₦airaland Forum

There have been many challenges not just for the project but for LADOL. We have moved from a time where private sector development from LADOL was literally forced out of the market. The biggest challenge we faced is definitely the monopoly that was prevalent in the sector until it was outlawed by President Muhammadu Buhari in April 2017. When you have a monopoly in the sector, particularly when that monopoly is collecting billions of dollars in unaudited revenues from the government, it makes it impossible for other transparent private sector companies to compete. Even worse, the modus operandi of these monopolies was to actively exclude other companies from the market. So, not only did they have this huge advantage, they were also excluding other companies.

naijaking1:
Mention unquenchable lust for power in Nigeria, and everyone knows you are referring to Buhari's Hausa Fulani folks.
Can't you do better?

AGÙNTÁṢǪÓLÒ
Widgets
Posted on March 3, 2014

Mr. Wendell Simlin
Perhaps it is worth putting all the points of this ‘case’ in a blog post. So here goes.

First off, if every Nigerian was forced to be in one of two camps – ‘pro’ or ‘anti’ Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, it’s safe to say I’d firmly be in the ‘pro’ camp. I like the man. That’s my bias. So when I see news stories making wild allegations against him, I tend to give them a second look. As an example, a few weeks ago, ThisDay newspapers reported that CBN awarded a N9.5bn contract to a bankrupt firm, Dermalog. I thought this was odd and within 30 minutes of looking around the internet, I found the story to be 100% false – not even 1% true. ThisDay has since deleted the original story but published this apology/retraction a couple of days later.

So last week when a journalist friend of mine mentioned that her online paper had received an email making very strong allegations of the religious kind against SLS, I asked her to please forward me the email which she did. I was keen to see what the new gist was about and if it was true. Here’s what followed.

The email was sent out by one Wendell Simlin with the email address wendellsimlin@yahoo.com. We (I will use ‘we’ because I shared the email with a couple of friends and we sniffed around it together) then did some checking around the email. To be clear, I have always been suspicious of the President’s Special Adviser on New Media (I wont dignify him be typing his name in this piece). To my mind he has always been a duplicitous character skilled in the dark arts. But we didn’t do anything special at all. Just basic checks around the email and crucially, the attached word document.

1. A simple google search of Wendell Simlin turned up a Facebook page with only one photo. The photo had about seven people in it, including the SA New Media (it has since been deleted). Is this enough evidence to say it was him? Of course not.

2. Do you know how to check an email’s header? Go to this link which shows you how to do it in a few clicks. Again, this is nothing complicated at all. When we checked the email header, it pointed to an IP address in the Kubwa area in Abuja. The ISP was Galaxy Backbone, which provides most of the internet hosting services to the government. On its own is this enough evidence? No.

3. Searching around Facebook again pointed to a long standing ‘relationship’ between Mr Simlin and the SA going back to at least 2010 spanning ‘pages liked’ and threads commented on. Enough evidence on its own? I doubt it.

4. The final piece in the puzzle however was that Mr Simlin typed out the allegations against SLS in the body of the email but then included the same text in a word document and attached it to the email. Again, nothing ‘technical’ was done here – it was as simple as opening the attached word document and right clicking to pull up its properties. There it was – his name as the author and person who last saved it on Hewlett-Packard computer (this is automatically done when you use your computer to generate a document).

Now a lot of noise has been made around this part of the evidence namely ‘anyone can type a word document and change the name’. This is true. But it is also simple to check out – all those who received the original email with the attachment have carried out the same check and found the exact same properties. Perhaps I have so much time and hatred for this guy that I went out of my way to edit the properties with his name but it is tough to explain how I did that with the original recipients given that I wasn’t the one who sent out the email.

5. Furthermore, an online newspaper, Premium Times, who have received official emails from the SA in the past have checked out previous email headers from him and compared it to this particular one from Wendell Simlin. They matched i.e the emails were sent from the same computer/location.

Perhaps each of the above items is not enough to convincingly prove that it was him. Perhaps. But it is very difficult to argue against all of the evidence taken together.

All of that is hardly the story though. There are very worrying issues thrown up by this matter. The first is that the email to smear SLS with Boko Haram was sent by an aide to the President just a day after 59 school children were massacred in a school in Yobe. At a time when even the most hardened Nigerians were saddened by the atrocity, someone somewhere in the Presidency thought it a good time to score political points by directing suspicion towards an ‘enemy’ of the President who has already been suspended from office and charged with very serious offences.

Secondly, religious baiting is a very dangerous thing to do in Nigeria. More than 100 people died over a matter as trivial as a Miss World competition in 2002. Once the religious touchpaper has been lit in Nigeria, no one really has any control over it and many lives will be lost before people calm down. The email sent out by the SA was dripping with Islamophobia and also contained outright lies and smears not just against SLS but against Alhaji Mutallab – a man who reported his own son to the American authorities when he noticed extremist tendencies in him.

In any other country, this would be a sacking offence and possibly worthy of prosecution. But not only has the SA in question here kept completely silent, he is actually writing articles where he hints that online critics of the government might be ‘satan’ afterall. All of this is amusing but hardly surprising. He works for a government that not only recently gave Sani Abacha an award, it actually went out of its way to justify the awards on the grounds of his wondrous achievements as Head of State.

We’ve sent a formal complaint (along with all the evidence) to a government minister but I am not sitting here holding my breath that he will be so much as censured. It is what it is. We are also exploring other avenues to make formal complaints. He is afterall paid from the public purse.

But it’s important to make the point that just because you remain in your job and you can keep quiet about the matter, presumably till it dies a natural death, does not mean those who accused you are fools.

Wendell Simlin: American woman accuses Reno Omokri of identity theft
January 1, 2015Nicholas Ibekwe

An American woman has accused President Goodluck Jonathan’s special assistant on New Media, Reno Omokri, of impersonation and identity theft.

Mr. Omokri had used the now infamous moniker, Wendell Simlin, in his attempt to link the former Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Lamido Sanusi, to the terrorist group Boko Haram.

Back in February 2014, Mr. Omokri wound up in a scandal after digital footprint of an article that tried to link the spike in Boko Haram attack to the suspension of Mr. Sanusi as CBN governor was traced to him.

Mr. Omokri allegedly used the pseudonym, Wendel Simlin, in the article circulated to bloggers and journalists but the document digital signature was identical to previous documents Mr. Omokri had sent to PREMIUM TIMES.

The Califonia- based woman, Deborah Campbell, told Sahara Reporters in a series of emails and telephone conversation that her son, based in Hercules, California, is the real Wendel Simlin.

She explained that she is married to Mr. Omokri’s brother-in-law and that the president’s aide exploited the relationship to perpetrate forgery.

“I am the true Wendell Simlin’s mother here in the States. Appalled to find out my son has been a victim of identity theft, judging from the articles I recently read in your newspaper. Reno met my son after I married his wife’s brother,” she said in an email.

“There are pictures on my facebook of Reno’s wife, kids and my ex-husband Godwin Melle. He is Reno’s wife’s brother.”

Mr. Omokri, who was based in the United States before coming to Nigeria to work for Mr. Jonathan, may be soon be facing criminal charges as Ms.Campbell has promised to involve U.S. authorities if her son’s name is not cleared.

Mr. Omokri could not be reached to comment for this story. Calls to his known telephone number did not connect, and he is yet to respond to a text message sent to him.

SalamRushdie:
whobis more desperate for power than the APC who is fielding a failed senile dullard terrorist and lunatic as it's presidential candidate just because the don't want to lose power

There have been many challenges not just for the project but for LADOL. We have moved from a time where private sector development from LADOL was literally forced out of the market. The biggest challenge we faced is definitely the monopoly that was prevalent in the sector until it was outlawed by President Muhammadu Buhari in April 2017. When you have a monopoly in the sector, particularly when that monopoly is collecting billions of dollars in unaudited revenues from the government, it makes it impossible for other transparent private sector companies to compete. Even worse, the modus operandi of these monopolies was to actively exclude other companies from the market. So, not only did they have this huge advantage, they were also excluding other companies.

Senator Dino Melaye wanted by the Police for criminal conspiracy and attempted culpable homicide, committed on 19th July, 2018, when Senator Dino Melaye and his armed thugs attacked Police personnel, shot and wounded SGT Danjuma Saliu on stop and search duty along Aiyetoro Gbede, Mopa Road in Kogi State has surrendered to the Police Investigation Team on wait at his residence, today, 4th January, 2019 at about 1500hrs.



2. The Police Officer, Sgt. Danjuma Saliu, is yet to recover from the gunshot injury he sustained during the attack and still under intensive medical care in the hospital.



3. The Police Investigation Team had since 28th December, 2018 at about 1000hrs arrived the residence of Senator Dino Melaye with a duly obtained Warrant of Arrest to effect his arrest to answer to a case of Criminal Conspiracy and Attempted Culpable Homicide against him under investigation in the Kogi State Police Command. Senator Dino Melaye on sighting the Police Team locked up himself in the building to evade arrest.



4. The Warrant of Arrest was obtained after Senator Dino Melaye refused to honour Police invitation dated 23rd July, 2018, signed by the Commissioner of Police, Kogi State Police Command addressed to the Clerk, National Assembly, Abuja, inviting Senator Dino Melaye to report on 26th July, 2018 at 1100Hrs at the Kogi State Police Command, CIID, Lokoja to answer to a case of Criminal Conspiracy and Attempted Culpable Homicide against him under investigation in the Kogi State Police Command.



5. The Police Investigation Team cordoned off the building and continued to be in wait for eight (cool days for Senator Dino Melaye to obey the law and surrender himself for arrest.



6. While the Police Investigation Team was waiting, Senator Dino Melaye granted an interview monitored on Television Stations that he was not in Abuja. This claim eventually was discovered to be completely false as Senator Dino Melaye surrendered to the waiting Police Investigation Team today at his residence in Abuja at about 1500hrs.



7. Senator Dino Melaye is currently in Police custody for investigation, and subsequently, taken to Police hospital, Abuja for medical attention and he is in stable condition. Investigation into the case of criminal conspiracy and attempted culpable homicide against him is on-going.



8. The case will be taken to court on completion of investigation.​

adaifx:
I tried my best not to comment on politics section cause it seems most people here don’t know how to reason cricticaly or even think for themselves. Yes the previous government appointed her so it won’t seem inec has been compromised by Jonathan cronies. Now it is Buhari time, the lady isn’t supposed to be part of the election cause it will put the intergity of the electoral process in question since they are related.

SalamRushdie:
This paid post is obviously an attempt to distract the truth !!! nobody ever said she is Buhari sons wife but Buharis niece , can Amina Zakari come out and deny that she is not Buharis niece? HELL NO!!!

deeoh:
Do you understand the meaning of niece

Prechy08:
try get sence na. Abeg. So your sister daughter can't marry from another state?

LegitHustler:
Are you speaking for Osagyefo of NL or Dr Kwame

I learnt Osagyefo of NL traces his root to bini

LegitHustler:
Osage from edo let it be, atleast enugu and ebonyi is pdp while edo is apc so we know who is deceiving itself. I also think peter obi not being able to deliver anambra state to pdp is caused by enugu and ebonyi

He said, “It is befuddling to imagine how officers, who are 15 years older than the new HoS, will take orders and directives from him.

Eledan:
To most of the Ibos, Nigeria democracy started in 2015. All this your history excursion is strange and new to them

01Alpha:
pls do not turn it into a tribal war, we just trying to honor our past president. He was a great man

And the renaming of the University of Ibadan to Shehu Shagari University of Ibadan will go a long way in solidifying the alliance between the core North and South west.

Hedonini:
One can't be a Buhari supporter without being incredibly stupid and foolish, just like you are.

In all of your very idiotic rant why didn't you shout at the EFCC to vigorously investigate the allegation like it does whenever something that has to do with the PDP and other opposition members comes up?

Moronic Zombie. I despise you animals.