team, Reno Omokri has been sidelined….he is now to work under Obi Asika, the new
senior special assistant on social media.
as an apparent maneuver to re-energize his social media image following
a growing slide in his electoral fortunes as well as a series of
scandals involving Mr. Omokri, who until now shaped and ran the
incumbent president’s campaign on social media.
A source at the Presidency told SaharaReporters that Mr. Omokri,
who returned from California to boost President Jonathan’s political
campaigns in 2011, had become a huge liability and source of
distraction.
Mr. Omokri, who also doubles as a pastor, came to be known as
“Wendell Simlin” after tech-savvy Nigerian social media activists caught
him red-handed as he circulated reports on the Internet that claimed to
have found a link between former Central Bank Governor, Sanusi Lamido
Sanusi, and Islamist terror group Boko Haram. Enterprising social media
sleuths discovered that the so-called reports implicating Mr. Sanusi as a
sponsor of Boko Haram were first created on and disseminated from Mr.
Omokri’s personal computer in Abuja.
A few weeks ago, a California-based woman, Deborah Campbell, who
was once married to a relative of Mr. Omokri’s, told SaharaReporters
that the presidential aide had stolen her son’s identity to engage in
the circulation of fraudulent news that smeared Mr. Sanusi, who is now
the Emir of Kano. Mr. Reno never denied the woman’s allegations.
Last week, Mr. Omokri was accused of leading policemen to
burglarize a house in Warri, Delta State that belonged to his late
mother. The occupants of the house, including Alex Oyoro, a well known
PDP political figure in Delta State, alleged that Mr. Omokri had led a
group of thugs and mobile police officers who broke into the property
and stole N25 million in cash. The money, according to Mr. Oyoro, was
meant for Mr. Jonathan’s re-election campaign.
Mr. Omokri denied being physically present at the scene of the
burglary, claiming he was at his desk in Abuja and also doing some
pastoral work at the time of the reported burglary.
A source at the Presidency told SaharaReporters that, in an
attempt to present a more humane outlook as his electoral fortunes slip
and his popularity plummets at home and abroad, Mr. Jonathan decided to
push Mr. Omokri aside. Mr. Obi Asika, who has been elevated to serve as
the new presidential strategist on social media, was described as one of
the co-organizers of “Social Media Week” in Lagos. “Obi Asika is a
serious personality who is also refined and self-controlled,” a source
at the Presidency said.
Apart from his dubious activities and cantankerous personality,
Mr. Omokri has committed a series of blunders in recent months that cast
Mr. Jonathan’s campaign in bad light. He organized two online polls
that eventually showed that President Jonathan would lose the 2015
elections to the opposition APC presidential candidate, Muhammadu
Buhari, by a wide margin. Several sources at the Presidency said Mr.
Omokri’s cup became full after he engineered a poll on Twitter where
informal posts showed that Mr. Jonathan’s electoral prospects had become
wretched. “That ill-advised Twitter poll backfired and caused
embarrassment to Mr. President,” said a source close to the Jonathan
campaign.
In a short email obtained by SaharaReporters earlier today,
presidential spokesman Reuben Abati confirmed Mr. Asika’s appointment to
take charge of the president’s social media coverage. A source in the
Presidency disclosed that Mr. Omokri was now in a subordinate position
to Mr. Asika in the hierarchy of aides working on the president’s social
media image.
“If Reno decides to remain here, he will have to be reporting to Obi Asika,” a source at the Presidency revealed.