Willie Obiano’s “death” – Why is everybody afraid to condemn Sahara Reporters?
By Lilian Onoh
On Friday, November 14, 2025, Sahara Reporters engaged in yet another vile act of lies, greed and cruelty to generate traffic to its website and thereby get more advertising revenue in a repeated pattern of calculated evil – they published the purported death of former Anambra Governor, Willie Obiano, as absolute fact.
They went as far as to invent the location of his death (London) as well as invent two harrowing sicknesses – heart disease and prostate cancer – as the cause of his death. Even Wikipedia updated Obiano’s page to indicate that he died on November 14, 2025.
This is similar to the same vile hoax they engaged in in 2011 when they announced that the Ikemba Nnewi, Dim Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu, had essentially died and was hooked up on life support machines and even claimed that they had a video, which was all total fiction. The family’s denial was ignored and disbelieved became Sahara Reporters accused the family of a cover up. It was only when the Royal Berkshire hospital issued a press statement that the Ikemba was not on a life support machine and had never been on life support during his time at the hospital that Sahara Reporters’ lies were exposed.
They did not care that his children, barely over 10 years old, had to hear from strangers that their father had essentially died nor did they care the horrors they inflicted on the family, Igboland, Nigeria and globally.
They did not care that they endangered not just the Ikemba but other patients and the entire hospital, which was suddenly inundated with calls and swamped by journalists, causing them to divert resources to increasing security and fielding calls. All Sahara Reporters cared about was generating traffic to their website and causing maximum pain to his family. They never apologised nor did they pull down their vile lies.
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After they announced Obiano’s death, it required not just Obiano’s former commissioner but also the sitting governor of Anambra State and Willie Obiano himself to debunk the lie, which had gone viral, with every single publication quoting Sahara Reporters as the source of the news.
But when it came to refuting the horrendous lie, a peculiar thing happened. Not a single person, including Obiano, the subject of the death hoax, mentioned Sahara Reporters by name. They mentioned “rumours” on social media and made allusions to the perfidious nature of the vile publication, but nobody called out Sahara Reporters or its publisher, Omoyele Sowore or its Chief Operating Officer, Lakeisha Landrum Pierre, by name.
They didn’t even dare refer to a news publication, even though Sahara Reporters markets itself as the premier source of authentic news across Africa. It was as if everyone was afraid and preferred to dance around the bush and blame “social media” for “rumours” instead of attacking the scourge called Sahara Reporters for the abomination of inventing a story declaring a living man dead.
Nobody even demanded that Sahara Reporters tender an unreserved apology to Willie Obiano, his family and the public at large for publishing total fiction as news – news that was capable of causing his elderly relatives in his village to go into shock and possibly die.
Nobody dared demand that they pull down the despicable fiction published as news which generated more traffic to its site since its publication than almost the entire year combined, thereby increasing its advertising revenue, which is based on the number of visitors to a website.
Willie Obiano himself, the soft target for Sahara Reporters over the years, was equally too afraid to man up and call them out by name. He only talked about those that wish him ill.
Not even the Nigerian Union of Journalists (NUJ) or the Guild of Editors spoke up to condemn this vile act, which has been the staple of Sahara Reporters for its entire existence – an act that erodes the public’s trust in the news that all of them put out.
The blanket silence and effort to move on and not call Sahara Reporters, its publisher and its C.O.O. to account and censure them for this outrage is the most disturbing part of this matter, in a country known for collective outrage when such things happen.
Sahara Reporters has made it their trademark to publish fiction about public figures and well known private individuals, destroying reputations and lives with lies and never apologising even when they are proven to be liars. They never bear any consequence for their lies because it seems that cowardice and fear of coming under their attack has overtaken everyone, including the Nigerian media, State Governors, Federal Ministers and even the Nigerian Police that didn’t hesitate to lock up a woman for a social media post about the taste of Erisco tomato paste!
I can say this because in my battle with Sahara Reporters over the total fiction it published against me on behalf of Geoffrey Onyeama, most of Nigeria’s media will not publish anything I present to them about Sahara Reporters and Omoyele Sowore; and usually, the asinine excuse they give me is “journalistic kparakpo/ camaraderie”. They watch Sahara Reporters leverage its strong algorithm to destroy lives, and while many will abuse its publisher, Omoyele Sowore, in private, very few ever publicly denounce his “journalistic” practices or agree to call him out for the numerous fake stories he’s published.
The collective media cowardice is sickening.
The same Press that want transparency from Nigeria’s officials refuses to be transparent or accountable in its dealings with Omoyele Sowore and Sahara Reporters.
I recall the many times that Sahara Reporters falsely published “Breaking News” about the President’s travel – fake news designed to cause problems for the President, especially during the Jonathan years.
As diplomats, we would know that this was total bunkum because we had not received any request for over flight clearances that must be submitted to every single country that a presidential jet must cross, or landing requests, or for any of the many standard processes an Embassy must do before the President travels out of the country.
After ensuring that enough people click on their website in a well-oiled click-bait scam to generate advertising revenue, it would then publish that the President did not travel because of its “revelations”!
Having been at the receiving end of the fallout when Sahara Reporters falsely claimed that the Ikemba was on life support with a story that was totally made up, I can only imagine the hell that Obiano’s children and extended family must have gone through when the news went viral. It is not something I would wish on my worst enemy.
I don’t know if Willie Obiano will have the stomach to sue Sahara Reporters for emotional trauma, which carries a heavy sanction in Texas; but I do know one thing – Nigerians from all walks of life must rise up and condemn this repeated pattern of destroying lives that Sahara Reporters has perfected. They continue because there is a state of collective cowardice and paralyses when it comes to holding them responsible. The Nigerian press is their greatest enabler – quick to amplify any story that portrays its publisher Omoyele Sowore as a victim of Government abuse and totally comatose when it comes to calling him to account for running what has been proven to be a fiction factory masquerading as a news website which has destroyed countless lives with their lies.
The NUJ must condemn this scam website and its publisher because their conduct diminishes all Nigerian media. Even the Guardian, regarded as one of Nigeria’s most authentic news sites, reported the Sahara Reporters’ lie, instantly damaging its own reputation globally. Trust, once broken, is nigh impossible to regain. If an entire country’s media is regarded with less trust than the National Enquirer, where people routinely recount alien abductions and other outlandish stories, then it is inevitable that they will become obsolete.
When my colleague in London told me that Willie Obiano had died in London last Friday, the first thing I asked him was the source of the news. As soon as he said it was Sahara Reporters, I told him to discard the news because it was definitely a lie. As I told him, Willie Obiano lives in Sugarland, Texas, and had absolutely no business in London.
As a victim of Sahara Reporters’ lies, I knew exactly what I was saying and was instantly proved right.
Less than a minute after our call ended, I saw the rebuttal by C. Don Aninuba.
Yet up till today, the false headline of Willie Obiano’s death and its link to Sahara Reporters webpage, its Instagram page and its FaceBook page is available on Google, in a click-bait scam that continues to generate traffic to its website, which Sowore, LaKeisha Landrum Pierre and Sahara Reporters then use to self-promote themselves to Western organisations in order to get additional funding as well as generate more advertising revenue in US Dollars.
This is literally making merchandise of people’s desire to read news and holding them in total contempt whilst using their visit to Sahara Reporters website to enrich themselves in US Dollar, laughing all the way to the bank.
It is time for the NUJ, the Nigerian Guild of Editors and anybody with a shred of backbone and journalistic integrity to condemn this vile act which Omoyele Sowore, Sahara Reporters and Lakeisha Landrum Pierre have practically patented.
The collective fear of their reprisal attacks must end for their power to destroy lives to be broken; and for trust in the media to be restored.
