Omoyele Sowore Has Experience – Just Not The Kind The Establishment Wants To Recognise, By Dr Oluwaseun Akinlade | Sahara Reporters

I want every Sowore’s supporter to come forward and help correct a misleading narrative that is being deliberately pushed: the claim that Omoyele Sowore lacks experience.

This narrative appears designed to diminish his accomplishments and extinguish the hope that many Nigerians are beginning to see in him. It is especially important to address it for those who are encountering Sowore for the first time; people who admire his bold ideas, courage and charisma, and who see him as someone capable of pressing the reset button that Nigeria has desperately needed for decades.

Some of these people are inspired by his message but remain hesitant because they repeatedly hear that he does not have the necessary experience to lead Nigeria. In this article, I will examine that claim using facts. Please read to the end before drawing your conclusions.

Whenever a particular political narrative is enthusiastically repeated by members of the establishment (politicians), we should ask who benefits from it. That does not automatically make the narrative false, but it should compel us to interrogate it carefully.

Take Rotimi Amaechi, for example. He is a former governor of Rivers State and a former Minister of Transportation. His documented journey into mainstream politics began around 1992, when he was approximately 27 years old. His first degree was in English Studies and Literature, and he later earned a law degree in 2022.

Amaechi unquestionably has experience in conventional Nigeria politics. However, the more important question is: how should Nigerians evaluate that experience? What has that experience contributed to the Nigeria and the Nigerians?

Should experience be measured merely by the number of years someone has occupied political office? Or should it be measured by the tangible impact that those years have had on the lives of ordinary citizens?

Holding office as a governor, minister or legislator certainly provides administrative experience. But longevity in office should never be treated as an achievement by itself. We must examine the quality of that experience, the resources entrusted to the individual, the decisions made and the lasting outcomes produced.

When politicians say, “I built this” or “I constructed that,” citizens must ask: With whose money? How much public funding was available? What did the project cost? Was it delivered efficiently? Did the result justify the resources spent?

Public officials do not build infrastructure with their personal money. They manage resources that belong to the people (“commonwealths”). Therefore, managing public wealth should not automatically be presented as personal generosity or entrepreneurial brilliance.

Experience that benefits only the political class while leaving the wider society struggling cannot be the only form of experience Nigerians recognise.

Omoyele Sowore’s experience did not begin with a political appointment. It began in struggle.

As a student at the University of Lagos in 1989, he became involved in protests against military rule and the Structural Adjustment Programme. He later served as president of the university’s Students’ Union Government between 1992 and 1994 and participated in the pro-democracy struggles surrounding the annulment of the June 12 election. These parts of his history are documented in accounts of his student activism and political background.

Fighting military dictatorship, mobilising citizens, confronting injustice and demanding democratic governance are not lesser forms of political participation. Sowore and many other activists accumulated their experience by challenging authoritarian governments. Often at enormous personal risk.

This “democratic” system that later produced governors, ministers and legislators did not appear by magic. It was fought for by Nigerians who resisted military rule, endured detention and refused to remain silent. Their sacrifices must not be erased simply because they were not serving in government offices at the time.

Political experience should not be restricted to controlling government budgets or holding prestigious titles. Understanding oppression, organising people, building movements and consistently confronting abuses of power are vital forms of leadership experience especially in a country like Nigeria where corruption has many “offsprings”.

It is also inaccurate to claim that Sowore has never built or managed anything.

After studying Geography and Planning at the University of Lagos, he obtained a master’s degree in Public Administration from Columbia University. In 2006, he founded SaharaReporters from a small room in Manhattan. In an interview about the organisation’s beginnings, he described combining the platform with his daytime job, struggling to pay his bills, operating with limited support and confronting cyberattacks and legal threats. That is an account of a real builder.

Another published account describes SaharaReporters as beginning with a laptop reportedly purchased for $600. From that modest beginning, it developed into a prominent digital news platform and an employer of labour.

Nigerians readily celebrate technology entrepreneurs abroad for transforming ideas into globally recognised platforms. Why, then, should building a major Nigerian digital-media organisation from the ground up count for nothing?

Same Nigerians celebrate traders, bankers and military turned politicians. This is not an attempt to belittle trading, banking, military service or any other legitimate profession. Each can produce valuable experience. The argument is simply that we must be consistent. If building a successful commercial enterprise demonstrates competence, then creating and sustaining an influential media organisation must also be recognised as entrepreneurship, institution-building and management experience.

Critics sometimes attempt to dismiss SaharaReporters by pointing to grants it received. However, Sowore publicly acknowledged that the organisation had received funding from the Ford Foundation and later the Omidyar Network. Receiving institutional funding does not erase the original idea, the work required to develop it or the risks involved in sustaining it. The proper questions should concern transparency, accountability and editorial independence, not the mere existence of external support.

To be clear, Sowore has not governed a state or managed a federal ministry. That is a legitimate point for voters to consider. But it is very different from saying that he has no experience.

His record includes decades of activism, student leadership, pro-democracy advocacy, citizen mobilisation, journalism, entrepreneurship and institution-building. Nigerians are entitled to examine that record critically, just as they should examine the records of every other person seeking public office.

I am not asking anyone to support Sowore blindly. Ask him difficult questions. Examine his policies. Demand details about his team, budget, priorities and implementation plans. But do not pretend that he appeared from nowhere. Do not allow political officeholders to define “experience” in a way that automatically favours those who have spent decades circulating within the same establishment that produced Nigeria’s present condition.

Sowore has experience. It is simply not establishment experience. And perhaps that is precisely why the establishment is so uncomfortable with it.