Barely 48 hours after it asked X (formerly Twitter) to ban the X account of activist Omoyele Sowore, the Department of State Services (DSS), has sent another petition to Meta, demanding for immediate and urgent ban/deactivation of his Facebook account.
The DSS, in a petition dated 7th September,2025 and addressed to the Chairman and CEO of Meta (Facebook) Platform Inc in California, USA, accused Sowore of using his Facebook accounts for “misleading information and willful intention to further an ideology capable of serious harm, incitement to violence, cyber-crime, hate speech to discredit/disparage the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and cause serious threat to national security of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.”
In the petition, signed by Uwem Davies, fsi for the Director-General State Services, the agency specifically demanded for “immediate and urgent ban/deactivation of a Facebook account owned by Omoyele Sowore through his Facebook page Omoyele Sowore and his personalised link on Facebook http://www.facebook,com/osowore or any other account maintained by him.
Justifying the demand, the DSS informed Meta, “we detected and monitored with dismay and consternation a widely circulated publication by Omoyele Sowore on his Facebook page “Omoyele Sowore on 26th August, 2025, disparaging and ridiculing the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
“The defamatory statement was personally directed at the Nigerian President and reads: “This criminal @ official ABAT actually went to Brazil to state that there is NO MORE corruption under his regime in Nigeria. What audacity to lie shamelessly!”
According to the DSS, the said post was still in circulation and had attracted widespread condemnation by majority of Nigerians, “and is causing both online and offline tension across the country, thereby creating political tension and threatening the country’s national security.”
“This is in addition to the disparaging effect the post has on the reputation of Mr. President and the country before the comity of nations,” it stated.
The agency further noted that the post under reference hasdcrossed the boundaries of decency and acceptable behaviour, and that the Government had frowned at this extremely dangerous and false privacy violation that manipulates and negatively impacts on the person of the President and the Country.
The rest of the petition reads:
“It is pertinent to bring to your knowledge that under the Nigerian Law, these quoted words constitute an offence punishable in Section 51 of the Criminal Code Act Cap.77 Laws of the Federation of Nigeria, which prohibits publication of false information; Sections 19, 22 and 24 of the Cyber Crimes Act 2025 which prohibit and make it an offence to spread fake news or publish content that is deliberately misleading or deceptive, posting content that is rude, vulgar, offensive, or indecent, especially with the intent to embarrass or humiliate others, provoke ethnic, religious, or tribal hatred through online or offline statements; amounting to domestic terrorism. The Law also makes the offender and the medium through which the offence is perpetrated/propagated culpable and criminally liable too. The author and purveyor of the inflammatory online publication against Mr. President is very much aware that the publication is also prohibited by Section 2(3) of the Terrorism (Prevention and Prohibition) Act, 2022 and other relevant Laws of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
“It is not in doubt that the words employed by Mr. Omoyele Sowore are misleading information, online harassment and abuse. It is also a willful intention to further an ideology capable of serious harm, hate speech, cause disunity, discredit/disparage the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria within the Comity of Nations to damage the image of Nigeria and cause serious threat to national security of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
“It is against the above highlighted backdrop that we make an immediate and urgent demand on your corporation, to as a matter of its own policy, immediately TAKE DOWN the post and its attendant shares.
“This demand is unequivocal with its attendant consequence. Should you fail, neglect and refuse to comply with the command in this notice, the Federal Government will be compelled to take far-reaching, sweeping and across-the-board measures through our organization, whose mandate covers such criminal acts.
“In the light of the above having been made official to you, 24 hours is sufficient enough to take necessary action.”
At the time of this report, Mr. Sowore, a notable online publisher and Presidential candidate of the African Action Congress (AAC) in the 2019 and 2023 general elections, was still to react to the latest move by the secret police to have his Facebook account deactivated by Meta.
