Why Mr Bayo Onanuga Should Apologise And Submit To Investigation And Prosecution

WHY MR BAYO ONANUGA SHOULD APOLOGISE AND SUBMIT TO INVESTIGATION AND PROSECUTION

We are appalled by the content, intent and the purpose of Mr. Bayo Onanuga’s tweet of Wednesday 27th May, 2026 made against our Mr. Martins Vincent Otse (VDM).

It is disheartening that a man who risked detention, exile, and death to confront tyranny and elected to resign his position as editor of Concord magazine rather than apologize to former President Babangida in April1992 when the accuracy and correctness of his piece titled 'has Babangida hi up' and which he termed subversive, the proud author of the News cover of November 1997 titled, “The Chagouris: 'How A Family Hijacked Nigeria', the great Onanuga! Master of guerrilla journalism, the voice that once indicted power and corruption now defend it; officially, dutifully and without compromise, the man who once indicted power now propagates its abuse in its cruelest form. Despite his rich pro-democracy credentials as a former NADECO leader, it is sad to see Mr Bayo Onanuga evolve from being a fearless challenger of tyrannical military dictators to a pathetic defender of one of the worst governments in the Country’s history.

Now that the inaccuracy and falsity of Mr Bayo’s allegations has been established, we submit without any sense of equivocation that the right of Nigerians to criticize, condemn, challenge any obnoxious government policy, and the right to demand for a change of government; including the right to assert that, which Mr Bayo and his paymasters find offensive and discomforting must be re-asserted and commitment to its protection re-affirmed by the Presidency he has sheepishly embarrassed with his provocative assault against our collective national interest.

Need we remind the Bola Ahmed Tinubu presidency that as Lord Justice Stephen stated in Redmond Bate Vs DPP (1999), “Free speech includes not only the inoffensive but the irritating, the contentious, the eccentric, the heretical, the unwelcome and the provocative provided it does not tend to provoke violence. Freedom only to speak inoffensively is not worth having.”

It is no longer a secret that this present Ahmed Bola Tinubu regime has lost the confidence and faith of the Nigeran people and the right of Nigerians to insist that it yield the floor is one, the direct beneficiaries of the failed, anti-people regime must come to terms with. Had the previous PDP government the APC took over from prioritized clamping down on dissent, the Buhari/Tinubu regimes might never materialize.

In 2004 when Mr Bayo and his co-travelers' right to protest and demand a change of government was threatened, they ran to court and the Court of Appeal in the case of IGP v. ANPP (2007) in affirming the right held, 'how long shall we continue with the present attitude of allowing our society to be haunted by the memories of oppression and gagging meted out to us by our colonial masters through the enforcement of issuance of permit to enforce our rights under the Constitution'.

The Court of Appeal in the case of Arthur Nwankwo Vs the State (1985) had posited,

“We are no longer the illiterates or the mob society our colonial masters had mind when the law was promulgated…To retain S. 51 of the Criminal Code, in its present form, that is even if not inconsistent with the freedom of expression guaranteed by our Constitution will be a deadly weapon to be used at will by a corrupt government or a tyrant…Let us not diminish from the freedom gained from our colonial masters by resorting to laws enacted by them to suit their purpose.”

In December 2021, Allegra Stratton was forced to resign as spokesperson to the former British Prime Minister, Mr Boris Johnson after making inappropriate, false and misleading comments about a 10 Downing Street Party. On September 8, 1974, Jerald Franklin terHorst had resigned as white House Press Secretary because President Gerard Ford had taken a policy decision that is at variance with his often-stated Presidency position.

So therefore, Mr Bayo must face the consequences of circulating and authenticating falsehood, spread through electronic means against the very government and people he was employed to defend- for the sake of clarity, (1) the Presidency must distance itself from the embarrassing declarations of Mr Bayo Onanuga and (2) met out the appropriate sanction against a state official that deliberately misinformed the public and caused the government gargantuan embarrassment, likewise, (3) the tweet under review lucidly falls within the narrow prism of the extant Section 24 of the Cybercrimes Act. Additionally, the several incendiary tweets particularly that made in March 2023 warning inter alia that 2023 should be” the last time of igbo interference in Lagos Politics” amounts to racist and xenophobic offences prohibited by Section 26 of the Cybercrimes Act, as amended and if found guilty he should face the penalty prescribed therein which is imprisonment of not more than five years or a fine of ten million naira or both fine and imprisonment.

This is without prejudice to the right of our Mr Martins Vincent Otse (VDM) to seek appropriate civil redress forthwith.

Marshal Abubakar, LP

28/05/2026