Activist and presidential candidate under the African Action Congress party, Omoyele Sowore, has declared that he would appoint a drone as his minister of defence if he became Nigeria’s president.
He made the statement during a live interview on Arise TV on Thursday.
“If I become Nigeria’s president tomorrow, my minister of defence will be a drone. That’s how much I believe in technology,” Sowore said.
The AAC flagbearer argued that Nigeria’s security crisis required an urgent technological overhaul, saying the country needed equipment, technology, and “honest leaders and supervisors and officers” to tackle the challenge.
He said the military had been let down by commanders unwilling to leave the capital.
“We have to have honest leaders and supervisors and officers who are not staying in Abuja fighting over land but actually fighting wars, generals who can actually strategise and do what is right,” he said.
Sowore also called for a police force refocused on its core mandate.
“A police force that can carry out internal security of the country, not escorting people or arresting people for insulting others on Facebook,” he said.
He described his vision of a command-and-control security architecture built around drones and artificial intelligence.
“I’m just going to have a control centre where people sit down and track terrorists and liquidate them,” he said.
When the interviewer suggested he could go further by making artificial intelligence his minister of defence, Sowore agreed.
“That’s part of it. And that drone will fly everywhere,” he said.
The activist stressed, however, that technology alone would not end insecurity.
He said any lasting solution must address the conditions driving young people towards militancy.
“Ultimately, you must create a society where people can find jobs and go to school, and not be willing to take up arms,” he said.
Sowore had made a similar remark in January 2026 during an interview on Channels TV, where he first floated the drone-minister idea.
Source: The Punch
