Sahara Desert Reporters And The Reno Omokri’s Setup

On the 26th of February, SaharaReporters (also known to me as Sahara Desert Reporter), an online news reporting platform with physical presence in the United Kingdom, posted an article with the headline: “President Jonathan’s Social Media Aide Reno Omokri Exposed As Author Of Fake Document Linking Ousted CBN Governor To Boko Haram to the world”. I took time out of my very busy schedule to go through the lengthy piece not because i believed it even for a second, but because i want to see what the “desert” reporters has once again, cooked up.

One thing that very write-up will get anyone is anger, disappointment and a question of why “Sahara Desert Reporters” has thrown decency and professionalism out of the window in its bid to gain popularity and discredit President Jonathan’s administration.
Not surprised though but beaten to see that some high profiled Nigerians are looking for all means necessary not just to exonerate Sanusi Lamido Sanusi from his involvement in corruption, but also to publicly dent the name of President Goodluck Jonathan and his administration. They are applying different tactics to this effect but the question is, to what end? Is our struggle to raise one man on top of the other or are we struggling to better the lives of one another as a people from the same country, who share the same believe?

Looking at the various point for which the Sahara Desert Reporters based their one-sided argument, you’d find out that the whole thing is whacked, immature and a political setup by negatively shallow minds. They claimed to have found a Wendell Simlin on Facebook with only one photo. That the said photo had Mr. Reno Omokri in it. Assuming this is true, does that alone make Mr Omokri guilty or the account his? Shouldn’t Sahara Desert Reporters know better that in todays world, people with questionable character like themselves, create fictitious accounts to either blackmail or swindle others? For all i know, it could be Sahara Desert Reporters that planted that account and proceeded to deleting the account all in a bid to pin Mr. Omokri in an actionable process.

“Further circumstantial evidence, such as friendships on Facebook, including ‘liked’ pages, strongly linked the account of Mr. Simlin to Mr Omokri. Some Internet investigators also discovered that there was a lot of interaction linking the “shadowy” Mr. Simlin to Mr Omokri as far back as 2010.” This is the second line that boosted the confidence of Sahara Desert Reporters to self-indict Omokri. Even a crawling child in this technology age knows the extent ethical-crackers can go, should they wish to achieve their negative aims. In fact, what are the credentials of these so-called “Internet investigators”? What’s their pedigree and how can Sahara Desert Reporters prove beyond reasonable doubt, that they weren’t the ones that planted the invisible document?

I could go on and on in analysing the individual points listed in the write-up but it will be an action that drive to time wastage because Sahara Desert Reporters deep down inside of them, knows that Mr Reno Omokri is innocent of these accusations. They think that the number of times they lie, can suddenly make them appear truthful. Just because the Internet is freely available and anyone can setup a domain name with a hosting account, and a platform doesn’t mean people’s name and integrity should be smashed in the mod. If Sahara Desert Reporters wants to write they should, and find other alternative means of promoting it not through an embarrassing means. What Nigeria needs right now, are THINKERS who can help solveghe problems on ground not REAPERS who introduces more problem in order to make sales!

God Bless Nigeria!!!