He mused and moped in his interiority and contemplation in the House of Revolution without understanding its intimacy and secrets. So it seems to me. He lingered and loitered long there in its nooks and crannies. Yet his rapt attention could only fetch him futile laziness of ideas which didn’t allow him to fall deeply in love with the world or space of revolution. So it seems to me. Indeed, our dear Omoyele Sowore of “Revolution Now!” would not have been picked up, as the security personnel did, as a dull and one little fly, if his mind or art of revolution was not one of futile laziness. Why did he allow himself to be easily picked up without even striking a blow?

The publisher of the influential online Sahara Reporters news publication should have known or ought to have known from his reading engagements and enterprises that any revolution, meaningful or non-meaningful, must be effected by anyone or persons who possesses or possess courageous imagination(s). In truth, revolution does not belong to anyone or persons or should not emanate from anyone or persons whose art or imagination is one of futile courage and of futile risk and of futile plan.

When I saw the video clip of Sowore’s “Revolution Now!” even before he was discovered and picked up like a fly – I say it again – by the S.S.S. or whatever name the security outfit that arrested him is known by, I realized at once that our young “revolutionary” or would-be “revolutionary” lacked the consciousness of consciousness of revolution or of something called revolution. How could he announce or broadcast in the open what should ordinarily or normally be an underground activity? (Femi Aribisala, Vanguard columnist, also made a comment akin to this – if not exactly in the manner I am putting it here – when the news of Sowore’s arrest reached the newsstands). Did the young man who was a presidential candidate in the last presidential election think that the much- abused, faithfully maligned and rottenly beleaguered central government would merely watch him without reacting, without moving against him – even without his striking a blow? Or was Sowore merely seeking the kind of popularity his online publication has not fetched him? Or was he trying to etch his name and face further on our consciousness as a lovable alternative to Buhari and any other presidential candidate through his “Revolution Now!” muscular creation and stupendous éclat after his candidacy was “rejected” by the electorate in the presidential election aforesaid? Or was he merely trying to demystify our one and only Professor Wole Soyinka, who recently said that our country’s young generation are devoid of spunk but full of gas hence they accept the type of government that should not be accepted in the land? Must this generation of lads without spunk keep on depending on heroes like ageless but young-less Soyinka and company to alter their lazy minds that are full of gas? The more I think of these questions, and other ones I am withholding here for good and sound journalistic reasons, the more I tend to arrive at the conclusion that Sowore disappointed me immeasurably with and by his art of futile courage, by his bent of courage not well bent toward an end that ought to be an end.

Revolution is participation – it is the art of participation, which means or implies that its productive force is solely realisable only when a significantly sizable number of the masses is or can be galvanized and propelled towards startling the powers that be. Without one form or the other of its productive and propelled force, the productive imagination that produced it would come to naught. This accounts for what has become of our artist of courage. If you disagree with my calling Sowore an artist, you must note this point: Journalism is real or realist literature in a hurry to clear the way for our common good. Journalism is critical criticism, impulsive or non-impulsive criticism, literary or not peculiarly literary, that takes its inspiration from the very simple reality that we experience. At times, it is like a great gush of wind. If we love our country we must make it lovable – no matter what and no matter how. If we see Sowore in this light, we must understand and appreciate his error. What his journalistic, artistic words could not do for him and our country, his revolutionary practical action must do for him and our country. However, his error did not allow him to strike a blow before anything realistic is realised from his “hidden” apartment of thoughts. Who betrayed him? His party people with whom he is engaging in a rift? Or the “PDP for day, APC for night people”? And can Barrister Femi Falana, SAN, get him out of the lurch and hook after the forty-five days of his incarceration? Will the “PDP for day, APC for night” lawyers and people allow and make his release possible? Until then his lonely refuge must be his lonely refuge without his striking a blow, without his striking even the feeblest blow.

Now I must tell Sowore’s prime lawyer to stop talking too much, to stop making too much noise because by talking too much or too loud he is opening his flanks, and by opening his flanks those who want to do them in are plotting and plotting to blunt their plot. I can say it loud and clear, and I am saying it loud and clear, that noise-making strategy is a non-starter in the present case. And Sowore committed the blunder also of hobnobbing openly with the run-away coward of a rebel, of an alleged rebel, after he was granted a legitimate bail that he apparently has illegitimately jumped. And I am sounding it authoritatively here through the impeccable authorization of a high central government person that the prosecutors would use his rubbing of minds with the run-away ‘’rebel” as one optimum evidence against our artist who did not strike a blow despite his loud proclamation of “Revolution Now!’’. Sowore’s prime lawyer must plan well, and use this information as well 

as he can to do what he must do when the time comes for him to do what he must do.

By Tony Afejuku


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