Just like a few others who value and seek for authentic, objective and classified, investigative reporting and editorials, I had once revered Sahara Reporters for that fit. For in the turn of time, when bias and adulteration filtered online media especially, Sahara was amongst the very few who held their head-up in giving essence to the true value of investigative, true and fact-laden reporting.

As a young writer, I admired the style, the guts, the depth, the competence, and the intellectual prowess evident in almost every report of Sahara Reporters years back. I had imagined I would penetrate some day, those brick walls and bounds, the cabal and circumvented Caucus of governments and dig out classified files, dust-off lies and sentiments in the files and untie the files to unclad the hidden facts and truths of gruesome corrupt practices, shivering and very monumental abuses of offices by government officials and politicians, which I very sincerely thought Sahara reporters also, amongst the very few, were doing.

Fast forward to 2016, I couldn't believe myself thinking almost completely differently about Sahara Reporters. Yes, almost differently because Sahara Reporters still feed us with information. I have painstakingly read most of the reports from the USA based online media and if nothing, the very recent ones about the Buhari holiday saga, Apostle Suleiman's Sexual "voyage" with one Stephanie, Dino Melaye and his false graduation daily sermon, Andy Ubah certificate vending, Ike Ekweremmadu 's and now DSS’ turning to fight against the corruption war, still radiate my mind.

APC, Nigerians definitely know, is a child of propaganda. It rose from the circumstances that were quite strategic for and favourable to propaganda. It was easy for instance, to tell Nigerians that Boko Horam had killed almost all the indigenes of a particular village in Borno while Jonathan holidayed in Otuoke, and if Nigerians voted for a certain general and one time head of state, Boko Horam would be a grief forgone.

Propaganda worked wonders for APC. Officials were blindly and openly stealing in Jonathan's administration, though they had the conscience of distributing their loots generously, and APC came and reminded us that the distributed loots were our monies that could be put to use to better our lives far more and if we voted for them all those looters would rot in jail. Particularly, the North were sold the treachery that Jonathan was killing their people in the guise of fighting corruption and they needed to replace him with their brother; not forgetting that they are the powerful north with the monopoly of "rulership" of Nigeria. People swung into action with their PVCs and with some bit of rigging, Jonathan gave up the fight "honourably."

Few months after the assumption of office, things had gone worse. Unprecedented hardship emerged, we began to hear so many terms manufactured to blanket the economic meltdown (technical recession is one of them), blatant flouting of the rule of law began to rise like the one in which the President made appointments and major political decisions without setting up his cabinet as prescribed by the constitution, Fulani Herdsmen suddenly "hammered" to the point of affording AK'47s to kill and mane communities. And when the President finally appointed his ministers, his corruption war began to raise serious question as most of the Ministers "allegedly" had indicting cases of acute corruption.

Day after day, issues aggravated. More advanced cases of harrassment and subjugation of opposition grew in tandem with the escalation of economic, political, religious, and psychological crises that bewildered the poor country. The arrest of judges, the intended alleged "caging of the legislature," freezing of accounts of some notable opposition voices, etc, were the earliest.

Sahara Reporters were very much in the heat of these events. They hear, see but definitely do not feel the pains of the citizens and the pressure on the polity; the pressure on democracy and its ideals, the pressure on the voices of opposition, the pressure on the voices of Nigerians who can only cry out against the ills of the government, the pressure on the freedom of speech and expression of the people like the Igbo youths that rally once in a while in solidarity to their own course, the pressure on the press and fearless journalists, the pressure on forces that stand in the way of the government. Sahara Reporters probably saw these, did they engage their pens?

As Nigerians have suddenly woken up from slumber and staggered to exact force on the government of APC to sit-up and deliver on the many policies (or propagabda) they poured out unchecked in their desperate bid to win in 2015, distractions have begun to fly from all corners to keep the mind of the people away from the reality of their conditions.

Propagandas are thrown into national discourse and strategised to force away the focus and minds of the people. Regrettably, most of these strategies are so cheap and mundane, that we, Nigerians, still bought into them, further depicting our "chronic gullibility," and where have they all started from if not Sahara Reporters.

Few weeks after Apostle Suleiman spoke up against the mayhem of Fulani herdsmen and the very muted gestures of the President over the incessant killings, a woman emerged from nowhere, but Sahara Reporters to give us a drama. The intensity and magnitude with which Sahara Reporters followed the "Stephaniewood" script gave us some entertaining distractions and of course, coffered some naira into the pockets of some bloggers. The drama became the daily epistle of almost every online site and discussions offline followed in that sequence.

With the polity being relieved a bit and the people beginning to ask how El-Rufai was faring with the heinous attacks on his people of Southern Kaduna, Sahara Reporters headed to ABU to find stories, and Dino Melaye, a popular figure whose story will definitely sieze attention, would be the protagonist. Having allegedly engaged actively in ensuring some stooges of the Presidency never get a pass from the Senate, and fighting to ensure the Presidency never cows the national assembly and glaringly partaking to initiate a ruptured relationship between the national assembly and the presidency, Dino Melaye was suddenly found to have graduated from other university but not ABU. He was soon to become the Senator without certificate and Sahara Reporters was the judge to rule on that. Files were dug, persons were found to validate the report that Dino graduated without a certificate.

Now, what is baffling on the Dino saga wasn't just that right from the time he was in the House of Reps, even from two years back he became a Senator, Sahara had been in their optimal, strength of investigation and couldn’t find it necessary to expose the “Certificatelessness” of Melaye, but the fact that Nigerians were so engrossed in the thrills that they forgot to ask the essence and grounds of the allegations as well as asking "why now."

But no, Sahara perfectly took our minds away from putting pressure on the government to reveal the medical holiday of the President in London and how it expended our resources on our dear President. We lost the thought of reminding the President that good things had happened while he was away. For one, our naira appreciated, there was a reconciliation movement in the Niger Delta region by his seemingly more decisive and active vice, that the Made-in-Aba Campaign was giving the Aba creative youths some sense of belonging and the government, some sense of responsibility, that economic revitalisation began to spring.

Sahara reporters did well for the government as Nigerians could hardly discuss the Southern Kaduna crisis that claimed many lives and the governor claimed to have paid the people that killed his brothers and sisters. We also, lost our focus in reminding the President that he is yet to give a national broadcast to condemn the killings of the Fulani Herdsmen and reveal the strategy of the government in dealing with that. How about the short term plan of the government to save the economy from complete collapse, did we give it a thought?

http://igbobia.com/?q=sahara-reporters-now-a-tool-and-an-agent-of-national-distraction-part-1.html

SR always doing a good job

Rubbish

Every other news media have gone to sleep. Sahara Reporter is the only news media exposes shady dealing of politicians and government.

its clear as day!
SR is fake
they get UNVERIFIED documents from their APC sponsored counterparts
refuse to do investigative journalism
post the unverified rubbish to cause huge distractions
then get paid by their APC sponsors!

we know that they are the face of BMCs! but we just dey observe them!

they are only good at BLACKMAILING PEOPLE!

i dont blame them anyways!

the owner is from a certain area that specializes in BROWN ENVELOPE journalism, PROFESSIONAL BLACKMAIL and of course SAHARA is what? ha ha they report for the SAHARA (desert) masters from the SAHARA(north)

so in the end, its still a SW and NW + NE + NC gang up against us! but of course we know them!

Sahara desert is full of sand. The reporters hv nothin reasonable to report just lies

sahara reporters, just like every other lagos-ibadan express way media left their own saraki to leak buhari ass. they defamed apostle Suleiman who rose up against the Fulani herdsmen oligarch just to please their Fulani lords.