When I read the charges against Omoyele Sowore, the publisher of Sahara Reporters, I laughed. Cyberstalking, insulting the President and other such ridiculous charges. Sowore has not lied against General Buhari even up to a quarter of the lies he told against Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, yet Jonathan never once contemplated arresting him.
If you say Omoyele Sowore is a liar, I will agree. He tells deliberate lies to destroy the reputation of those he is against, using his Sahara Reporters website. He has done it to me personally and to my boss. But neither Jonathan nor I ever contemplated his arrest
I sympathise with Omoyele Sowore, but I cannot help but feel that what is currently happening to him is self inflicted. I know his nature. By the grace of God, he will come out of prison, read this, and use saharareporters to savage my reputation. But, he created the Buhari Frankenstein monster.
What is happening between Sowore and Buhari is just a bromance gone sour. Nothing more, nothing less. Sowore is not just some innocent human right activist that General Buhari is persecuting. He was an ally of General Buhari, and sold him to Nigeria. We must not rewrite history or we will repeat it.
Using saharareporters, Sowore dishonestly DEMARKETED then President Jonathan as a “DRUNKARD”, a “SLOW POKE”, “CLUELESS” and MARKETED General Buhari as an “INCORRUPTIBLE”man who would “CRUSH” Jonathan, and was “BETTER” than GEJ.
In 2014, when then President Jonathan said “I am the most abused and insulted president in the world but when I leave office, you will all remember me for the total freedom you enjoyed under my government,” he was referring to Sowore and saharareporters. Nigerians mistook his tolerance for weakness.
Today, General Buhari is trying Sowore, his former partner in propaganda, for insulting him. If insulting a President is a crime, then both Buhari and Sowore are guilty of that crime due to what they did to then President Jonathan. But it is NOT a crime and Sowore should be freed! Sowore is not the victim here. The victim, who refused to be a victim, is former President Jonathan, who Sowore accused of thievery, yet all the former President’s children schooled in Nigeria while he was President. 5 Five years after leaving office, no one has found him wanting.
It is quite possible that people around Jonathan made money, just as people around General Buhari are making money. A President cannot be everywhere. But I am telling Nigerians, Jonathan was not the THIEF, DRUNKARD or WEAKLING that Sowore painted him to be. He is a God fearing man. To fear God is weakness to men like Sowore.
Then President Jonathan is MEEK. MEEKNESS is not WEAKNESS. MEEKNESS means you have POWER, but you RESTRAIN yourself from ABUSING it because you want to BUILD, not DESTROY. Moses was MEEK. Nigerians do not deserve a MEEK leader. We deserve General Buhari.
On more than four occasions, Omoyele Sowore visited Nigeria while Jonathan was President. We knew his whereabouts. He met then Governor or the Central Bank of Nigeria, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, and was in contact with General Buhari himself and Nasir Elrufai. But Jonathan never arrested him because he believed in FREEDOM of the PRESS. Perhaps Sowore thought he was dealing with a Democrat like Jonathan.
Sowore and saharareporters marketed Jonathan as a corrupt weakling. Yet, Jonathan would never have made a man indicted by the army for theft, as reported by Premium Times, a minister. Jonathan deported South Africans in retaliation when South Africa deported Nigerians. It is Buhari who is WEAK and CORRUPT.
The problem with the average Black African, and particular the Nigerian variety, is that we CRY over CONSEQUENCES, and LAUGH over ACTIONS, forgetting that CONSEQUENCE follows ACTIONS as DAY follows NIGHT. Sowore and Saharareporters are the ACTION. General Buhari is the CONSEQUENCE.
I look at those now shedding tears for Sowore and I remember when then President Jonathan’s son was crying because his classmates were laughing at him because they read on saharareporters that his father is a drunkard. Even children believed what they read on saharareporters!
Without Sowore, General Buhari would not have become President. That is an indisputable fact. He and Saharareporters poisoned the mind of Nigerians against then President Jonathan. As Christ said “offences will come: but woe unto him, through whom they come!”-Luke 17:1.
It is a different matter if Sowore and saharareporters used the truth to turn Nigerians against then President Jonathan, but they used lies. Deliberate and malignant lies. You cannot DESTROY another man and expect Providence to BUILD you up! ko le work!
What General Buhari has done to Sowore is a common Northern tactic. I lived in the North, so I know. Abacha used it on Abiola. He used Abiola to destroy Shonekan. After Abiola destroyed Shonekan’s government, he was of no use to Abacha, so Abacha threw him in jail!
General Buhari and Nasir Elrufai know what they used Sowore and saharareporters to achieve in destroying then President Jonathan. They are not fools. These guys are more political sophisticated than even Sowore knows. They will not sit idly and watch him do the same to them.
All of you were FOOLED when General Buhari rubbed mentholatum on his handkerchief and used it to induce crocodile tears. Shebi you are now seeing the genuine Buhari now? Who is crying today? Buhari or you? When we told you did you listen? Enjoy your Buhari!
General Buhari used Sowore and saharareporters against then President Jonathan and he will never let them be used against him. Sowore was naive. He should have known that the first person a feudal king kills is the kingmaker that brought him to the throne. So he can’t remove him from the same throne.
What an irony that Sowore used saharareporters to remove then President Jonathan from office, but today, he cannot use the same saharareporters to remove himself from jail. Don’t dig your enemy’s hole too deep so that when you fall into it, you can also escape.
This article was originally titled, “Sowore and Buhari: A Bromance Gone Sour!”
RenoOmokri
Thinker. #1 Bestselling author of Facts Versus Fiction: The True Story of the Jonathan Years. Avid traveller. Table Shaker. Buhari Tormentor. Sharer of the Gospel, not the gossip.