The Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP) and Amnesty International (AI) have called on President Bola Tinubu to drop the charges against activist Omoyele Sowore, in addition to social media platforms X and Facebook.
In a signed statement, dated 20th September, 2025, the organisations raised concern over what they termed was an on-rising tendency of employing the use of court cases by security agencies to harass and silence critics. They defined the case the Department of State Services (DSS) filed against Sowore and the platforms, for publishing “anti-Tinubu” remarks, as a Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation (SLAPP) an attempt to gag free speech.
They contended that the acts have the chilling effect, deterring Nigerians from exercising their rights as well as from free speech.
SERAP and AI also asked the President to instruct the Attorney General of the Federation (AGF), Lateef Fagbemi (SAN), to withdraw the charge and to prepare and submit anti-SLAPP bills to the National Assembly. This, they claimed, would protect Nigerians against abuse of the judicial system and guarantee the constitutional right of expression.
The letter, addressed by SERAP’s deputy director Kolawole Oluwadare and AI Nigeria’s director Isa Sanusi, pointed out that public officers, by virtue of their office, should be more tolerant of greater degrees of criticism.
Sowore is charged in five counts under the Cybercrime (Prohibition, Prevention, etc.) (Amendment) Act 2024 and the Criminal Code Act after he refused to remove the posts criticizing President Tinubu.
The two organizations indicated that Sowore has been targeted before and quoted a similar case in May 2025, when Professor Pat Utomi was arraigned in court for allegedly trying to create a shadow government.
They gave the administration an ultimatum of seven days stating that charges must be dropped or else they would pursue redress in the ECOWAS Court of Justice.
“Freedom of expression is not merely the foundation of democratic society but also vital to a healthy civil society,” the organizations said, citing decisions of regional and Nigerian courts, as well as the UN Human Rights Committee, which has routinely held that politicians must be subject to greater criticism than average citizens.”.
They added that global human rights bodies condemn defamation and penalizing the opposition through criminal offenses as means of stifling the opposition, decreeing that limitations to freedom of expression should always be legal, necessary, proportional, and in accordance with constitutional standards.
