In January 2025, I deployed my Ray-Ban Meta AI glasses to combat a notorious Nigeria Police extortion team stationed on the Murtala Mohammed International Airport road in Lagos.
Instead of rounding up the officers and punishing them, the illegal IGP Kayode Egbetokun ordered my arrest.
I was subsequently charged before a Federal High Court, with the absurd claim that by filming these corrupt police officers, I had engaged in cybercrime; they even presented their statements in court as part of evidence to pursue a criminal trial that has so far stalled.
The presiding judge, Justice M.S. Liman of the Federal High Court in Abuja, granted me bail only after seizing my international passport. Subsequently, he flipped out during one of the few trials he held when he asked, and I disclosed I was wearing medicated Ray-Ban Meta AI eyeglasses, which he’d never heard of before.
Later, during the historic #PoliceProtest at the Nigeria Police Force Headquarters, the Force Public Relations Officer, Muyiwa Adejobi, deployed his cameraman, Victor Chiemerie Aku, to forcibly snatch my Ray-Ban Meta AI glasses. The entire incident was captured on video.
Following this theft, I immediately lodged a criminal complaint at the Nigeria Police Force
office in Asokoro. To this day, nothing has been done. Instead, the same stolen glasses were eventually (quietly) returned to me by DCP Akin Fakorede of the IGP Monitoring Unit, but only after they realized they could not access the content stored on the device.
How then can such a Nigeria Police Force, drowning in corruption and impunity, be trusted when it issues “official statements” condemning junior officers on the streets of Lagos for carrying out extortion at checkpoints that are, in fact, sanctioned by their senior commanders?
This episode lays bare the power of technology, and it tells why Nigerian rulers hate technological advancement of any kind; however, these digital efforts is part of a digital revolutionary effort that will ultimately overthrow Nigeria’s corrupt, insensitive, and useless status quo.
And if anyone doubts this, they need only listen to what All Progressives Congress Senator Bamidele Opeyemi, the Nigerian Senate Chief Whip and a close associate of Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu himself, admitted when he described social media use as a “national threat.”
The fear of technology by those in power is precisely why digital resistance has become their greatest enemy and, I dare say, nemesis.
Let me also salute the courage of the young man in Lagos who stood up to those corrupt policemen that day, his resistance immortalized on video. His bravery is proof that Nigerians will no longer fold their arms in silence.
I urge every citizen to protect themselves by arming up with body cams, AI glasses, dashboard cameras, and other digital tools and devices that can expose brutality, prevent cover-ups, and ultimately save lives.
The era of darkness and impunity is coming to an end. Technology is our witness, and the revolt must be AI-powered if we are to defeat the old order.
Omoyele Sowore
Credit: Facebook
