Human rights activist Omoyele Sowore has made a fresh revelation about the 2020 #EndSARS protests, alleging that Afrobeat superstar Davido was threatened with a murder investigation just moments before a meeting with the then Inspector General of Police — and immediately withdrew from the movement.
Speaking on The Honest Bunch podcast, Sowore offered what he described as behind-the-scenes details of how the Nigerian government handled the protest movement.
“#EndSARS had leaders, but the problem was that the government didn’t want it to be led by people they cannot control,” he said.
The Abuja Meeting That Changed Everything
Sowore alleged that Davido had been an active and consistent participant in #EndSARS meetings, until a trip to Abuja to meet with former Inspector General of Police Mohammed Adamu changed things.
According to Sowore, security operatives confronted the singer with a damaging allegation on his way into the meeting.
“Davido was attending every #EndSARS meeting. When he got to Abuja to meet with the IGP, before he got upstairs, they were telling him they want to investigate him for the murder of one of his aides,” Sowore alleged. “By the time he got upstairs, he said, ‘I didn’t come to Abuja to protest.'”
The claim, if accurate, suggests that authorities leveraged a pre-existing legal vulnerability against the artist to neutralise his participation in the movement.
Intimidation as a Tool of Protest Suppression
Sowore’s account paints a broader picture of a government strategy aimed at identifying and exploiting pressure points against high-profile protest voices, rather than engaging with the movement’s demands directly.
The #EndSARS protests erupted across Nigeria in October 2020, driven by widespread public anger over documented cases of extortion, torture, and extrajudicial killings by the Special Anti-Robbery Squad, a now-disbanded police unit.
The demonstrations drew participation from celebrities, civil society figures, and millions of ordinary Nigerians, before being violently dispersed — most infamously at the Lekki toll gate in Lagos, where soldiers opened fire on unarmed protesters on October 20, 2020.
Sowore’s latest disclosures have reignited public debate over who bears responsibility for the movement’s collapse — and whether key figures were coerced into silence.
Neither Davido nor representatives of the Nigeria Police Force have responded publicly to Sowore’s claims as of the time of this report.
