IT is in human nature to seek benefits even from disasters, which explains why owners of funeral homes see profits to be made from deaths that leave the bereaved mournful. It is consequently not out of place for Sahara Reporters, an online content platform, to attempt to make gains from the plagiarism mishap experienced by the presidency. Such moves are consistent with the scavenging tendencies of Sahara Reporters, whose owners wrongly perceive it as the alpha predator in the mudslinging business.
The gain Sahara Reporters seeks to derive from the unfortunate incident is nauseating. It is revolting not because the platform is again disparaging the presidency. That is to be expected from an entity whose sole joy is to depict Nigeria as an irredeemable case and has made it a standing policy to denigrate our nationhood. Its latest gain-seeking outing is revolting for the very fact that it has sunk lower than human expectations can envisage to sustain its attack on Mallam Mamman Daura.
To the unsuspecting reader, SR presented a myth that was made to read like an exclusive story. The telltale signs that it is delivering a hatchet job are its inability to hide its disdain by branding Daura as President Muhammadu Buhari’s nephew before creating the impression that he does the job for which civil servants and political appointees are drawing salaries. In advancing this falsehood, the goons behind SR omitted to mention that Mamman Daura, in addition to being related to Nigeria’s number one citizens, happens to be a human with the requisite intellect to contribute to national growth.
The attack on this gentleman is not a one-off. The SR’s servers are replete with cooked-up fables about Daura to the extent that all they have written about him will make a bound volume if printed in hard copies. Yet not one page of all they have ever published about him holds one paragraph of truth that is not tainted by the bile of hatred or coloured with the greed arising from paid character assassination on the part of those churning out this garbage.
Apparently, they did not read the lies put out by their affiliate publications, probably bankrolled by the same client, which claimed Daura has been sent packing out of the Presidential Villa. Had they been up to date with the hatchet jobs their other colleagues were doing, they would have perhaps been able to advise their client that this latest report should have been deferred to a later time while the country deals with the more pressing issues impacting the populace. But these are not people who care what the global economic contagion is doing to other Nigerians. All that is of concern to them is to collect their mess of pottage, malign whosoever they have paid to malign and wait for the next order for a dirty job.
If SR is truly interested in reporting to make Nigeria a better place, as it wants to claim, then it should focus on the real issues and leave individuals alone. Its attacks on Daura have nothing in them geared towards engendering good governance.
Instead, it is part of a larger scheme to harass President Buhari’s government into succumbing to what is now its blackmail of successive governments. The pattern has been consistent. SR demonises a sitting government to arm-twist its officials for money and tunes down its attacks once some of them pay up. It then revives its attacks once there is a delay in the agreed-upon scheduled payment. The rabidity with which the Buhari administration’s officials are being vilified suggests no one has agreed to play along in this government in line with the change agenda. By now, citizens are beginning to see through the tricks of SR.
In case someone thinks Nigerians are not awake to the trick at play here, it is fast becoming stuff that the average right-thinking person on the street knows. That is how a certain online publisher who has his address abroad sneaks into the country at regular intervals for the scheduled collections for the jobs done and the ones to be done.
To those who know, the scheme SR is implementing becomes more frightening when one realises that it has funding that is connected to neocon entities that would like to see Nigeria become a failed state. The knowledge of this should get the many Nigerians who swear by SR’s lies to reassess what they believe in and how much of their decisions they based on falsehood. This is because if Sahara Reporters were allowed to cause trouble in Nigeria, its publisher would simply sit back and enjoy his loot in the United States while those it incites remain here in Nigeria to face the fallout of their gullibility.
As the slush funds that used to flow to the guys at SR dry up with the change agenda to hold, Nigerians should be prepared to see a desperate platform that would become increasingly rabid in its mudslinging. It will target not just President Buhari but also his family members and administration officials. What will serve Nigerians best is not to go mad with this rabble-rousing outlet.
*Okanga writes from Benue State
