The State Security Service (SSS), the country's secret police, has come under fire from African Action Congress (AAC) presidential candidate Omoyele Sowore for having a lacklustre attitude. Sowore claimed that while holding him in custody, SSS agents were watching the 2019 Big Brother Naija reality show.
Speaking during the Arise TV presidential town hall series on Sunday at the Transcorp Hilton in Abuja, Mr. Sowore suggested that rogue security personnel were to blame for Nigeria's high level of insecurity and that they preferred to watch entertainment programmes to their primary duties.
“We have a rogue system where everyone is doing what they like. To collect intelligence, you must have intelligent people,” Mr Sowore said Sunday evening. “When I was detained in DSS for five months, DSS officials were busy watching BBNaija.”
Mr Sowore was arrested on August 2, 2019, for attempting to stage a protest against the Muhammadu Buhari regime which had birthed untold hardship, inflation, banditry and so on on innocent citizens. The AAC presidential candidate was released in December 2019, having spent four months in SSS facility .
Checks by Prime 9ja Online showed that Mr Sowore was indeed in custody while the 2019 Big Brother Naija reality show was underway. The Pepper Dem edition began on June 30, 2019 and ended October 7, 2019, which marked the third month of Mr Sowore’s incarceration.