Joyful return to Bergen for Yele Sowore after being detained for nearly 5 years in Nigeria
The mayor read a proclamation. The local congressman showed up with a pizza. And there were yellow balloons for the man they called “Yele.”
Such was the welcome home on Saturday in Haworth, a tiny hamlet in northern Bergen County, New Jersey, for the Nigerian activist, journalist and reformist presidential candidate, Omoyele “Yele” Sowore, who had been detained nearly five years in his native homeland in what many felt were bogus charges.
“I stand today to declare that I am unbowed,” Sowore said to cheers from supporters in his adopted American hometown of Haworth, many of whom had never met him and knew little about the internecine politics of Nigeria before joining a campaign for his freedom after he was charged with treason, money laundering and cyberstalking.
Sowore, 53, a legal U.S. resident who edited the news website, "Sahara Reporters," which regularly criticized Nigeria's authoritarian regime, was jailed in 2019 when he returned to his homeland.
Besides working as a journalist, Sowore, a Nigerian citizen, also ran in 2019 for his country's presidency as a candidate for the African Action Congress. He lost his presidential bid — his campaign was largely viewed as quixotic. But Nigerian authorities saw him as a rising threat.
After Sowore joined anti-government protests in August 2019 and questioned the results of the presidential election, he was thrown in jail. With a charge of treason, he said he faced the death penalty if convicted.
But Sowore was suddenly freed last month, with Nigerian authorities dropping the most serious charges of treason and money laundering while still scheduling a hearing at some point in the coming months on the legally tenuous allegation that his web-based journalism is a form of cyberstalking.
After the U.S. State Department, with the prodding of Rep. Josh Gottheimer, the Wyckoff Democrat, fast-tracked a travel visa to America, Sowore caught a commercial flight late Friday from Nigeria. He landed in Washington, D.C., on Saturday morning, then hopped on a shuttle flight to Newark Liberty International Airport and headed to Haworth to reunite with his wife, daughter and son.
“Welcome to beautiful Haworth, New Jersey,” said Mayor Heather Wasser, as Sowore, clad in a navy blue knee-length shirt and wearing a string of Nigerian cowrie shells around his neck, smiled broadly.
“We’re very excited to gather here,” Wasser said. “Today marks 1,680 days — 4 years, 7 months, 6 days. And finally we can say, ‘Welcome Home Yele’.”
From grassroots to top diplomats, advocacy was everywhere
The story of how a Nigerian-born writer who was jailed some 7,000 miles away by an authoritarian government became a centerpiece of life in an otherwise sleepy suburban New Jersey town is one that touches on a basic instinct of humanity — the urge to help a neighbor in need.
It began with a group of women in Haworth — all mothers who knew Sowore’s children from soccer games and school functions — brainstorming ideas with Sowore’s wife, Opeyemi, on how to draw the world’s attention to the plight of a man who had been tossed in jail in an African nation that few Americans can pinpoint on a map.
The Haworth women were a diverse group, to be sure: American-born mothers, most of them white, coming together to help an African-American family navigate the politics of a foreign government.
The mothers organized a campaign to reach out to political figures and media organizations.
Next came the intense lobbying of American diplomatic officials by Gottheimer and New Jersey’s senior U.S. senator, Robert Menendez, who took on a less prominent role after being indicted last year on a variety of federal corruption charges.
Finally, there were the successful efforts to draw the attention of such advocacy groups as Amnesty International, the American Bar Association, the Committee to Protect Journalists, the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Foundation and the George Clooney Foundation for Justice.
Worrisome moments emerged -- for sure. Sowore was isolated in a prison for months after being taken into custody by Nigerian police in August 2019. Then, after a court hearing in which he seemed to gain his freedom, he was rearrested.
He was eventually confined to an apartment in Nigeria’s capitol, Abuja. But he was constantly watched by police — and under threat of assassination, he said.
After the outbreak of COVID-19, the world’s attention seemed to wane. But U.S. diplomats continued to monitor his court hearings – an effort that played a key role in persuading Nigeria to drop the most serious charges against him.
Meanwhile, he could communicate with his wife and children only by cell phone and Face Time video. His family was not allowed to visit him.
Finally enjoying pizza on a winter's day
The years-long effort to free him culminated in the joyous celebration on a cold, rainy Saturday.
Nearly 75 people jammed into the cramped council chambers at Haworth borough hall decorated with yellow balloons — with the crowd spilling into a corridor.
Few residents had met Sowore before. He was mostly known around town as the soccer dad and a runner. It didn’t seem to matter. In Haworth, there was plenty of warmth from residents who felt a mix of happiness and relief that Sowore had returned home.
“I’m not used to winter,” Sowore joked as he walked into the one-story borough hall, hugging supporters.
It had been 93 degrees on Friday when Sowore caught a flight from Nigeria. When he arrived in New Jersey, the temperature hovered in the mid-40s, with a nagging, cold rain.
“It felt unreal,” Sowore said earlier in a telephone interview with The Record and NorthJersey.com, after his flight from Nigeria touched down in Washington. “I’ve been gone for more than four years. I haven’t been in winter season in almost five years.”
Sowore had told friends he was looking forward to eating a slice of pizza. In Haworth, Gottheimer handed him a full pizza pie.
“There’s nothing like Jersey pizza, right?” Gottheimer said.
“This is what a community is all about, isn’t it?" Gottheimer said in remarks to the crowd. "Banding together around something we passionately believe in and knowing it’s right and not stopping until it gets done. This wouldn’t have happened without this beautiful community.”
As many in the crowd nodded, Gottheimer praised Sowore for “being strong” and "fighting for right and justice.”
“You believe in something and stand up for something," Gottheimer said, looking at Sowore. "That’s why you’re a hero.”
Alanna Zahn Davis, a Democratic councilwoman who organized the mothers group to assist Sowore’s family, called him “our warrior friend” who was “responsible for bringing all of these people together.”
“We came together as neighbors with a mission,” Davis said, also praising Sowore’s wife, Opeyemi, as a source of inspiration to the group.
In her own remarks, Opeyemi, a health care marketing consultant, said the “one silver lining” from the lonely days of wondering if her husband was safe was the “friendship and unbreakable bonds” that she forged with other women in Haworth. She also praised the continuing prayers by the borough's Sacred Heart Roman Catholic Church where she worships regularly.
“I’m so overwhelmed by the love that surrounds me and my family,” she said.
Sowore will have to return to Nigeria
For Sowore, the joy of his homecoming was tempered by the fact that he still has to return at some point to face yet one more charge of cyberstalking Nigeria’s former president. Muhammadu Buhari, 81, a former army general who left office last May.
Nigeria’s new president, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, had signaled for months that he was open to freeing Sowore. That’s why Sowore was allowed to leave Nigeria, authorities said.
But Nigerian prosecutors left the cyberstalking charge on the books.
Sowore said he remains confident the charge will be dismissed. But he still has to return to his homeland in the coming months for another court hearing.
“If I don’t go back, they are going to declare me wanted for not showing up in court and would issue a bench warrant,” Sowore told The Record and NorthJersey.com in an interview. “It’s not like it’s a big deal. It would be a strategy to keep me out of the country and make it impossible for me to travel to other countries.”
Such worries seemed far away on Saturday.
Sowore’s daughter, Ayomide, 17, a high school junior, read a poem describing her father as “a man with a big heart.”
Ayomide was 12 when her father was jailed in Nigeria. Except for some Face Time conversations, she had not seen him since then. Her brother, Komi, now 14 and an eighth grader, was only 9 when Sowore were imprisoned.
Mayor Wasser read a proclamation, which praised Ayomide, Komi, along with Sowore and Opeyemi.
“Reuniting this family is what this is all about,” Wasser said.
The celebration ended with Wasser’s daughter, Olivia, now a senior studying voice at Muhlenberg College in Pennsylvania, reprising an acapella rendition of “Amazing Grace” which she sung four years ago when Haworth residents first gathered for a candle-light vigil for Sowore and as they tied yellow ribbons around trees for “Yele.”
"I was a senior in high school when this happened," Olivia said afterwards.
Sowore said he heard of the candle-light vigil while in prison in Nigeria.
“That beacon of light warmed my heart,” he said.
And, back in Haworth, he now has a singular wish.
“I just want to rest and relax,” he said.
Mike Kelly is an award-winning columnist for NorthJersey.com, part of the USA TODAY Network, as well as the author of three critically acclaimed nonfiction books and a podcast and documentary film producer. To get unlimited access to his insightful thoughts on how we live life in the Northeast, please subscribe or activate your digital account today.
Email: kellym@northjersey.com
This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Omoyele 'Yele' Sowore: From Nigeria to joyful return in Bergen
