‘One Of My Bags Got Missing’
ACTIVIST and presidential candidate of the African Action Congress (AAC) in last year’s presidential election, Omoyele Sowore, has revealed that officer of the Nigerian Immigration Service (NIS), on arrival at the Murtala Mohammed International Airport in Ikeja, Lagos State, from the United States, asked if he had a waiver to the watchlist prepared by Nigerian security agencies, prompting him to question the purpose of such a waiver.
Speaking on a television programme monitored by TheCardinal, Sowore, while sharing his experience at the airport on Sunday morning, raised questions about the transparency and accountability of Nigeria’s watchlist system.
Explaining what transpired between him and the officers, the activist said he was only detained for about 10 minutes, during which one of his bags went missing, adding: “I tweeted while I was waiting in their office that I was in detention and they had seized my passport. And they said, ‘oh, we are looking if you have a waiver for the watchlist,’ and I said, ‘what is waiver for the watchlist?’
“And another 10 minutes later, they came and said ‘we have resolved the issue, you can go. You can have your passport back now.’
“Some of them nicely escorted me to get my bags, but by the time I got to the bag section, one of my bags had gone missing. We are still looking for the bag as we speak. The biggest bag I brought in disappeared.
“I am just hoping they are not trying to play funny with the bag. I have reported that to the airline.”
Sowore had earlier declared that he would never flee Nigeria, despite being reportedly on the watchlist of the Department of State Service (DSS), which later clarified that it had nothing to do with his brief detention at the airport.
He alleged that he was not afraid of being targeted by the government and would continue to exercise his right to free movement in and out of Nigeria, even as he criticised President Bola Tinubu for doing to protesters what was done to him (Tinubu) in 1994 by a military regime, charging Nigerians to continue to fight for the liberation of the country from bad leadership.
