The wife of detained activist and Publisher of Saharareporters, Mrs Opeyemi Sowore, said she and her two children have only been able to speak with him twice, by phone, since his arrest on 2 August in Lagos.
Mrs Opeyemi Sowore said “The calls i made to my husband was heavily monitored,”.
Mrs Opeyemi Sowore gave an interview to U.S.- based nonprofit broadcast outlet Democracy Now! a few weeks ago, the Nigerian government cut off all communication, she added.
Sowore has used the word “revolution” to promote democratic governance, including in the protest he was organizing in August, which called for education, security, infrastructure and fair wages, Opeyemi Sowore said, but the Nigerian government, she said, sees the term as negative.
Opeyemi Sowore called the charges against her husband “frivolous” and said they also stemmed from his criticism of the Nigerian president during a TV interview and movement of between $15,000 and $16,000 to a Nigerian bank to pay salaries of Sahara Reporters journalists working in Nigeria, she said.
Opeyemi Sowore said, “This is basically a violation of his human rights,”
Sowore and his wife in normal times live in Haworth, in Bergen county in New Jersey. She said Sowore was in Nigeria on a business trip when he was arrested.
She said on the day he was arrested on 2 August, she got a text message from him saying ‘I love you’.
“It came out of nowhere,” Opeyemi Sowore said. Within an hour, she started getting repeated calls from his cousin. Her husband had been detained, she found out, because he was helping organize what she called a peaceful protest for Aug. 5″.
He was held for four or five days without officially being charged, and no warrant was issued for his arrest, his wife said. Sowore is among at least five other journalists and activists behind bars in Nigeria.
