Omoyele Sowore and his many demons, By Chuks Akunna

A drowning man will clutch at a straw, is a very old proverb. This proverb still holds true today, especially concerning one overgrown baby, who calls himself my “long-time friend.” This time-tested blackmailer is none other than Cashivist Omoyele Sowore.

Like he admitted, our long-time friendship began nearly 20 years ago, precisely in December 2006, after the then-presidential domestic aide, Senator Andy Uba, appointed me as media assistant. Under the guise of seeking clarifications, Sowore would want to lure me into spilling information that would be the feedstock for his Sahara Reporters’ “exclusives”. Of course, I was smarter than that. After the Supreme Court fired my boss, he would occasionally call me up to help him investigate several stories. He never paid a dime for my reports. I, however, stopped writing for him circa 2012 after discovering that the reason he failed to publish at least three exclusive stories I spent time and money investigating was because the parties involved paid him off!

Sowore would purport to have damaging stories on public officials. He’d blackmail them to the point they paid huge sums of money as settlement. Why do you think he decided to float a political party? People stopped falling for his blackmail, so he changed gear and began using his presidential aspiration as another “format.”

When Ibrahim Magu was detained by the then EFCC chairman in an underground cell in Area 10, Abuja, I got in touch Sowore who at the time was in New York, and made him speak with Magu. Sahara Reporters’ published the conversation as an exclusive! When Magu became EFCC chairman, Sowore would often call, asking me if “my man” had forgotten all he did for him. If course, I never passed such silly messages to Mr. Magu. He is alive and can testify to this.

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On other occasions, he would call and spend hours on the telephone. Whenever I drew attention to his libelous style of writing, he would retort, “I be activist, I no be journalist like una.”

Now, to the photograph in question. I was at the Federal High Court last Friday in solidarity with a man I thought was my friend, his excesses notwithstanding. On Saturday, May 2, 2026, I missed several Whatsapp calls from a number I wasn’t familiar with. When I returned the call, it turned out to be Sowore. Apparently, he didn’t use his old number as I had stopped picking his nonsensical calls. He said he missed my birthday two days earlier, so called to felicitate with me. I was a bit uneasy, fully aware that he’s never up to any good. When he picked, he began thus:: “Chuks, you no be better person o. After all these years of our friendship, you know say I get case for court and you no even say make you come court one day come stand with your friend.” He told me the next hearing date, and I gave my word that I would be there.

Last week Friday, therefore, I found myself in court. The court didn’t begin sitting early. I ran into a lawyer friend of mine and we began catching up. Sowore walked in and excitedly joined us. Apparently, my friends is an Obidient. Sowore began by running Peter Obi down. He began boasting about how he is the best presidential material. I even teased him with the idea of begining as a council chairman.

His discussion drifted to how he helped BLord, the young businessman he boasted to have helped let off VDM’s hook. Without prompting, Sowore told my lawyer friend and I that BLord is, in his words, “a very poor boy” who offered him a paltry N2 million for all he did to save him from VeryDarkMan! Sowore even swore that all the cars BLord flaunts on SM are borrowed. That all he did was because Blord’s dad appealed to him to help his son. After about ten minutes, another lawyer called this my friend, leaving just Sowore and I. We continued conversing around his political ambition. I must add that I was pissed, but not disappointed when, in the course of our discussion, he dismissed Deji Adeyanju and a very senior lawyer from the Southwest I know was very helpful to him, as contractors who feed fat on government. “You should know that Deji and (the SAN) are part of the corrupt system I want to sanitize when I become President,” he boasted.

The court resumed, and he stepped into the witness box. After the judge dismissed his no-case submission, and that he had a case to answer, Sowore went berserk. I understood his frustration. He is used to having his way. He couldn’t stand losing out. Not to the DSS, an agency he loves to call “lawless.” Ironically, the same agency he calls “lawless” chose the path of civility, charging him to court. The same “lawless DSS” didn’t arrest him, but approached a court of competent jurisdiction to determine if it is within his right – or anybody’s – to call President Bola Tinubu a “criminal.” Sadly, here we had a “Sowore The Law” running down the trial judge and the federal high court of justice!

For about 20 years, each time Sowore and I spoke, nothing to him was off limits. Not only is he often cranky and uncouth, but vain. Given that Sowore well knows that I know him too well, and that even a mad man avoids a cow, I never imagined that he would risk blackmailing me. Alas! Isn’t it amazing that the same Sowore who called to wish me happy birthday about two weeks ago, begging me to attend his court session in solidarity, attempted to use my presence in court to blackmail me? Big mistake! The Yoruba call this “eedi,” a form of self-inflicted spell.

Omoyele Sowore is a man who would rather choose to film a burning car for the sake of creating content with the video clip than rescue victims in the burning car. Take Justice Crack, for instance. Had Sowore and his lawyer, Marshall Abubakar, taken out a mere five minutes of their time to type and print out a bail application, perhaps Justice Joyce Abdulmalik would have granted Crack bail two weeks ago. Instead, he chose to organise bogus demonstrations before the Federal Ministry of Justice as if that would conjure the much needed bail for Crack. I’m certain that Sowore’s theatrics informed Crack’s decision to ignominiously dump Marshall Abubakar in open court on Thursday. The grass, they say, always looks greener from afar. And things, they say, aren’t always what they seem. Sowore is at best a scam. I’m always filled with pity whenever I see beret-wearing young men and women flocking around him, hailing the cashivist as their Messiah. Well, they are not to blame.

Even in the United States, we had the Reverend Jim Jones of the People’s Temple. In November 1978, Jones and 916 members of his cult committed mass suicide. All of the youngsters wearing ivory-coloured berets and flocking after Sowore had better “shine their eyes” From the learned SAN (whose identity I would love to shield for now), “Area Fada” Charly Boy, to Deji Adeyanju; and from VeryDarkMan to my humble self, the stories of Sowore’s treachery and blackmail are well-documented.

Omoyele Sowore, it is not my fault that you suffer from personality disorders that are fueling your frustrations. Know what? Leave Chuks Akunna out of your your self-inflicted troubles. Face your demons!