Excerpt (Transcribed from Sowore’s Speech) “Let me say so much thank you to the organizers of this event, and I want to thank some of my friends — people I have not seen in years.

I particularly want to single out a friend of mine at the back of the room; his name is Francis Ibikunle.

He taught me a lot of tactics in life. We attended the same secondary school together. He loved mathematics very well — I hated maths! He was one of those people who said, ‘Even if you don’t like mathematics, you can make it in life, but don’t ignore maths.’

He was my teacher in secondary school. You know when you have a guy who is more brilliant than you — and he’s always teaching you — but he did something more serious. We attended the University of Lagos together.

This guy follows me everywhere I go, and he was also very supportive of me throughout the university.

He was the first person to ever tell me to start a website. I didn’t know it was possible to operate a website as an individual — I was living in the U.S. — and he said, ‘You can create a website for yourself.’

After he left the university, people didn’t stop talking about him.

I said, ‘Francis, I have left Nigeria and want Nigeria to leave me alone,’ but he kept bugging me until the point I purchased a web address.

Francis was the first person to help me build SaharaReporters.com, and he has been the one who kept telling me that one day I can be president of Nigeria.

Thank you, Francis, for your dreams — they are about to come true. Thank you everybody for coming.”