Omoyele Sowore, the presidential candidate of the African Action Congress (AAC), “has filed two fundamental rights actions at the Federal High Court, Abuja, against the Department for State Services (DSS), social media giants Meta (Facebook) and X Corp.”
In a statement from his legal team, signed by Tope Temokun, the lawsuits were filed to challenge what the lawyers described as an “unconstitutional censorship” of Sowore’s accounts.
The statement argued that the lawsuit is about the “survival of free speech in Nigeria,” warning that “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 whims of those in power.”
Read Also: FG Charges Sowore, Facebook, X With Cybercrimes Over Anti-Tinubu Posts [PHOTOS]
The lawyers also asserted that “Censorship of political criticism is alien to democracy” and that “no security agency, no matter how powerful, can suspend or delete those rights.”
According to the lawyers, Meta and X “cannot hide behind neutrality while authoritarianism is exported onto their platforms,” and when they comply with censorship demands, they “become complicit in the suppression of the struggle for liberty.”
The legal team’s prayers before the court were: “That the DSS has no power in law to censor Nigerians on social media; That Meta and X must not lend their platforms as tools of repression; and “That our client’s rights and by extension, the rights of all Nigerians, be fully protected against unlawful censorship.”
The statement concluded with a call to action: “We call on all lovers of freedom, journalists, human rights defenders, and the Nigerian people to stand firm. Today it is @YeleSowore ; tomorrow it may be you…This struggle is not about personalities. It is about principle. And we shall resist every attempt to turn Nigeria into a digital dictatorship.”
Sowore’s suit comes just hours after the DSS had filed a five-count charge against him, X Corp, and Meta Inc.
The DSS had previously given Sowore a one-week ultimatum to delete a “false, malicious, and inciting” social media post about President Bola Tinubu, which he failed to do.
The social media companies also did not comply with the DSS’s demand to delete Sowore’s accounts.
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