An Omoyele Sowore Moment, By Sonala Olumhense

Campaigns for the 2027 elections begin this week. I publish this ahead of them to ensure that it does not become a part of them.

But it is about a man who could be at the heart of them, whether he is on the ballot or not: Sahara Reporters’ Omoyele Sowore – publisher and phenomenon.

When our paths first crossed nearly 20 years ago, he was a man with a grudge he could neither conceal nor surrender. He was outraged by the corruption and political ruthlessness of Nigeria’s ruling class, a cause to which I had been nodding vigorously, and he wanted to expose all its ugliness.

Thus was born Sahara Reporters, which he nurtured from one citizen’s quiet outrage into the roar of a major Nigerian news organisation, despite operating from faraway New York.

Sahara Reporters began to mature in the early days of digital publishing in Nigeria, coinciding with the heyday of the Peoples Democratic Party and the Umaru Yar’Adua presidency.

It broke stories that struck at the heart of that party’s malice and menace, unveiling its duplicity and complicity.

Nigeria’s legacy media did not know what to make of Sahara Reporters. They began by pretending it did not exist. They avoided mentioning it.

But you could neither escape nor diminish the impact of Sahara Reporters as it began to dictate the pace and substance of public-interest reporting. At least two senior diplomats told me at the time that the first thing they did each morning was consult the Sahara Reporters website to be certain they were still breathing.

Among Sahara Reporters’ earliest coverage, scoops and investigations of national significance were the following, to list just 10:

• President Umaru Yar’Adua’s incapacity, constitutional succession, and his death;
• Stella Oduah’sarmored BMWs, and her manipulated educational record;
• Lamido Sanusi’s missing NNPC billions
• The South African cash-for-arms affair
• The 2015 election coverage
• The UBEC phantom-company contracts
• Bola Tinubu’s foreign-account case
• James Ibori’s exposure and British conviction
• Fuel-subsidy fraud and the Farouk Lawan affair, and
• The Reno Omokri–“Wendell Simlin” exposé

Sowore and Sahara Reporters, like a few other diaspora digital publishing efforts emerging at the time, have been accused of confrontational journalism.  Maybe yes, maybe no.

For me: it is both yes and no, as I conceive of Sowore as a man in transit. Remember: Sowore did not begin his rejection of, or resistance to, the excesses of Nigeria on the streets of New York or on the pages of Sahara Reporters.  He began as a student leader in Lagos, leading protests against the military government, coming face-to-face with the police, getting arrested and brutalised.

The movie was reminiscent of the fiery Gani Fawehinmi who, having deftly pursued legal response to the nation’s intractable problem for decades, contested the presidency in 2007.

That kind of transition usually arises when a highly motivated citizen decides that he needs the cudgel of power itself to get things done.

Gani did not win.  Maybe Sowore will; maybe he won’t.

The more important observation is that he made that transition, knowing well the Nigerian political terrain: one in which the domestic politician conceives of diasporan participation only in terms of the foreign exchange it can supply, and that electoral integrity is negotiable. Sowore made this transition without the comforts of his family.

I write this story, then, because Nigeria needs a figure like Sowore.  Not because he is perfect,  I know he is not, because I observed him advancing our national conversation in those early days of Sahara Reporters: a non-journalist walking towards the story when journalists are hiding it or hiding from it.

Sowore has never been far from trouble.  Part of it is because, in news publishing (as in the original Sahara Reporters), or in front of injustice, corruption and collusion, aka Nigerian political power, his weapon of choice is not diplomatic doubletalk but a hammer.

He is blunt and direct.  Most Nigerians, in contrast, retreat into riddles, speak in circles, do philosophical backflips.

Because courage, the kind brought to us by such people as Gani and Balarabe Musa, the late Kaduna State Governor, is not on sale on the streets.  Cowardice, on the other hand, is.  That explains why there are so many “rich” Nigerians in a country that is the poverty capital of the world, including an army of former governors and ministers who cannot explain their wealth, sometimes in world capitals.

Because courage, the kind we saw in the original Sahara Reporters, is rare. It surprised and confused Nigerian legacy media organisations, hardly any of whom, 20 years later, can muster that kind of imagination or motivation.  Stuck in the tradition of their founders ages ago, they treat powerful new technologies and communication skills with impatience and irritation.

Sowore stands in this gap, but even he may be missing something.  His publishing arrived at a wonderful moment, and despite his inexperience, he proved that the media could do more.

Two decades later, his Sahara Reporters can also now do far more with the new technologies and deeper attention.

And Sowore can be even more pivotal were he to restructure his worldview so that his focus on domestic Nigerian issues is in addition to, not in place of, his publishing, perhaps by letting someone with his “original Sahara Reporters” mindset run it.

That would free him up, should that be his choice, to dedicate and boost his considerable voice to addressing Nigerian issues, using his sharper understanding of emerging technologies to broaden and deepen his message.

In a country in which many citizens are programmed to be afraid, Sowore grew up organising or joining protests over police brutality, economic hardship, Nnamdi Kanu, pension rights, and demolitions, and the prosecution of fellow activists such as Dele Farotimi.

These interventions have repeatedly generated court restrictions, arrests or police confrontations, but none has resulted in sustainable criminal convictions.

In 2015, APC came to power partly because of the bruising reporting of the Jonathan government by Sahara Reporters, but the party has proved to be eminently worse than PDP, the party it supplanted.

What this means is that Nigeria remains in need of courageous, strong voices at a time that so many citizens cower before power, sell their families for money, and exchange their souls for a place in the convoy.

It is far easier to join them than to say those two difficult words: “Heck NO!”

Sowore has triumphed in several cases against him, although some substantial matters persist.  What Nigeria could really use, at this time, are men and women of character and principle and defiance: people who stand up when it is far easier and more convenient to sit down.

It is a moment Sowore could transit into and harvest for history.