My attention has been drawn to the trash published in Saharareporters.com by Omoyele Sowore, the sole owner of that blog, alleging that I, Daniel Elombah, have ever been hired in any capacity by Mr. James Ibori, the convicted former Governor of Delta State. That trash was titled, ‘Ibori Won’t Serve Prison Term In Nigeria’, on 29 February, 2012. It would have been a simple matter of me flatly debunking such a senseless and vain fabrication by Mr. Sowore, but in view of Sowore’s known agenda for attempting to tar me with any such association with Ibori, it would be in good order for me to further inform the pubic concerning Mr. Sowore and Saharareporters’ motives.
This fabrication that Sowore published about me is consistent with his modus operandi since he established the poisonous fraud that his Saharareporters has come to be in the past few years. Whenever it sooths Sowore’s whims and despicable machinations, he would use his Saharareporters.com to spew unimaginable falsehoods against people. Usually, he does it either for blackmail purpose and some bizarre and insane objective.
Despite all the information available to our on-line news portal, the Elombah.com, consistently showing that Sowore has demanded blackmail money from people, failure to pay which he threatened to publish damaging but untrue stories about them and their families on Saharareporters.com, and such other criminal activities, I have refrained from publishing these stories about Sowore and Saharareporters to avoid any perception of an undue attack on a rival.
Yet, we remained dismayed and greatly troubled by the damage and destruction that Sowore and Saharareporters have wrought on so many innocent people. Yes, it is true that some of the people that Saharareporters have written about are truly corrupt. Indeed, most Nigerian public officials are corrupt. Yet, it remains wrong and dangerous for Saharareporters to hide behind the veneer of that Nigerian reality to tarnish certain innocent people with utter impunity. Also, it is wrong for him to make money out of people’s desire not to be subjected to false light. Even in cases where an official is corrupt, there is still no basis to exaggerate or falsify records as Saharareporters has repeatedly done. Also, the fact that Sowore guessed one out of every 20 stories right, does not obviate the fact that the remaining 19 stories are fabrication and that innocent people are thereby damaged.
Clearly, Sowore and Saharareporters have hoodwinked the gullible Nigerian public and some people outside Nigeria in the most basic manner known to all fraudsters. He juxtaposes perception with false realities. He has ridden on that practice for way too long now. He acquired powers and access, which he has used to enrich himself. But like in all cases of life, the truth will eventually catch up with every lie. The emergence of alternative on-line news has continued to deny Sowore and Saharareporters the monopoly they needed to continue the evil practice of intimidation, blackmail and extortion. It has been much anticipated that some day, Sowore and Saharareporters will bare their fangs at these rival sources. And what you have seen in the story in question is just one such moment.
Unlike Sowore, Elombah.com has attempted to operate above the passions and sensationalism of the moment, especially where such departures from standard are driven by personal greed and ambitions such as the case with Saharareporters. Two events in recent times have cast Elombah.com as the opposite of Saharareporters. First, last year, Saharareporters carried an extremely false and incendiary sensation against the family of the late Dim Chukwuemeka Odumgwu Ojukwu. He falsely claimed that the Ikemba was on life support, in a coma and almost dead, when he was not. Sowore also false reported that Ikemba’s wife, Bianca Ojukwu had abandoned him in the hospital, and was living with her lover when in fact the lady was by his bedside throughout.
And in the most shameless fashion imaginable, he fabricated stories of infidelity and dishonor against the poor Mrs. Ojukwu. That report and the outcry it raised forced Elombah.com to actually travel to Royal Berkshire Hospital in Reading, United Kingdom, where the Ikemba was being treated to ascertain for itself the truth. And lo and behold, the truth was so different from what Sowore reported in Saharareporters. Indeed, there was nothing that could be likened to what was reported. The world was aghast and from the moment I reported my findings, people, on their own, began to come to grips with the fact that there is no truth in Saharareporters stories.
Also, recently, Elombah.com felt the need to follow the lawsuit that Emeka Ugwuonye filed in American federal court against Saharareporters for defamation and false light. We have known about that case since the past 3 years. But we refrained from publishing most of the stories until we knew how the case was going. After several desperate efforts on the part of Sowore to kill that case failed, notwithstanding Ugwuonye’s exceptional travails in Nigeria, the case has now moved to the critical stage of discovery. At present, Sowore is now having to answer the kind of questions he never expected in his life and to face a level of scrutiny unprecedented in his experience. After due consideration, we contacted both parties for information and we approached the court as well. Our recent reporting – two days ago, is evidently exposing the erstwhile-unknown truths about the shady practices of Saharareporters and its owner, Omoyele Sowore. That rankles them so much. And today’s story about me and Ibori is just a desperate rash-out from a desperate and drowning dream and extraordinary ambitions of Sowore.
Furthermore, as people read more stories about the abusive and even criminal conducts of Sowore in America, more stories are reaching us from hundreds of people who have had extraordinarily nasty experience with that man going back to the time he was a cult member and a bloody menace to his fellow students in the University of Lagos.
For instance, upon reading our story on Saharareporters and the libel case in America, Emeka Ogbonna wrote us, narrating how his chance encounter with the “President of the Students’ Union called Sowore and his boys” nearly cost his his life and said: “”I’ve just seen the photo of the Omoyele Soworo of Sahara Reporters and I realised he was a former students’ union president of University of Lagos. He use to go by the nickname “Sho.” I remember that when he left unilag he join the civil society movement. My encounter with him as Unilag students’ union president was not a good one. That experience gives me the impression that if he were to be one of the political leaders he often criticizes, he would do worse things. I keep the details of the encounter for another day.”
Elombah.com shall continue to follow the case in America notwithstanding this blatant intimidation by Saharareporters and Sowore.
