News reports that Adeboye was taken to court after making a social media post about the singer’s daughter.

Reacting to the development, Sowore referenced an old post by Adekunle Gold in which the singer had criticised former President Goodluck Jonathan.

He noted that the post, which circulated during the 2012 fuel subsidy protests, had gone unpunished as an expression of free speech. The post read: “Dear God, if you give us Dagrin back, we will give you Jonathan in return.”

Sowore wrote on X: “@AdekunleGold in 2012 openly criticising then-President @GoodluckJonathan. Back then, it was rightly called free speech, and if he had been arrested for those tweets, we would have been on the streets demanding his immediate release.

“How then does someone who benefited from freedom of expression turn around years later to use the police, courts, and the brutal cybercrime framework against ordinary Nigerians over online banter and social media exchanges?

“You cannot enjoy free speech when you are powerless, and criminalise it the moment you become influential. Freedom of expression must apply to everyone, celebrities, politicians, activists, and poor young Nigerians on social media alike.”

He further urged the Nigeria Police Force not to act as a “private army” for influential individuals, and called on the judiciary to avoid imposing excessive penalties on online speech cases that, according to him, should not be treated as criminal matters.

Kwankwaso made the appeal during an interview with Trust TV on Sunday, where he spoke on political alignments ahead of the polls.

The former presidential candidate of the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) said political success in Nigeria cannot be achieved by the North or Muslims alone without support from Christians and other regions.

“We must look beyond tribe and religion. We are Northerners and Muslims, and everybody knows that, but we can’t play politics without Christians, Southeast, South-South or South-west,” he said.

Kwankwaso also praised former Labour Party presidential candidate Peter Obi, describing him as a widely accepted politician across the country.

“If you look at it, Peter Obi is a very popular politician in the entire South and many parts of Northern Nigeria, and you cannot take that from him, the same with the Kwankwasiyya movement,” he said.

He further noted that supporters of the Kwankwasiyya movement are largely young Nigerians who are seeking better opportunities rather than ethnic or family-based loyalty.

“We are lucky that our supporters are mainly young men and women who are looking for a way out. They are not looking for their brothers or their sisters or somebody close,” he added.