I rejected Funtua’s request that Sowore begged Buhari – Falana

Human rights lawyer, Mr Femi Falana (SAN), on Thursday, said he rejected the request of a delegation comprising the late Isa Funtua and two newspaper publishers to prevail on the Sahara Reporters publisher, Omoyele Sowore, to apologise to the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.).

Falana, in a statement titled, ‘On the collapse of secret meetings designed to compromise Omoyele Sowore in custody’, said he also rejected the delegation’s request to have Sowore, who was in detention, to write an undertaking to desist from further embarrassing the Federal Government..

He said at the meeting, which held last year in Lagos, Funtua, an ally of Buhari, said “rather condescendingly” that the regime in power could not be defeated.

Falana said he was quick to remind the deceased that the Nigerian people had defeated military dictators to pave way for the current democratic dispensation.

The senior lawyer said his statement on the issue was informed by “incendiary” and “erroneous” account given by a presidential spokesperson, Mr Garba Shehu, regarding the meeting he had with the delegation.


Sowore, who was detained by the DSS for over four months in 2019, was visited by the late Funtua, Shehu, the publisher of Vanguard Newspapers, Sam Amuka-Pemu; and the publisher of ThisDay Newspapers, Nduka Obaigbena.


Following Funtua’s demise on Monday, Sowore granted an interview to his news platform on Tuesday, narrating how the deceased and others paid him a visit while he was in the DSS custody and asked him to put aside his ‘revolutionary views’ and stop fighting the government for him to be released.

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