When You Fight Power, It Fights You Back — Sowore Of Sahara Reporters
Their
brand of journalism marks them out for constant official scrutiny. The
name Sahara Reporters means different things to different people. While
some credit it with having changed the face of online journalism in
Nigeria, others see it as precursors of a brand of confrontational
in-your-face journalism which most of the later entrants have abused.
Take
it or leave it, Sahara Reporters has earned a reputation as having had
the courage to take on every government that has come into power since
Nigeria's return to democracy 13 years ago. Some see it as having
neither friends nor enemies in the dispensation of its duties, others
see it as highly opinionated, but whichever shade of the argument you
see it from, it has become a force to reckon with in the Nigerian media
industry.
Operating from its Seventh floor office in West 29th
Street in Manhattan, New York, OMOYELE SOWORE transmits both Sahara
Reporters and Sahara TV, feeding a host of Nigerians with breaking news.
National Daily's Head, Special Investigation and Crime Desk,
AHAOMA KANU, was at the Sahara Reporters Head office in New York and had
this interview with the man behind this citizen journalism movement.
Excerpts:
SAHARA
Reporters and Sahara TV have become so huge in followership, readers
and viewers that I want to ask if it is becoming a corporation.
I
am uncomfortable describing what we are doing here as a corporation
because it will look like we are part of a conspiracy to take away
people's power by way of making profit. No, it is not a corporation but a
compact platform for citizen reporters' movement; I will love to call
this a media movement as opposed to being a corporation, that's the way I
see it. I don't know if it's huge yet but I think it's an idea whose
time has come in the sense that Nigerian citizens and by extension,
African citizens, have found an alternative avenue to voice their
opinions .This is what I love to call the main street media as against
mainstream media. Another word that I love to use is disruptive media;
it disrupts the official formal means of mass communication and gives
power back to ordinary citizens to decide how their news is written,
presented and told. And also, because of its interactive nature, people
have a way of determining how the final news reaches the final
consumers. So we find ourselves in a situation where people who
otherwise are consumers of news have become producers of news.
What would you say is behind the drive?
Again,
I will like to say that the time of this particular idea has come and
it's just the timing first and foremost. I also don't want to ignore the
fact that people made a lot of sacrifices and contributions. I said in a
recent conference that part of the reason why SR was successful is
because Nigeria is a bad place for governance, there are a lot of people
in government who actually prefer better governance than they have. It
is from these kinds of people we get information that are later
processed and re-transmitted to the ordinary citizens and they take it
and run. I hate when I read news and I see this all the time, the person
who committed a crime is unnamed, the victim of the crime is unnamed
because your news was written by lawyers. No, I want specifics; I am not
afraid. In a lot of times, the issue of news reporting in a continent
like Africa is not about law; it's about justice. And sometimes, in some
cases, reporting news in a justifiable way will have to go beyond the
boundaries of law. So, the motivation is this, I come from an activism
background; I used to be a student activist in the 90s and I always
wished that newspapers could do more. And when newspapers went out of
business in my opinion, digital media came in.
(Cuts in) Which year did that happen in your opinion?
I don't know exactly but I will love to say that newspapers have gone to the museum and it's the best place it should be.
Can you be specific?
I
think in the mid 2000s newspapers began to fade out and I say this
because I know statistically today that even the best newspaper don't
have more than 120,000 people subscribing to them. But if we publish a
breaking news story that affects a lot of people, an investigative piece
that reveals government secrets, within an hour of our publication, we
can get up to 200,000 people viewing that particular story. It makes it
possible for us to get up to 8 million page viewing in a month.
You studied Geography as a first degree, when did the transformation to journalism happen?
Yes
I studied Geography at the University of Lagos and I will tell you that
my interest was on Ground water Hydrology; if anything in this world
interests me it is how to provide water to ordinary people on a regional
basis. That was what I wanted to do when I graduated from the
University of Lagos. When I came to the United States, I actually went
to Columbia University School of International Studies to study Public
Administration; my interest was to protect the interest of ordinary
people by using public policy but I have never practiced any of those
things. I developed interest in the media when I found out that every
person can actually publish and, you didn't mention it, my first trial
was with Elendu Reports. I had this guy that I had never met before,
Jonathan Elendu and we started publishing. What we were doing around the
world was going around the world looking for properties owned by
Nigerian officials, taking the pictures of those properties and
extracting from public information outlets and publish them. In fact,
the person that made me popular was Orji Kalu the former Governor of
Abia State then. He granted me an interview saying that Olusegun
Obasanjo was very corrupt and a killer and I published it through the
Guardian. The moment the news hit the stands, he (Orji Kalu) denied it;
he said he never talked to Sowore, he is a strange element. That was how
I started. The real coming to light of this brand of journalism was
when I was travelling to Nigeria by sneaking through Benin Republic and I
met Olugbenga Obasanjo. The reason we met was that he was travelling to
avoid publicity in Benin Republic while I was travelling to avoid
arrest; we met at the border. I had been arrested by the Customs but
they did not really know who I was; they wanted to collect bribe from me
for the goods that they thought was contraband. He met me and asked the
Custom officers to release me. When we were discussing and I mentioned
who I was, he was shocked and said, “I know you. You write those crazy
things about my dad.” And I did not deny it. He then said, he love one
thing we did, “when you were writing your news about my brother buying a
house at Brooklyn, you said it wasn't me but the Nigeria media said it
was Gbenga Obasanjo and I think you did a good job on that.” That was
how we kind of merged together and he took me in his car and for four
hours we talked and I published everything he told me and that changed
the entire media industry in Nigeria as at 2005. By February 2006, we
started publishing SR because by then, my colleague, Jonathan Elendu,
had decided on a different trajectory; he wanted to become a consultant
for politicians which I was not cut out for.
Let's look at the
ideology behind SR, many are of the opinion that SR focuses more on the
negatives while ignoring the positives, what's your take on that?
No,
I disagree with that. I think that it is an excuse for mis-governance
for people to talk about the negatives and positives. One thing I have
always told people is that if governance is positive, you cannot make a
negative version of it but if governance is negative, you cannot make a
positive of it. A lot of people have fallen into the baloney that you
can just put Nigeria as the giant of Africa in this fake place where you
can say we are doing so well but we have no roads; we are doing so well
and we have no hospitals; we are doing so well and we have no schools;
we are doing so well and there is no hope, there is no infant mortality
care; we can't take care of our pregnant women; we are doing so well and
we have no electricity, no water. Even if you combine all these
scenarios that I have just mentioned, you have to be a magician to
present Nigeria in a positive way. But some few elitist young people
feel that you have to present the fake and fallacious Nigeria. I am
saying that that doesn't last for five seconds. One of the things that I
ask for and we practice here is if somebody is going to talk about
Nigeria being a fake state, a failed nation, I want it to be from a
Nigerian; I don't want it to be a CNN reporter; I don't want it to be an
Al-Jazeera reporter. Let it come from the mouth of Nigerians and say
look we prefer and deserve a better nation and not to say that when the
desirable is not available, the available becomes the desirable.
When you started this movement called SR, did you think it will get this far?
I
didn't know; I was surprised. I started SR to see if I could have a
platform to catch up with the rest of the world and it turned out to be
the thing the rest of the world is trying to catch up with because I
found our news to be headline news on CNN, BBC and you know, think about
all the mainstream media; they cashed in on our breaking news. You know
we had the UN building bombing of August 26th 2011 and everybody used
our pictures when the reporters couldn't get there. We had the Nigerian
underwear bomber, Abdumutallab and nobody knew who he was until we
published his picture.
Talking about that particular incident,
the underwear bomber, how did you feel seeing CNN use the picture you
published of that young man?
I didn't know until I started getting calls that we were on CNN and BBC.
How did you get that picture so fast when even big media organizations in the United States could not get it?
It's
very simple and I will reveal it for the first time to you today. It
was a difficult but strategic decision. We have citizen reporters that
we communicate with and we said to them on that day, “there is a guy who
is Nigerian and has been accused of trying to bomb an airline, do you
know him?” And we sent out emails to all our supporters. Someone got
back and said, I went to school with him in Togo. And before we knew it,
five minutes later, we got a class photograph were he appeared. We
cropped out his face and put it on. Five minutes later, it was on CNN
and because CNN referenced us, our website shut down because it was
being accessed by so many people. So that was how it started. But don't
forget that before the underwear bomber, we also had pictures of Yar
Adua's son holding a gun in Aso Rock.
You have stepped on so many
toes with your expository stories on corruption and corrupt government
officials, are you not afraid for your life considering that some of
these persons being exposed are influential and may put a prize on your
head to get you assassinated even here in New York?
I have said
this before, if you are ever afraid of death or assassination or threat
to your life, you should never go after powerful people. I have said to
myself, we have been at the receiving end of fear, intimidation, threats
and danger; it is time we turn that around. And we have had a simple
tool of technology, digital technology to turn that around and that's
what I did. It is time that the people who are actually the consummate
criminals start being afraid of the people who are being robbed, being
deprived and denigrated. And that's what the tool is about for me, to
turn the engine of fear on the perpetrators of fear, perpetrators of
corruption and fraud. And that's why I do this. If I were to be killed
today, I will be a happy man.
As a reporter that covers crime
investigations, I know the essence of security, it was so easy to walk
into your office here in New York; there were no guards, security doors
and all that, how careful are you with your security?
I am happy
you said you are a crime reporter and you investigate crime even in
Nigeria. Now tell me how many bodyguards you have to protect yourself
against the people you investigate? Perhaps nothing; you came here
without a bodyguard too. My best bodyguard is my conscience and I have
said it before, if you want to fight power, you can't afford to invest
too much on bodyguards because when the chips are down bodyguards would
disappear even bulletproof vest would not work. So I will say again that
if they are to catch up with me, I will be a happy man that has lived a
life of fulfilment. When Martin Luther King Jnr was killed, they found
the heart of a 60 year old in a 39 year old body.
So many people
back in Nigeria believe that you are kind of involved in some spiritual
protection schemes courtesy of what you wear, do you patronize such?
No.
Everything you see me wear is for African Pride. Somebody asked me one
day why I wear all these things and I said because it's cheap. If I were
to be wearing a golden necklace, nobody would ever ask me that; if
these were gold, I would earn respect and adulations for wearing golden
cowries. If I were to wear six golden cowries, everybody would love to
just have a handshake with me; if my tooth were to be made of gold,
people will love me. But I am saying this is made in Africa; poor people
make these on the streets and I patronize them, I love them. If anybody
thinks that any of these things can save you, that person is not only
silly but unscientific. I also wear a cross by the way which was given
to me by a friend and the reason why I wear a cross is not because I am
religious.
How religious are you?
I have no religious inclination.
Are you a Christian?
No. I was born a Christian but I do not believe in organized religion.
Why?
It is because Christianity has become part of the corporate structure of the world.
What challenges do you have running SR?
Our
biggest challenge is finding funding but we are in existence because we
believed that once this works, it will take care of itself. But we have
been lucky to have some U.S foundations supporting our work. That has
made it possible for us to expand in our influence and existence. But it
is not about that, the reason we are what we are today is not because
we have any form of funding but because we have legitimacy, acceptance
and integrity.
Do you get any kind of support from Nigeria for
your operations and talking about getting support from U.S foundations,
are you not afraid they might want to influence what you do?
No,
if we don't tell you who our supporting foundations are you won't even
know because we make it clear to even the foundations that you cannot
tell us what to do and it is based on that agreement that we exist
today. So nobody tells us what to do. But for your information, we also
have some Nigerian corporations and businesses that are advertising on
our website and supporting our work. And we are the only one, in my
view, that can tell an advertiser what is possible. For example, if
anybody is advertising, we make it clear just as Fela would do in those
days, your advert money has no power over our editorial policy.
Some
media organizations in Nigeria somehow lost the flame of their vibrancy
following the elapsing of the military regime, what will it take for SR
to follow similar route?
We are not going to mellow down. People
always say that maybe if we have an Eldorado we will mellow down and
the question I ask is, the U.S democracy has been around for many years
and people are still protesting in 2012. People still go to the World
Trade Organizations to occupy. So this is what it is about; governments
can never be perfect and you need a media that is always scrutinizing
the government for them to do the right thing. It is my hope for as long
as I am alive that SR, Sahara TV or any other platform that is created
from this concern continues to hold the feet of government to fire.
Looking at what you do, you should have a big library of archives, how big is that?
I don't know but everything is online and searchable.
To what extent would you say cyber attacks have affected your operations?
Every
time we upload a story, it is duplicated in several places that it is
sheer waste of time to hack the main site; we keep them in different
places. We have them in hard drives, soft drives and even if the attack
is coming, it is temporary.
How often do these attacks come?
It
has reduced in frequency by the way because it has become a waste of
time for people who attack us but the most important thing for us is to
keep the spirit, lethal and electronic life of SR alive and this is by
pre-duplication of every story. So even if you attack us, by the time we
are back online, everything is intact and that's what's important.
You have had a couple of lawsuits and have gotten out and evaded all the suits, how has these happened?
It
is not by way of evasion; all the lawsuits we had have somehow come
from the Nigerian government. The first person to sue us is now the
Director-General of the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration
and Control (NAFDAC) Dr Paul Orhii. He actually got that job because he
promised the Yar Adua government that he could shut us down. We got
legal support and overcame him but he is having a good life in Nigeria
stealing money as the rest of them. And we went on and got sued by
another individual, Emeka Ugwuonye who helped the Nigerian government
sell some real estate in Washington D.C and Maryland; that case is still
in play. But the interesting thing is that the Nigerian government
turned against him and now they are fighting themselves. But it was
originally a lawsuit initiated by the Yar Adua government. The third
person that sued us was actually pushed and supported by the Nigerian
Permanent Representative at the United Nations, Prof. Joy Ogwu. He got
indicted by the FBI in a different case and he abandoned the case he had
with us. I am just giving you all these information so you can
understand that all the legal issues we have are somehow been inspired
and sponsored by the Nigeria government except that of Emeka Ugwuonye
who is now caught up in this complex fight against the Nigerian
government and the judge has not ruled finally. It is expected that when
you fight power, it fights back and we are not an exception and we
expect more of these will happen. Again, we are lucky in the sense that
they are coming after us with lawsuits and assassinations but I know we
will get there. You must have probably read from Boko Haram when they
mentioned that they would come after us but none of these will deter us
because it is not about our persons; it is not about our businesses; it
is not about our corporate existence, it is about an idea whose time has
come. Even if they kill all of us, another set of people will emerge.
Just
mentioning Boko Haram, after the group mentioned SR in one of their
broadcasts, it now seems that SR has become a kind of mouthpiece for
Boko Haram. Is SRs reporting of Boko Haram activities not promotional
for the group?
No, I think people misconceive our position; we
have always been accused of promoting Boko Haram from the government
side. The first time the government went and killed the leaders of Boko
Haram extra judicially, we were the first to procure the video where
they killed the leader of Boko Haram and said that this is extra
judicial killing and it was going to come back and bite Nigeria. So we
have always said it that human rights is a separate issue from law
enforcement especially extra judicial law enforcement. So we have always
been accused of supporting Boko Haram, in fact we were accused of
supporting Buhari but those are small, little ways of blackmailing media
houses and we understand it. And then, when Boko Haram was going
overboard, for us it was a human rights issue and we did take on Boko
Haram as an informal or extra governmental body perpetrating human
rights abuses and that's why Boko Haram came after us. So what that
tells you is that even if it is between government and Boko Haram, we
will take on anybody that violates human rights.
If not reporting the activities of Boko Haram helps in a way to curtail their activities, will you toe that line of thought?
No,
I think reporting all sides is very important because the government
has tried to do it; they tried to prevent people from reporting Boko
Haram as a way of stopping their activities but it has been over one
year after that line of thought prevailed in Nigeria and Boko Haram has
gotten stronger. In fact, we are known to be the only people who can say
this is what Boko Haram is going to do. But don't forget, it's not just
Boko Haram; when MEND was the problem; we were also known to be
reporting MEND because we were in touch with these guys. As a matter of
fact, on the day the Independence bombing was going to take place, we
were aware of it and reported that MEND said they were going to attack.
So for us, it is about alerting government to its responsibilities; it
is about alerting everybody that needs to know what is happening. That
is more important than those jargons about patriotism and several styles
of keeping the media quiet.
How do you get your sources of news
as some of the breaking news you have published come on few minutes
after they occur for example the plane crash involving the Taraba State
governor, how do you access these sources within seconds while you are
here in New York?
That is part of what I was telling you earlier;
as much as you may want to think of Nigeria as a hopeless situation,
there are people who want a better government; people in official
circles who want a better Nigeria and somehow, they align with us and we
don't know them. Sometimes some of the best reports we get comes from
anonymous sources but we have a duty to verify. As you mentioned, the
Taraba State governor, there are people still harassing us that we said
that the man died but he didn't die but the question we asked them is,
how many times in Nigeria do plane crashes and people survive? And the
guys who saw them said they were dead and helpless. In fact, it was our
news story that led several government organizations to go after them to
try and save them. But most importantly, the question I asked one guy
is, have you heard from the Taraba State governor? Has he spoken? Is he
alive? Is it normal? It is almost three weeks now and we have not heard
from him. Because it was the same kind of scrutiny we were subjected to
when Jonathan's wife was taken to the hospital; nobody in Nigeria knew
that she was even in the hospital until we mentioned it. Even when we
reported it, they came back to say she was on vacation but when she
sauntered into Nigeria she said, God gave me a second chance and nobody
took notice of that and I will ask her what happened to your first
chance?
Coming to the Yar Adua issues, I got from sources that
you were in Nigeria when the late president was on admission in a
hospital in Saudi Arabia and that you were in Katsina with a member of
the family acting as courier for you, how true is that?
No, I
wasn't in Katsina but I was in Nigeria. We were right on point and knew
what was happening on a daily basis. In fact, this made it possible for
us to disprove Al-Jazeera when they reported that a cousin of Yar Adua
was drinking tea with him. We said to Al-Jazeera that Yar Adua could not
drink tea because he was brain dead and that was exactly what happened
actually. Even when Oyedepo and the rest were made to see him from a
distance, we were the only group that said that they lied and it turned
out that few days after he died. Even if he was alive, they just kind of
extended his life span on a thread so that it allows his wife, his
family and his cronies to take care of business and we kept reporting
this. It is the same thing with Mrs. Jonathan. I keep asking people
where is she? How come she is no longer active these days even after she
came back ceremoniously?
Are you not mindful of the methods you
use to expose some of the persons you write about like Yar Adua you just
mentioned, you once published a caricature picture of him on his sick
bed and you call government officials names on TV and so on, don't you
abide by media ethics? Does it matter to you?
No. The truth is that the whole media ethics thing is a caricature itself; it's meant to cover up the truth.
Is it here in the West or back home?
Even
back home; have you ever seen the ethics of performance or operation by
the media in Nigeria? Most likely you will never be shown one because
one does not exist. Everybody just thinks esoterically of this media
ethics but what does these media ethics help you do; it helps you to
cover the truth. We take it a step further by ensuring that the truth is
primary to us. Sometimes people don't like it; people don't want to
hear it. What I tell people is the fact that the news story is
unbelievable doesn't mean that's it is not true because sometimes, we
write and publish stories people can't believe and they assume that
because they can't believe it, it is not true. But in 95 per cent of the
time, our stories have been true. The truth is that nobody is going to
come back and tell me and tell me sorry for disbelieving you and we are
not looking for sorry asses; we are looking for people who understand
that the media has disappointed the populace and the media cannot be
left in the hands of professionals anymore.
Looking at the kind
of news you publish which the Nigeria government perceive as harsh and
considering the fact that you once held political office as a student at
the university, do you have any political intentions?
The
Nigeria government doesn't like us but we will be greatly disappointed
if we are their favourite news platform. But guess what, the Nigeria
government also patronizes us; they send us their press releases and
their pictures. We don't advertise for government because we believe
that once a government is good it needs no advertisement. We do not
accept a government advert, that's our position. Remember that there was
a time the president was travelling and they sent us pictures that he
was travelling and wasn't travelling through Germany. We researched on
the photos and discovered they were pictures taken in 2011 and they had
no response to that. What it tells you is that in an attempt to
understand how we operate they are part and parcel of our machinery. We
get a lot of photos to their credits and they send us press releases
which they were not doing in the past. But now they have accepted that
the citizen journalism platform is part of governance reporting process
and they are doing that. I answer to your second question; I do not have
political ambitions.
Will you accept political appointment of any nature?
No.
I have said it to people that there is no political appointment more
powerful than being able to take the government to fire. But I will say
this though in a way without bragging and without being arrogant; there
is no government that is better than any of us. We can run Nigeria
better than Jonathan and his bunch of cronies.
If you are asked by Nigerians to stand for elective office, will you respect such request?
There
is no Nigerian that will ask you to come for office; the moment
somebody takes power, they are the ones asking you to take the position
because assigning positions in Nigeria does not involve the citizens and
that's what we are trying to change. I keep saying that we will get to a
point when Nigerians will have a say and that's why we are doing what
we are doing. If Nigerians want me to run for the presidency of Nigeria
and run Nigeria in the most efficient and egalitarian manner, I will do
it because I am convinced that you and I are better than some of the
people running the country.
Source: Nigerian Village Square
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