Have all the politicians who want SaharaReporters gone finally found a way?

In Nigeria, there aren’t many media houses that take the pain to dig into the affairs of top government officials and even prominent individuals; uncovering corrupt practices. The now defunct NEXT founded by Pulitzer winner, Dele Olojede tried but packed up after 7 short years.  SaharaReporters has been around for about 11 years now and in that time, the media house has broken its fair share of exclusive scandalous news. From breaking the news about Yar’Adua’s health status to Stella Oduah’s N225 million armoured BMW cars scandal; James Ibori, Peter Odili, Godswill Akpabio, and more recently, the members of the allegedly corrupt cabal in President Buhari’s cabinet and even the wife of the President, Mrs. Aisha Buhari.

The online news media has not limited its tentacle to government either, digging into affairs of corporations like AIT and telco giant, MTN. SaharaReporters has proven itself to be unafraid to challenge the powers that be and of course, the site and all those associated with it must have come within the crosshairs of many wounded politicians.

As can be expected, a website of its kind would have lots of enemies and SaharaReporters is not lacking for this. Even among ordinary citizens, it would appear. The events that have transpired this week involving the arrest of SaharaReporters founder, Omoyele Sowore in Lagos goes a long way to show that it may have had its time as the shining star of rebellious news reportage.

Mired by what many have called news and feature articles based solely on conjectures, supposition and sometimes, outright falsehood, the reputation that the platform gained from leaking news of President Yar’Adua’s sickness to Nigerians in 2009 has waned. The fact that private citizens have begun to point out inconsistencies and even outright hilarities adds to the momentum that has been building up against Sowore’s Sahara.

Last year, in the midst of the allegations against Senate President, Bukola Saraki, SaharaReporters published this photos as proof that the Senator and former governor of Kwara State was not even Nigerian:

Before this, the website had put up a publication casting aspersions on the character and integrity of the Judge who was to hear Saraki’s application to the court to quash his corruption trial at the Code of Conduct Tribunal. Anchoring much of their claims on how rich the Judge, Justice Kafarati, was, the article claimed that he had several petitions pending against him with the EFCC and the National Judicial Council.

The Justice was forced to withdraw from the matter in the interest of the overall integrity of the judicial system. It is the same kind of vigour and confidence they used to publish this story that they applied when in 2014, the publication ridiculed a sitting President as being “drunk to stupor” and before then, the story about 53 gold-plated iPhones.

It cannot be overemphasized, Sahara Reporters has made itself into public enemy number one. And now, it appears the enemies they have made; from Musiliu Obanikoro to Patience Jonathan and Reno Omokri have come for them through fellow journalist, Lekan Fatodu.

Fatodu has made very heavy claims that SaharaReporters’ Omoyele Sowore requested a N100 million cut from him from a N500 million deal the former had with the ex-National Security Adviser. Fatodu claims that his refusal to give in to Sowore’s blackmail has led to threats to his life and as can be expected, defamation of character on the website. However, what the site reported was that Fatodu had acted as a front for Femi Fani-Kayode in diverting money meant for Nigerian Armed Forces fighting Boko Haram.

The complainant issued a statement where he disclosed that he wants to take legal action against the owner of the SaharaReporters website.

The line of attack of every politician ever smeared by the website has always been that Sowore gets paid by “enemies” to write scandalous things about them. If Lekan Fatodu were to be successful in pursuing his claims to fruition and securing the conviction of Sowore, all of the politicians who have been smeared by Sahara’s “public conscience” campaign will finally heave a collective sigh of relief.

SaharaReporters currently enjoys relatively low goodwill from the public at this point, based on the barrage of complaints against the site by private citizens and seemingly unbiased readers, and in comparison to 2006 when it was blowing hot on truly scandalous events. If this attempt to prosecute Omoyele Sowore on charges of criminal blackmail is successful, it will only serve one purpose – to finally dismiss SaharaReporters as an unreliable news source.

Sowore on his part has said that he has never received any bribe from anyone and certainly not Fatodu, but coming on the heels of the yet unresolved WhatsApp conversation that was circulated last year purporting to show that suspended legislator, Abdulmumin Jibrin had in August provided Sowore some documents detailing how the money in the controversial budget padding scandal was shared between him and the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara.

The conversation claims Mr. Jibrin asked Sowore to do a publication about it and ensure it was re-written to convince readers that Mr. Dogara wrote everything. The two of them denied ever having any such conversation but other than that, there has been hardly any other proof to show the conversation never took place. For Sowore’s enemies, that was a missed opportunity that may be capitalized upon in this fresh allegation.

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