A former Nigerian presidential aide, Reno Omokri, has issued a detailed public response to statements attributed to activist and former presidential candidate Omoyele Sowore and his lawyer, Abubakar Marshal, which were made in court on Tuesdayl.
In a statement released on Wednesday, Mr Omokri acknowledged that he had previously made critical remarks about President Bola Ahmed Tinubu during the period when President Tinubu was the presidential candidate of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC). He said the remarks were made in the belief that they were true at the time.
However, Mr Omokri said he later discovered that the allegations were false and subsequently withdrew them publicly, both in writing and on video, across several platforms.
He said his first formal retraction came on 29 May 2023, the day President Tinubu was sworn in, when he released a statement recognising Mr Tinubu as Nigeria’s president and urged Nigerians to support the new administration.
Mr Omokri said he reaffirmed this position on 26 October 2023, following the Supreme Court’s dismissal of petitions challenging President Tinubu’s election. The petitions had been filed by opposition candidates, including Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Peter Obi of the Labour Party.
According to Mr Omokri, the Supreme Court ruling confirmed that there were no criminal charges or convictions against the president and clarified issues he said had previously been misrepresented in sections of the media.
He said he publicly accepted and praised the judgement on the day it was delivered, adding that he now believed his earlier statements about the president were “wrong and fallacious”.
Two days later, on 28 October 2023, Mr Omokri said he appeared on TVC News, where he described the Supreme Court’s decision as a “righteous verdict” and said the justices had acted in accordance with the law.
He also referred to later media appearances, including an interview on News Central Television on 27 March 2025, in which he said President Tinubu had been “exonerated” — a term he said he used deliberately, citing his legal training in the United Kingdom.
On 11 June 2025, during a live broadcast of Politics Today on Channels Television, Mr Omokri said he publicly admitted that he had been wrong to make the earlier allegations, stating that he had relied on false media reports. He named Sahara Reporters, a platform founded by Mr Sowore, as one of the sources of the information he had previously believed to be accurate.
Mr Omokri also disclosed that he had travelled from the United States to Nigeria on 1 October 2024 to seek a private audience with President Tinubu, during which he said he apologised in person for the statements he had made.
Addressing the legal arguments raised in court, Mr Omokri said it was improper, under established rules of evidence, to rely on statements that had been made in good faith but later withdrawn after being shown to be untrue. He cited the common law rule against hearsay and referred to Phipson on Evidence and the Privy Council decision in Teper v R.
He argued that statements he made between 2022 and 2023, which he said were retracted in 2023, could not be relied upon to justify remarks made by Mr Sowore in August 2025.
In his latest statement, Mr Omokri again rejected allegations linking President Tinubu to drug trafficking, describing them as false. He said he was prepared to testify under oath and to present documentary evidence in support of his claims.
Neither Mr Sowore nor his legal representatives have responded publicly to Mr Omokri’s statement.
