An Omoyele Sowore Moment, By SOS/Sonala Olumhense | Sahara Reporters

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

But it is about a man who could be at the heart of it whether he is on the ballot or not. His SaharaReporters’ Omoyele Sowore: publisher and phenomenon.

When our paths crossed for the first time nearly 20 years ago, he was a man with a grudge he could and would not hide. He was outraged by the corruption and political ruthlessness of Nigeria’s ruling class—a lane in which I had been nodding vigorously myself—and he wanted expose all its ugliness.

Thus was born SaharaReporters, which he nurtured from one citizen’s quiet outrage into the roar of a major Nigerian news organization despite being in faraway New York.

SaharaReporters began to mature in the early hours of digital publishing in Nigeria, which coincided with the heyday of the PeoplesDemocratic Party (PDP) and the Umaru Yar’Aduapresidency. It broke stories that struck at the heart of that party’s malice and menace, unveilingits duplicity and complicity.

Nigeria’s legacy media did not know what to make of SaharaReporters. They began by pretending that it did not exist. They avoided any mention.

But you could neither escape, nor diminish the impact of SaharaReporters 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 in the morning was to consult the SaharaReporters’website to be certain they were still breathing.

Among SaharaReporters 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’s armored BMWs, and her manipulated educational record;

• 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

Sowore and SaharaReporters, 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: Soworedid not begin his rejection of, or resistance to, the excesses of Nigeria on the streets of New York or on the pages of SaharaReporters. He began as a student leader in Lagos, leading protests of the military government, coming face-to-face with the police, getting arrested and brutalized.

Thereafter, in Nigeria and elsewhere, sometimes as a citizen reporter challenging Nigerians to “Report Yourself,” sometimes as activist, and sometimes as both of those in the same breath, he pursued the same path, including in one fierce early confrontation in New York with President Umaru’s Foreign Minister, Ojo Madueke.

And then, after reporting stories of our outrageous kleptocracy for several years, Sowore curiously transited, physically returning to the scene of thecrime in Nigerian electoral politics.

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 politicianconceives 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 himadvancing our national conversation in those early days of SaharaReporters: a non-journalist walking towards the story when journalists are hiding it orhiding from it.

Sowore has never been far from trouble. A part of it is because, in news publishing (as in the original SaharaReporters), 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 SaharaReporters—is rare. It surprised and confused Nigerian legacy media organizations, 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 SaharaReporters 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 world view 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 SaharaReporters” 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 sharperunderstanding of emerging technologies to broaden and deepen his message.

In a country in which many citizens are programmed to be afraid, Sowore grew up organizing 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 SaharaReporters, but the parthy 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.