A Nigerian-born journalist and human rights activist who lives in Bergen County was arrested and charged while trying to organize a peaceful protest in his home country.

Owoyele Sowore, 48, and his wife, Opeyemi Sowore, live in Bergen County. He was in Nigeria for a business trip when he was arrested 51 days ago, on Aug. 2.

Sowore was charged Friday with three crimes: organizing a protest, insulting Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari and transferring U.S. money to a Nigerian account. He is being held in the Nigerian city of Abuja by a Nigerian intelligence agency.

During the second night of his trip, Opeyemi Sowore got a text from her husband saying he loved her.

"It came out of nowhere," Opeyemi Sowore said. Within an hour, she started getting repeated calls from his cousin. Her husband had been detained, she found out, because he was helping organize what she called a peaceful protest for Aug. 5.

Sowore is the founder and leader of Sahara Reporters, a pro-democracy, anti-corruption web news service.

"He wanted citizens to be able to report what they saw," Opeyemi Sowore said in a Sunday interview. "He would say, 'I am a citizen journalist.' That was one of the things he pioneered."

The site has been called “Africa’s WikiLeaks” and bills itself as "an outstanding, groundbreaking news website that encourages citizen journalists to report ongoing corruption and government malfeasance in Africa.”

Sowore launched the website in 2006 when the couple were living in Englewood. He moved the site's headquarters to Manhattan in 2008 with support from the Ford Foundation and the Global Information Network.

In New York, Sahara Reporters journalists cover stories more than 5,000 miles away. Founding the site here was a way for Sowore to escape chilling oversight by the Nigerian government, his wife said.

“Our reporters have a layer of protection they can’t have in Nigeria, where the police can arrest you and harass you,” Sowore told The New York Times in 2011. “They can’t bomb our offices. They can’t get the police to shut us down.”

Sowore and the site have been sued for libel in U.S. courts.

He will be arraigned at a Nigerian federal court on Tuesday, according to Sahara Reporters. Sowore hasn't yet had a day in court despite efforts by his legal team, including prominent human rights lawyer Femi Falana.

He was held for four or five days without officially being charged, and no warrant was issued for his arrest, his wife said. Sowore is among at least five journalists and activists behind bars in Nigeria.

Since his arrest, Sowore has had contact with his wife and two children, ages 10 and 12, just twice, Opeyemi Sowore said.

"The calls were heavily monitored," she said.

After she gave an interview to U.S.-based nonprofit broadcast outlet Democracy Now! a few weeks ago, the Nigerian government cut off all communication, she added.

Owoyele Sowore has used the word "revolution" to promote democratic governance, including in the protest he was organizing in August, which called for education, security, infrastructure and fair wages, Opeyemi Sowore said, but the Nigerian government, she said, sees the term as negative.

Opeyemi Sowore called the charges against her husband "frivolous" and said they also stemmed from his criticism of the Nigerian president during a TV interview and movement of between $15,000 and $16,000 to a Nigerian bank to pay salaries of Sahara Reporters journalists working in Nigeria, she said.

"This is basically a violation of his human rights," Opeyemi Sowore said.

A protest supporting Sowore's release was held last week in front of the Nigerian Embassy in New York. A second one is planned for Tuesday, when the Nigerian president will be in New York for the United Nations General Assembly.

Nearly 50 human rights and press freedom organizations last month united to file an urgent appeal with the U.N. on Sowore's behalf.

Prominent Nigerian human rights activists have decried his incarceration. Twitter users reacted with the hashtag #FreeSoworeNow, calling on the Buhari administration to release him.

Amnesty International described the charges by the Nigerian government as “a misuse of the criminal system to silence critics and opposition.”

According to press freedom advocacy group Reporters Without Borders, Nigerian journalists “are often threatened, subjected to physical violence or denied access to information by government officials, police and sometimes the public itself.”

The organization ranks Nigeria 120th of 180 countries on its World Press Freedom Tracker.

Email: shanesa@northjersey.com