By JIBOLA OYEKUNLE
Sunday Sun, December 2, 2007
He is a reporter loathed by a handful of politicians in Nigeria. But he is the same man the Nigerian public is willing and curious to know. After all, Yemi Sowore, the man behind the now famous Sahara Reporters, is not the bad boy many corrupt men and women in power would call him.
Rather, he is a dogged Nigerian committed to probity and accountability in public office. The wave-maker, who sneaked into the country last week on “official assignment,” sensationally revealed in this encounter with Sunday Sun, that his organisation had moles in Obasanjo’s home.
He said: “When Obasanjo was president, I had people among those who travel with him that gave me information. And when I report it everybody would be wondering where we got the information from. I have moles inside the closet of Obasanjo when he was president of this country. But we don’t have to reveal such people.”
He also spoke, among other isues, on some of the challenges he faced in the course of investigating the past state governors and other corrupt political office holders, the most challeging of which, according to him, is the case of former Governor James Ibori of Delta State currently embroiled in an international scandal over money-laundering.
Excerpts:
What brought you to Nigeria?
First and foremost, Nigeria is my country. It is my country of birth and nationality. But I came here to do my work, which is to gather information as a reporter.
Your reports have been making waves in the country in the last one or two years.
What is your inspiration?
It is very important to make people know that I don’t consider myself as a journalist. I actually started after graduating from the University of Lagos in 1994. And I left the shores of this country in 1999 after I was dissatisfied with the political process under former President Olusegun Obasanjo. I have been in the US doing the regular thing that other people do. At a time, I had to go to school, doing my Master’s degree for two years. At a point I was after the government of Obassanjo and I wrote plenty of articles. Further, I got dissatisfied with reports emerging from the media. I thought I could start something that could turn ordinary citizens into reporters. That was how the idea of reporting came in. I started through Elendu Report. We did it for a year before starting Sahara Reporters. It was shortly after interviewing Gbenga Obasanjo in January 2006 that Sahara Reporters emerged. So, the inspiration is to provide information for ordinary people using their own sources. It was so perfect that it’s usually referred to as the one that is always protected from contamination that you can define in different ways.
Criticism against your style is that your reports are based on allegations which are presented as facts. How fair is that?
It is actually incorrect. We have this attitude of counter-allegation. For example, we allow the people we write about to write rejoinders if they have counter facts. But beyond that, Sahara Reporters is the only media that write news or reports in sub-Sahara Africa that provides solid evidence. We easily make documents available for other people to see where we got our information from. But since we have been carrying our stories, nobody has come back to us. Our reports are based on facts. We have done quite a lot of stories. I cannot remember how many stories we have done. Like Gbenga Obasanjo’s story, for example. He actually claimed that he was not interviewed. He moved from there to say that it was a private discussion. When we challenged him to it he said he was going to sue us. But as I speak to you, it is already a year since the report came out and his lawyer hasn’t sued us. So who lied? If this was United States, I would have sued Gbenga Obasanjo for infringing on my reputation. He was just trying to bully me to abandon my duty as a reporter. If you move from Gbenga to other stories that we have done ranging from all the state governors that we have written about up to the latest which is Ibori story, which I have followed for two years, they have always said it is not true, it is not true until the London police came in and provided all the proof that I have been doing for two years. It is such people who make such false accusations against us and they should apologise to us because we have laboured for free for this country in the last two years, going to areas that nobody would go to in terms of writing reports. We have done things that nobody would dare do. We have risked our lives. There was this encounter with a private investigator in the US looking into my accounts without my consent just to make sure that they stop us from doing this. And in some cases, we have heard threats that they are ready to even hit me in the US. I am just telling you this background so that you can understand what we have been doing and how much was wasted in terms of time, energy and resources and the risk of life to get what we have been doing in the last two years. We do not think of ordinary people, we think of powerful people who can prove that we are liars but they have not been able to prove it.
What is your relationship with the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC)?
I have zero relationship with EFCC but I relate in terms of getting information from every sector of this country. Like I said earlier, we have turned the citizens of this country into reporters. And we don’t allow every other thing that affects the main stream media to affect us. So if somebody writes from their desk at the EFCC, as a citizen of Nigeria, to say ‘Look I have this information,’ it could be the typist, I will take the information and confirm its correctness. That’s it. And I have a lot of people at the background that provide me with information. I will give you example. When Obasanjo was president, I had people among those who travelled with him that gave me information. And when I report it everybody would be wondering where we got the information from. I had moles inside the closet of Obasanjo when he was president of this country. But we don’t have to reveal such people. That is not EFCC. That is the domain of the president. So, we are dealing with citizens of Nigeria who turn around information to us. Of course, we heard allegations that Sahara Reporters is an EFCC outlet. Anybody can say whatever they want to say. In fact, we get more information than the EFCC. For instance, when the commission presented the lists of corrupt candidates, Sahara Reporters provided a counter-list that was more comprehensive, of people that were excluded by the EFCC. There were instances like that when the EFCC even got information from us by logging onto our website. I’ll give you an example. We are the one that provided the e-passport of Saminu Turaki that the EFCC used to uphold his bail. They didn’t talk to us, they went to the website, downloaded it and took it to court.
In addition to what I said before, the inspiration is to have a better country. I live in one of the places people desire as God’s own country but the Americans don’t call their country the God’s own country. I tell you, I don’t want to live in America for one day longer than necessary. Their weather changes four times in a year. As a Nigerian I am tired of it. When you come into this country, the weather doesn’t change. I don’t see earthquake, I don’t see Tsunami. The problem is just bad leadership. So, what we want to do is to see how we can turn this country around sort of like carrying gun and setting up a camp like the Niger-Delta militants are doing. This is what my non-violence dream has seen me do, which is providing information for every Nigerian who needs it for free. And if our situation allows them to take certain decisions by a revolution, we won’t deny it. We will love to see that happening. I have always said that my happiest day would be the day after a revolution in this country.
Which of all your stories has been most challenging?
I think writing on James Ibori is the most challenging. His men have been mailing and asking me to come and get whatever I need for the rest of my life. But I said no. A lot of threats, of course. I think the man has the biggest connection with people capable of violence that I have ever come across. I have seen people whom I never knew before sounding like familiar people. I have heard offers from people who want to buy Sahara Reporters. And of course, I have had challenges from lawyers threatening to sue me and remove the pants out of my bottom. It has been very challenging. But I think in each case, the challenge took the same format. You sometimes hear, ‘What can we do to stop the story?’
Experience after the Gbenga Obasanjo’s story?
Obasanjo’s case was mostly legal and political question. We must not forget that Obasanjo also has people in the US. They were using that language too to pressurize us not to write on Obasanjo. Sometime I had a lawyer call me up and said they were going to sue me if we wrote anything against the President. And they knew that the report was coming out the next day. I had a lot of such legal threats and in Gbenga’s case, there was a lot of threats like ‘Don’t come to Nigeria, we have your name at the airport.’ I got calls from the SSS. In fact they told me that Obasanjo was going to criminalize libel and I was going to be used as a scapegoat for criminal libel. But I am glad that I did that interview for this country because it came to pass.
Sahara Reporters is a strong brand now. What do you intend to do with it?
The question I ask myself all the times is that now that you have got this, what are you going to do with it? I am going to continue in terms of having control over content and brand. I should still have a lot of control because I don’t have to wrestle with investors. Naturally, I would have tried to go into print but that would require a lot of energy, a lot of resources. And it means I have to source for somebody that can pay for it. But if I do that with Sahara Reporters, I have the fear that the investor would come and say that ‘Look, you just have to choose between your report and my investment.’ I don’t want to get to that point as a reporter. The future of news reporting is on the internet. There is something they call new media. We want to be able to put stories on people’s cell phones as they are breaking. We are trying to have a TV and radio brands of Sahara Reporters. Of course, we don’t have resources because even by US standard, I am poor. I am below the poverty percentage over there. I want support but I don’t want support that comes with conditions. We want to get people who can do things without looking for immediate rewards. But by and large, we are getting commendations from people who appreciate what we are doing and that is inspiring.
