• Biography Of Sowore Omoyele

Biography Intro: Omoyele Sowore is a human rights activist. He is founder and publisher of the SaharaReporters.com, a website of citizen journalism, supplying videos, photos, news stories and commentaries that expose official corruption and abuse in Nigeria’s government.

Full Name: Omoyele Sowore.
Date of Birth: February 16, 1971
Origin: Ondo State.
Nationality: Nigerian
Occupation(s): Blogger, Writer, Lecturer, Human rights activist.
Years active: 2006 – present.
Twitter: @yelesowore
Website: SaharaReporters.com

Childhood and Education

Omoyele Sowore was born February 16, 1971 into a polygamous family of sixteen siblings, in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria where he was also raised.

An indigene of Ondo State Nigeria, Sowore studied geography and planning at the University of Lagos and holds a master’s degree in public administration from Colombia University. He teaches Modern African History at the City University of New York and Post Colonial African History at the School of Art, New York.

While in the University of Lagos, he was deeply involved in anti – military demonstrations and student unionism which ultimately culminated in his election as the President of the Student Union Government where he served between 1992-1994. His activism began in 1989, when he took part in student demonstrations protesting the conditions of an International Monetary Fund (IMF) loan of $120 million to be used for a Nigerian oil pipeline — the IMF loan conditions were to reduce the number of universities in the country from 28 to just 5.

In 1992 at University of Lagos, Sowore led 2,000 students in protest against Nigeria’s notorious kleptocracy. Police opened fire, killing seven. Sowore was arrested, interrogated and beaten, and later found out his family too had been put under pressure. But he refused to back down in the struggle for decent education in his country. He was an active participant in the June 12 pro-democracy struggle.

For his vociferous anti – government campaigns, he was harassed, arrested and detained for about 8 times in various detention centers. He almost lost his life in Abacha‘s gulag. Since that tragic baptism of fire, Sowore has remained consistent in his struggle to emancipate his country from the clutches of the racketeers and plunderers. He fled the country to the United States in 1999 from where he has continued to launch his anti – corruption missiles against the corrupt Nigerian ruling class using his website – SaharaReporters.

About SaharaReporters

SaharaReporters, the scion of the Nigerian establishment and nemesis of the corrupt, was birthed in 2005 but became operative from 2006. It is supported by grants donated by the Ford Foundation and Omidyar Foundation. As part of its policy, the medium does not accept adverts and financial support from the Nigerian government.

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It was SaharaReporters that forced an associate of convicted ex Delta State governor Mr. James Ibori, Emmanuel Enaboifo, out of his exalted position as finance director of a bi-national commission that oversees the oil-rich zone owned by Nigeria and Sao Tome & Principe. No sooner had the Nigerian President appointed Mr. Enaboifo to the post than Sowore unmasked him as a fugitive who fled the United States, after a U.S. District Court convicted him of bank fraud. Two weeks after the publication, Mr. Enaboifo stepped down.

Earlier in January 2008, the site exposed Mrs. Iyabo Obasanjo-Bello, a former senator and daughter of former President Olusegun Obasanjo, as a hunted fugitive wanted in the U.S. over a child custody case. Even former head of Nigeria’s anti-corruption organization, EFCC, Mrs. Farida Waziri, did not escape Mr. Sowore’s searchlight. In series of articles, mostly backed by documentary evidence, he accused her of pilfering her agency’s funds and receiving bribes from governors and ministers, in exchange for ignoring their own looting of public funds. In the end, she was fired with corruption offered as one of the reasons.