison conditions, they are transferred there, where they receive visitors comfortably. So yes, detention in Nigeria is deeply class-oriented.”
