Ignorant Nigerians Are My Biggest Opponents — Sowore

Human rights activist, Omoyele Sowore, has said that ignorance among many Nigerians, rather than political opponents or money, remain his biggest challenge ahead of the forthcoming 2027 general elections.

Sowore made the remarks in a clip from his yet-to-be-published interview on ‘The Manifesto’ podcast, hosted by Bukola Adebayo and recorded before his cur detention at the Kuje Correctional Centre.

The excerpt of the interview was shared on his verified Facebook page on Sunday.

Responding to a question on who his opposition was in the forthcoming election, Sowore replied, “Ignorance. I mean, there’s still a lot of it. That particular ignorance is in Nigeria, and it’s driven by a number of factors.

“See, the education that Nigerians have up till now has been so bastardised to produce some of the political thoughts that we now have. It produced some of the political agenda that is prevalent. It also produced a population that don’t look at things fundamentally deep,” he said.

Sowore dismissed the notion that money remained the dominant factor in determining electoral outcomes, insisting that the country’s political realities have evolved.

“Anybody could have sat here and told you it’s money, but we’ve gotten to a point in Nigeria where money is no longer everything to them because their lives depend on a different kind of politics.

“But there’s a lot of ignorance about how to make that choice and stand with it in the case of poverty,” he added.

The activist further blamed what he described as the country’s “half-baked education” system, limited exposure, and the influence of social media for reinforcing uninformed opinions among Nigerians.

Sowore argued that social media often amplifies uninformed voices, saying, “It is very loud and gives them attention, that if the society will be a little bit higher in educational consciousness, some of those ideas may not be dominant.”