ABUJA: Nigerian authorities on Tuesday charged a former presidential candidate with posting false messages online in a bid to cause “a breakdown of law and order”, after he accused President Bola Tinubu of corruption.The charges against Omoyele Sowore, an activist and publisher, also named social media giants X and Meta, parent company of Facebook though it was not clear from the charging documents what they were accused of.Sowore said on social media that Nigerian authorities had contacted X over his posts. Neither company immediately responded to a request for comment.Sowore, a minor candidate in the 2023 presidential election and founder of news website Sahara Reporters, is facing five counts of cybercrime.While Tinubu was in Brazil for a diplomatic visit in August, Sowore wrote: “This criminal… actually went to Brazil to state that there is no corruption under his regime in Nigeria. What audacity to lie shamelessly!”In the charging documents, the government said Sowore knew “the said message to be false but posted it for the purpose of causing a breakdown of law and order in the country, especially among individuals who hold divergent views on the personality of the president”.Sowore responded on social media that it was “hard to believe there’s anyone sensible left in these offices that should be making Nigeria work.”“Regardless, I will be present whenever this case is assigned for trial.”Millions live in poverty in oil-rich Nigeria, where for decades, successive governments have been implicated in corruption scandals and accused of squandering the west African nation’s wealth.Rights groups regularly accuse Nigerian authorities of violating constitutional guarantees for free speech in the country, home to a large and sometimes combative media industry.Sowore has had multiple run-ins with the police over the years, and also ran unsuccessfully in the 2019 presidential election.
