The Ugandan faceless social media self-styled whistleblower, Tom Voltaire Okwalinga (TVO) and Voice of America have been in highly confidential negotiations for the last 5 months.
ChimpReports have exclusively learned that the United States multimedia news agency which is also the official external broadcasting establishment of the Super Power, started extensive negotiations with Okwalinga in May this year.
Sources in Washington told this reporter that VOA first picked interest in interviewing the shadow figure last year when the government of Uganda appealed to the social networking website, Facebook administration under its founder Mark Zukerberg to close down the Okwalinga’s account.
“The momentum of Uganda’s government attentiveness on TVO made the VOA to see a ‘great’ interview opportunity,” a source in Washington said.
After failure to secure the closing of the account which main posts what is deemed inflammatory information, cyber security expert Robert Shaka was arrested by police in June 2015 on suspicion that he
was TVO. The State was however astonished when the account remained active and reporting on the same arrest when Shaka was in detention.
After the general elections ended early this year, The VOA officials in May decided to contact TVO and started negotiations for an interview to be run on both television, radio and online.
TVO started by setting “impossible” conditions to be followed by the VOA before he could agree for an interview.
“He outlined unbearable conditions for the interview to take place. There was no agreement,” another source in Washington said.
Since May the talks have been going on between the two parties and a breakthrough came early this month.
This website understands that the deliberations were kept confidential and no other parties were involved; not even celebrated journalist, Shaka Ssali who hosts the VOA Focus on Africa.
We also understand that VOA’s East African region editors left Kampala for Washington in
late September for the TVO interview.
On Tuesday Okwalinga posted on his wall saying he has agreed to be interviewed on VOA next week.
“We have just reached a final agreement on how best the interview will be done without compromising my safety,” he said yesterday.