Omoyele Sowore is a journalist and activist who founded the online news site Sahara Reporters and the African Action Congress (AAC). He is running for president for the third time in 2027.12
Early life and education
Sowore was born on 16 February 1971 and is from Ese-Odo in Ondo State. He studied geography and planning at the University of Lagos, where he was president of the students’ union from 1992 to 1994 and was expelled more than once for his activism during military rule. He later took a master’s degree in public administration at Columbia University in New York.1
Sahara Reporters
In 2006 he founded Sahara Reporters in New York, an online outlet that publishes reports on corruption and abuse of power in Nigeria, often from leaked documents and citizen reporters. It is funded by grants and does not take money from the Nigerian government.1
Presidential campaigns
Sowore founded the AAC in 2018. He came fifth in the 2019 presidential election with 33,953 votes, and in 2023 he received 14,608 votes.1 In May 2026 the AAC adopted him as its consensus candidate for 2027.2
Arrests and prosecutions
In August 2019 the Department of State Services arrested Sowore before the #RevolutionNow protests he had called against the Buhari government. He was charged with treasonable conspiracy and insulting the president, and he remained in detention for months despite court orders for his release, before being freed in December 2019.13 He has been arrested or detained at protests several times since, including in Abuja in 2021, and in September 2024 his passport was seized at the Lagos airport. Human-rights groups and writers including Wole Soyinka condemned his detention in 2019; the authorities said he had threatened public order.1
Personal life
Sowore is married to Opeyemi Sowore, and his family lives in New Jersey in the United States.1
