Lere Olayinka, Senior Special Assistant on Public Communications and Social Media to the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Minister, Nyesom Wike, has hit back at activist and publisher of SaharaReporters, Omoyele Sowore, over the latter’s corruption allegations against the the Minister, saying Sowore was only afraid of his “scamming shadow,” describing his allegation that President Bola Tinubu and Wike wanted to assassinate him as “one of the mind games he plays to sustain his life of scams.”
Olayinka, in a statement on Saturday, said Sowore should rather face his criminal trial and be ready to provide the court judgement in which President Tinubu was once convicted to defend his reckless statement.
The FCT Minister’s spokesperson said: “Someone like Sowore, who collected over $3 million in 2019 to sell the governorship ticket of the African Action Congress (AAC) in Rivers State and was suspended by the party for corruption must have a lot of victims of his scams to contend with.
“In 2020, this same Sowore was accused by Oluwatosin Adeniji of pocketing an #EndSARS grant, which he (Sowore) applied for on her behalf without her knowledge.
“Between 2016 and 2019, Sowore collected $1.3 million from MacArthur Foundation and has been collecting millions of Dollars from other foreign donors, for the purpose of training journalists in Nigeria, which he never did.
“He is also known for using his online medium, SaharaReporters to blackmail and extort money from people while keeping his staff in abject poverty.
“Therefore, if there is any threat to the life of Sowore, it must be from those he had scammed or blackmailed. He should leave President Tinubu and the FCT Minister out of the impending repercussions of his life of scams.”
Olayinka, who said Sowore was already getting closer to the end of his wit, added that, “All the noise he has been making about Wike in the last 48 hours is just the last kick of a dying horse. He knows the consequences and gravity of the charges against him. He is, therefore, playing his usual mind game so as to present himself as a victim in order to sustain his scams.
“He is running riot about purchase of properties in United States. Did the Minister deny that his wife has properties in the US? Is it an offence for anyone to own properties in the US through inheritance or purchase?
“And is that Sowore’s defence for publishing outright falsehood and calling the President a criminal?
“Is that his defense for collecting $3 million to sell his party’s governorship ticket, and keeping silence when people were killed in Rivers State in 2019 to force the candidate on whom he was paid on the people of Rivers State?
“Is that his defensc for doing Yahoo Yahoo by collecting millions of dollars from foreign donors under false pretense?
“Like I have maintained, Sowore can only run and hide under Cashtivist for a while, he will get to the end of his scamming wit soon.”
