Opinion
By Valentine Obienyem
THERE are men whose contributions to public discourse elevate the soul, sharpen the intellect, and withstand the erosion of time. Reno Omokri is not among them. Rather, he has come to embody a tragic lesson in the corruption of public voice. Once an energetic commentator with the potential to shape thought, Reno has devolved into a chronic manipulator of truth – a corrosive presence in the public square, a poor influence by any standard of moral integrity, and a deeply disfigured role model for a generation seeking authenticity and direction.
His descent into irrelevance, however, did not happen in silence. With mischief perpetually smouldering within him, Reno prowls for opportunities to latch onto prominence, seeking out eminent figures like Wole Soyinka for the shallow triumph of a photograph. These snapshots, paraded as emblems of relevance, serve as the poor man’s badge of honour. Yet, when he retreats from the lens and takes to the pen, a different portrait emerges – that of a man ravaged by inner turmoil, whose once-confident voice now trembles with the petulance of self-doubt. His writing, often cloaked in moral posturing, betrays an unmistakable truth: he no longer believes in anything – not in ideas, not in others, not even in himself. His incessant invitations to be fact-checked do not spring from any noble pursuit of intellectual rigour; rather, they are the nervous gestures of a man attempting to muffle the rising chorus of his own irrelevance. Beneath the veneer of confidence lies a gnawing insecurity – a need to appear contested, when in truth, he is simply being forgotten.
As Søren Kierkegaard once warned, “The greatest hazard of all, losing one’s self, can occur so quietly that it is as if it were nothing at all.” That quiet erosion is what we now observe in Reno – a man loudly posturing to drown out the silence of his vanishing relevance.
This pattern of self-betrayal finds its most grotesque expression in Reno’s shifting loyalties. He has not lacked opportunities to demonstrate his mettle, but alas, he has proven mettlesome only in the dark art of betrayal. Time and again, he has turned against those he once extolled with breathless reverence – President Goodluck Jonathan, Alhaji Abubakar Atiku, and Mr. Peter Obi – names he once embroidered with praise, only to later discard when the winds of expediency shifted. Simply put, with Reno, loyalty is never anchored in conviction; it is tethered to convenience.
Machiavelli once wrote that “the promise given was a necessity of the past: the word broken is a necessity of the present.” Reno embodies this cynical calculus, where promises are tools, and principles are costumes.
This moral void, sadly, is not limited to the inconsistency of his alliances; it permeates the very substance of his thought. He remains, without exaggeration, one of the most unabashedly bigoted individuals I have ever encountered. His writings, far from inviting reasoned engagement, are charged with a seething hostility that spills over into every paragraph. One need not read far to encounter the unmistakable flare of unmannerly wrath, a caustic bitterness that drowns out coherence and eclipses logic. He does not write to illuminate or persuade, but to provoke, to wound, to unsettle. His pen is not an instrument of thought, but a weapon of grievance, wielded by an angry man who substitutes insult for intellect and rancour for reason.
This bile-laced rhetoric reaches its nadir when he generalises about the Igbo with the careless confidence of inherited prejudice. The manner in which he casually and repeatedly maligns them reveals far more than momentary lapse – it exposes a mind still shackled by the heritage of hate. He remains a captive of his own inherited hatred, ensnared in a legacy of suspicion and scorn that has ossified into reflex. As Plato once warned, “Opinion is the medium between knowledge and ignorance.” Reno does not dwell in knowledge; he luxuriates in the comfort of convoluted opinions, unexamined and unforgiven.
Unable to carve a path marked by honour or principle, he has instead nurtured a reputation for duplicity. Driven by an unrelenting appetite for material gain, he thirsts after money with the urgency of one who has no nobler ideal. Thus, he has honed the art of deception into a practiced craft, subtle in execution, insidious in intent, often masked in the self-righteous garments of activism, yet propelled by ambitions as mercenary as they are manipulative.
The consequence is predictable: he places greater value on currying favour than on upholding reputation. Today, he flatters those in power with the same zeal he once used to denounce them – yesterday’s adversaries transformed into today’s benefactors. Among his contemporaries, he is widely regarded as exceptional in three dubious arts: flattery, sycophancy, and time-serving opportunism. It is no exaggeration to say that he stands as one of the most remarkable figures in the long and inglorious history of sycophancy – a man who has made the vice not only a habit, but a craft.
Indeed, Reno is like a faithless dog, once barking ferociously in defence of his master, now tail-wagging before a new one the moment a bone is tossed. No loyalty, no honour – just the hunger of self-preservation. “He who opens a school door, closes a prison,” said Victor Hugo. Reno, however, closes the door of reason and opens wide the gates of moral imprisonment.
Little wonder, then, that there is scarcely a method known to political trickery by which public sentiment can be stirred, inflamed, or pacified that Reno has not mastered and employed. He weaponises emotion with surgical precision, engineers controversy with calculated flair, and modulates his tone like a seasoned actor – always performing for the applause of the moment. Oil-tongued and mercurial, he is the quintessential time-server, ever-ready to shift allegiances with the ease of changing garments, guided not by principle, but by the prevailing winds of advantage.
That adaptability, however, is not evidence of sophistication but of stagnation. The stubbornness with which he clings to the blind opinions absorbed in his youth—and the entrenched prejudice that shaped his thinking—has condemned him to repeated and predictable error. Unlike those who grow in understanding with age, Reno has remained becalmed in his transition.Rather than maturing, he has become more strident, more bitter, and more estranged from the very truth he claims to defend.
In contrast, one might be tempted to regard Bayo Onanuga with a degree of leniency, attributing his recent lapses to age or fading convictions. But such indulgence is misplaced. At over seventy, his writings have become an instructive study in the senile aftermath of youthful romanticism. Once a voice of idealism, he has since descended into the tired routines of propaganda and partisan self-justification. His prose no longer aspires to truth, but labours to defend irrelevance with borrowed conviction. What we find is not tragic decline, but wilful capitulation.
Reno, by contrast, offers no such excuse. He does not suffer from the erosion of age but from the corrosion of character. His cynicism is not the product of weariness, but of intent. Where Onanuga falters out of fatigue, Reno schemes out of design. Both are figures – not for what they have become, but for what they were willing to abandon to get there.
And so, it is no surprise that we have heard -indeed, have ourselves written – volumes about Reno’s incurable addiction to sycophancy. Once wielded with the promise of thoughtful critique, his pen now functions like a rented drum: noisy without depth, hollow in substance, and beaten not by conviction but by the whims of those who pay for the rhythm.
Let Marcus Aurelius remind us here: “The soul becomes dyed with the colour of its thoughts.” Reno’s soul is now stained with flattery, self-interest, and intellectual dishonesty.
Should the public be indulgent enough to seek a follow-up, the opportunity will be taken to incorporate whatever further is suggested by critics, specialists, and readers. But for now, let this piece serve as an honest reflection: Reno Omokri’s career has become a monument to lost credibility – where cleverness replaced integrity, and betrayal became a badge.
A.I
June 10, 2025
Tags: Alhaji Abubakar Atiku Goodluck Jonathan Mr. Peter Obi Reno Omokri Valentine Obienyem
