One expression I hear repeatedly whenever the subject of Omoyele Sowore comes up is this: “I don’t agree with his approach.” Others say, “You may not like his approach, but you cannot deny his courage.” Some simply conclude that he is “too confrontational.” Whenever I hear these remarks, I find myself asking a different question: What exactly is this “approach” everyone speaks about?
Many of us naturally organise our lives around family, career, comfort, reputation, and financial security. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Those are legitimate aspirations, and for most people they define a successful life. But history has always been shaped by a different breed of men and women, people whose lives become a permanent argument and controversy against oppression and injustice. Men who have deliberately placed themselves in the path of every consequence their convictions may attract. Their methods cannot be imported for them. Their approach is forged by the journey of their life.
Viewed from that perspective, what approach would anyone realistically expect from a man who has spent over three decades deliberately walking into danger in search of fellow citizens trapped in an inferno while others instinctively run in the opposite direction? Should he speak like those seeking appointments? Should he weigh every sentence against the possibility of personal advancement? Should he soften his language to earn the applause of those he believes have presided over the destruction of his country? Or should he simply become a polite spectator while injustice flourishes?
The real tragedy, in my view, is that many critics become absorbed in a convoluted debate about Sowore’s style while paying remarkably little attention to the injustice that necessitates that style. The conversation shifts from the disease to the manner in which the physician seeks to cure it. Instead of interrogating the abuse of power he complains about, the focus becomes the tone with which he complains.
To understand Sowore’s approach, one must first understand the life that produced it. His approach cannot be separated from decades of arrests, prosecutions, detentions, surveillance, personal sacrifice and relentless confrontation with power.
He has therefore permanently foreclosef possibility of reconciliation and friendship with those who have wrecked his country and have marked him as a lone dangerous voice they must quench.
Today the real question should not be whether we like Sowore’s approach. The real question should be whether history has ever been transformed by men who first sought the approval of those they intended to confront before deciding how to confront them. Perhaps that is the conversation we should be having.
Tope Temokun
July 4, 2026.
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