Sowore Accuses Tinubu’s Aide Sunday Asefon Of Collecting ‘Money From Abuja’ To Organise Ekiti Attack

According to Sowore, Asefon, a former president of the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS), allegedly travelled to Ekiti with money from Abuja to organise the attack. Human rights activist and African Action Congress (AAC) presidential candidate for the 2027 general elections, Omoyele Sowore, has accused President Bola Tinubu’s Special Adviser on Student Engagement, Sunday Asefon, of collecting money from Abuja to organise the attack on him and members of his team in Ado-Ekiti, Ekiti State. Sowore made the allegation on Sunday, November 8, 2026, during an interview on Channels Television’s Inside Sources, where he recounted how he was targeted, chased by armed attackers and forced to hide in an elderly woman’s kitchen for about 45 minutes to escape being killed. According to Sowore, Asefon, a former president of the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS), allegedly travelled to Ekiti with money from Abuja to organise the attack. “The person who arranged the attack, we later learned, is the former NANS President and Special Adviser to President Tinubu on Students Engagement. His name is Sunday Asefon,” Sowore alleged. “He was the one who went to Ekiti, I heard, with money from Abuja, to organise them to attack me.” The activist also identified Sola Adenijo, popularly known as Solar, as one of the attackers, alleging that he was the enforcer for the Managing Director of the Federal Housing Authority, Oyetunde Ojo, President Tinubu’s son-in-law and husband of the president’s daughter, Folasade Tinubu-Ojo. Sowore further alleged that Adenijo was appointed treasurer of the City Boy Movement in Ekiti, while another individual seen wielding a machete during the attack was the movement’s Chief Security Officer. He said the identities of the attackers were established through a video recording obtained from someone at the scene and subsequently released by his team. Sowore disclosed that he travelled to Ekiti to participate in the Ikogosi Marathon, having attended the previous edition. He explained that his criticism of Governor Biodun Oyebanji following his visit to Ikogosi last year might have contributed to the hostility against him. “Ikogosi is the hometown of the current governor, Biodun Oyebanji. When I came back (last year), they were about to have an election and I found out that this guy didn't do anything,” he said. He further alleged that before his interview at Midas FM 96.5, the governor’s Chief Security Officer, CSP Ayodele Akinlua, contacted one of his party members to ask what he was doing in Ekiti and whether he intended to organise a rally. “That he hoped I didn't have any plans to rally in Ekiti? That Ekiti is a one-party state. I told him not to worry, that they don't have the right to stop us. It is our country,” Sowore recounted. After the radio interview, Sowore and his entourage stopped at Tawakalitu Restaurant in central Ado-Ekiti. He alleged that within 15 minutes of their arrival, gunshots rang out as armed men stormed the restaurant. “We ordered food and within 15 minutes of arriving there, we just heard gunshots outside. People started rushing inside. They had come to attack us,” he said. Sowore claimed that police officers assigned to accompany his team abandoned them when the attackers arrived, while his orderly, who was in plain clothes and carrying a concealed pistol, was disarmed. He said the attackers seized the officer’s weapon and repeatedly shouted that they wanted to kill him. Sowore said he escaped through the restaurant’s backdoor, sustaining injuries to his leg and palm. He narrated that he got to a spot where he was able to tweet and send “a Facebook message that we were under attack, they came again looking for me, shouting the direction I went, ‘It is Sowore we want. We want to kill him.’” He recounted that he eventually found refuge in an elderly woman’s kitchen in a ‘face-me-I-face-you’ building (tenement house), where she concealed his presence as about 40 young men searched neighbouring houses. “There were about 40 young guys there and we could hear them saying if they had found this person they were looking for, they would have killed him. I spent about 45 minutes in that condition and I had lost my phone,” he said. Sowore disputed the police account that officers rescued him, insisting that he personally walked out of his hiding place to meet them after contacting his orderly. “So, I wasn't rescued by the police as they claim,” he said, although he acknowledged that the officers subsequently transported him to a police-run hospital. He also accused the Ekiti State Commissioner of Police of attempting to downplay the attack by describing it as an altercation. Sowore said the commissioner visited him at the hospital but left without speaking to him, only to issue a statement about 10 minutes later describing the incident as a fight between two groups. He added that a police officer attending to the victims warned him: “Our CP knows the people who attacked you. You better be careful.” He further alleged that security operatives subsequently removed the restaurant’s CCTV equipment and accessed the recordings. According to him, the restaurant owner later disclosed that the operatives and DSS personnel demanded the password to the surveillance system and brought in the technician who installed it. He alleged that the recordings showing the attack were subsequently deleted and that the owner was told there was no footage available because she had not paid for storage. Sowore said his team later tracked the stolen phones and AI glasses to the governor’s lodge on the evening of the attack. “We tracked our phones and the devices to the governor's lodge that same evening. We are talking about 17 phones. The governor hurriedly denied that there was nothing like that,” he said. He alleged that after his team began presenting evidence, the governor and the police commissioner stopped commenting on the matter. Sowore also questioned the police announcement that 11 suspects had been arrested, describing them as “fake people” presented to divert attention from the actual perpetrators. He said the suspects were arraigned the following day and released on bail, while some members of his team were initially allowed to identify and retrieve their stolen phones. However, he said the police subsequently stopped releasing the remaining devices after informing them that Abuja had taken over the investigation. Sowore also recalled that Sola Adenijo had previously been arrested and charged over the killing of a policewoman and several other people in 2021 but was never convicted. He claimed that the suspect was released through political connections, alleging that Ojo was involved in securing his release. Sowore said his team had submitted a petition to the police but had received no meaningful response despite the seriousness of the allegations and evidence they claimed to have provided. “We have found all those connections and we are revealing all these things, yet, nothing was done by the police,” he said. He accused the police of refusing to provide updates while demanding that he submit a formal statement before leaving Ekiti. “One other thing they did when I kept pestering them was to say that there is no complaint, that I didn't write a statement before I left. So if I had died, they would have been asking for a statement from my dead body,” he said. Sowore maintained that the police should be holding regular press briefings and providing updates until those responsible for the attack are arrested and prosecuted.