LAGOS DECEMBER 27TH (URHOBOTODAY)-Just last week, a former Nigerian journalist, now a popular blogger confirmed to the media community and Nigerians at large what was suspected about the penchant by some online websites to consistently publish unsubstantiated stories and fake reports about certain leading opposition figures.
The Nigerian blogger revealed what many people had suspected which was that the Presidency through Doyin Okupe, had recruited two online websites, TheWillnigeria and Pointblank news as paid attack dogs. These two websites ran by persons with questionable journalistic credentials were procured for a princely sum of $50,000 (fifty thousand dollars) each as initial down payment for their welfare and operations, comfortable accommodation in Abuja and free airline tickets to fly between their base in the USA and Abuja whenever they chose to visit. The deal was sealed about one month after Okupe was appointed. These two websites carry the adverts of Goodluck Jonathan and that of Bayelsa State only and prominently, their benefactors.
CC online reproduces below the findings of the citizen blogger and former journalist:
Breaking News!!!! Is it really? Nah, it isn’t. It is not only Nigeria-based journalists that have sold out, foreign-based Nigerian journalists have joined.
Am I surprised that three US-Based Nigerian journalists have become Doyin Okupe’s voice in the US? No.
Knowing them and what they have been doing before it did not come to me as a surprise. It is just becoming increasing sickening to see how innocent readers are been intellectually raped, emotionally insulted. These guys set up websites, write stories to harass politicians all for attention and now they’ve struck the gold. They now work for Jonathan Goodluck, the same man they have spent all their life and time to “expose” and mock is now their employer. They work as Assistant to Doyin Okupe the Attack Dog of Jonathan Goodluck.
One of them was Media Assistant to Seye Ogulewe when he was Minister of Works under Obasanjo before he relocated to the US from UK.
While they still run their website… lying to be progressives, they are actually licking the ass of Jonathan Goodluck as part of his propaganda team. Ladies and gentlemen, I introduce to you: Jackson Ogbonna, Churchill and Sunday Fashe to you. They form the US Bureau of Doyin Okupe’s office of propaganda.
In fact they hosted Okupe in New York recently.
What a shame! What a Waste! “ Blogger
Further investigations by CitizenConfidential, a site that has monitored closely the activities of these two online sites in the past five months revealed that the publishers have been awashed with bribe money in naira and dollars and enjoy free access to the villa. At some point however, Okupe demanded that they move to Abuja from their US base to be able to be more effective. They were given a list of Nigerians whose reputation must be ruptured on flimsy and unproven allegations.
Bola Tinubu, Babatunde Fashola, General Buhari and a host of other Jonathan critics have come under consistent attacks through sponsored stories published on TheWillNigeria and Pointblank news, online sites procured for Okupe’s hatchet job. The game plan is to malign these opposition figures ahead of the 2015 elections in order to give the PDP great advantage. The battle to take over Lagos from the Action Congress of Nigeria here seems to be the main objective with an extension to make sure Jonathan has no serious challenger when it comes to the 2015 presidential contest. The most recent of such attacks is a report now on the website of Thewillnigeria in which rehearsed and unproven allegations against Tinubu and Fashola were published in what many readers have called a hatchet and sponsored job.
Source: Citizenconfidential