Human rights activist and former presidential candidate, Omoyele Sowore, has instituted fresh legal actions against the Department of State Services (DSS), Meta (owners of Facebook), and X Corp. (formerly Twitter), at the Federal High Court in Abuja.
Sowore’s lawyer, Tope Temokun, confirmed the development in a statement posted on the activist’s Facebook page on Tuesday. Temokun said the suits challenge “the unconstitutional censorship initiated by the DSS/SSS against Sowore’s accounts maintained with Meta and X.”
He argued that the case was about protecting Nigerians’ right to free expression.
“If state agencies can dictate to global platforms who may speak and what may be said, then no Nigerian is safe. Their voices will be silenced at the whim of those in power,” he said.
Temokun cited Section 39 of the Nigerian Constitution, which guarantees freedom of expression, stressing that “no security agency, no matter how powerful, can suspend or delete those rights.”
He further warned Meta and X against complicity in rights violations. “When they bow to unlawful censorship demands, they become complicit in the suppression of liberty. They cannot hide behind neutrality while authoritarianism is exported onto their platforms,” he added.
Among other prayers, Sowore seeks a court declaration that the DSS lacks the legal power to censor Nigerians on social media, and that Meta and X must not serve as “tools of repression.”
The activist also confirmed on Tuesday that the DSS had filed a five-count charge against him, Facebook, and X at the Federal High Court in Abuja over his recent posts critical of President Bola Tinubu.
“They claimed that because I called Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu a criminal, I have somehow committed a set of ‘novel’ offences they invented and spread across five counts. Regardless, I will be present whenever this case is assigned for trial,” Sowore wrote.
PUNCH Online earlier reported that the DSS had requested X to take down Sowore’s contentious tweet, but the platform notified him that no action had been taken.
The notification from X read partly: “We have not taken any action on the reported content at this time as a result of this request. As X strongly believes in defending and respecting the voice of our users, it is our policy to notify our users if we receive a legal request from an authorised entity.”
