Re Time to question the pot bellied Amaechi’s sanity by Reno Omokri

By Solomon Okocha


"The great thing about irony is that it splits things apart, gets up above them so we can see the flaws and hypocrisies and duplicates." - David Foster Wallace

That Reno Omokri aka 'Windell Simlin' (pseudo name), is a Pastor does not surprise me at all. In this part of the world, the clergy toga is one that any educated or semi-educated Nigerian can pick up from sheer oblivion and conjure into a sparkling reality. The Bible also informs us that "many are called, but few are chosen". So I am not dumbfounded that Reno, a man who bears a false name online, proudly parades around as the founder of a certain 'Mind of Christ Christian Center' et al, or that he despises God's creation (Amaechi), by way of name calling.

I am also not surprised that Reno has permanently positioned himself as the official attack dog of former President Goodluck Jonathan and the 'failed transformation team. So I was not amazed when Reno descended too low and started throwing unprintable invectives at the person of Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi, former Director General of Buhari Campaign Organisation and the current Minister of Transportation, simply because he (Amaechi) stated obvious facts about Jonathan's universally acclaimed six years of epic mal-administration.

This renewed verbal warfare against Amaechi is neither special nor strange to me; those who grew fat feeding on Jonathan's table of surplus state largesse, can never and will never 'forgive' Amaechi for permanently dislodging them from the corridors of power. Even a Pastor, you might want to ask? The answer is an emphatic "Yes!".

However, what tickles my fancy here is the tone and posture that Reno Omokri, or if you like - Windell Simlin, puts up each time he embarks on his well-paid dirty job. Reno appears to live in a fictional world where every other person is a fool or an ignoramus. He writes like a man who romanticizes with the concept of mind control and hypnosis. He believes that he controls a section of the media. Does he?

Otherwise, how does one explain Reno's infamous attempt at embellishing the corruption-laden saga of Jonathan with flowery rhetorics and alternative facts in his opium-laced article? How dare Reno further insult the sensibilities of Nigerians by alluding that it has been established that no amount of money was ever missing from the coffers of NNPC, as alleged by former Central Bank Governor - Emir Sanusi Lamido and reiterated by former Governor Amaechi? Who established such a carcass of falsehood? Who??

I don't care whether it was $10b, $49b, $50b, or $60b that went missing from the coffers of NNPC, but the indelible truth remains thus: NNPC under Goodluck Jonathan was a waste pipe feeding directly from the corruption den of which Nigeria's oil corporation had unfortunately become. Is Reno not aware that Diezani Alison-Madueke, the former Minister of Petroleum Resources under Jonathan, is being tried abroad for financial crimes bordering on millions of dollars stolen directly from Nigeria’s oil revenue?

Or has Reno not heard that $9.77m and £74,000 were recovered from ex-NNPC GMD - Andrew Yakubu? Somebody should please remind Reno that so many other friends and cronies of Jonathan are running helter skelter around the globe with looted funds, trying assidously to avoid prosecution. Do we need a soothsayer to show us where these monies were stolen from? Or maybe we should painfully endure Pastor Reno's hypnotic sermons, a la, "no money was missing" and "former President Jonathan is a Saint", blah blah blah?

Yet again, Reno tried to divert public attention from the empty treasury which former President Jonathan unapologetically left behind. Even if we decide to accept but without conceding that Amaechi mounted excruciating pressure (Reno's words) on Jonathan, thereby forcing the latter to end the Excess Crude Account and the Sovereign Wealth Fund regimes and share the funds in those accounts amongst the three tiers of government, or in other words, Amaechi and his gang of rebellious governors forced Jonathan to stop saving for Nigeria; does that make any sense? Is it that Jonathan didn't know what he was doing at that particular point in time? So Jonathan made temporary peace with the governors at the expense of Nigeria's future? A President that cannot withstand 'excrutiating pressure' from ordinary governors, is that one a President?

Seriously speaking, if there was anything like morality in Reno's mind (I seriously doubt it), then I think that by now, he should have tightly sealed his mouth. A man who worked under a government that unscrupulously midwifed the worst level of corruption and impunity in the history of Nigeria, does not have any moral right whatsoever, to cast aspersions on Amaechi - a man whose developmental strides in Rivers State, stand tall till date. I am a full-fledged Rivers man and I am willing to take Reno on a free tour around the State, so that he will be able to see first-hand some of the gigantic legacies that Amaechi left behind.

Reno talked about Amaechi's sanity, but ironically, it is his own sanity that we must now question. For if he was sane enough, then he would never had called Amaechi names in the first place. For a man who professes Christ, it is both ironic and absurd to hear him refer to Amaechi as a "pot-bellied lunatic". In Matthew 5:22(KJV), our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, of whom Reno supposedly represents, clearly condemned name-calling and accordingly highlighted its dire consequences: "I say unto you, that whosoever shall say to his brother, 'raca', shall be in danger of the council: but whosoever shall say, 'thou fool', shall be in danger of hell fire", Jesus warned.

Knowing this, no sane Pastor would intentionally disparage a fellow human being who was also created in the image of God. It's like insulting Almighty God himself. But does Reno really care? A man that operates a pseudo personality will most likely care less about how God feels. Or who knows, maybe he had transformed into Windell Simlin before he wrote that unholy diatribe against Amaechi. In the end, it seems to me that there is a raging conflict between Reno and Windell.

Reno boy, it's all in your head.