By PAUL ARHEWE 05/05/2011 01:07:00
The April elections are over, leaving behind trails of woes and applauses. While winners are still in celebrative mood, those bad losers are either seeking avenues for redress or still attending to their defeats.
Nevertheless, we will forever remember the distasteful event that underscores the electoral exercise where many lives were inhumanly snuffed out, despite the fact that the polls were adjudged to be the most transparent and fairest Nigeria has conducted in decades. Many families are left in a lugubrious state from the residual of this deadly mayhem. From observation, foreign media have, in no small measure, contributed in abetting divisive outburst through their pattern of reportage and in the manner in which they harp continuously on the flimsiest of brouhaha in Nigeria until they snowball into a conflagrated quagmire.
The post-election mayhem is not an exception. One is flummoxed that most times, maybe deliberately, they chose to neglect those laudable happenings taking place in Nigeria, but pick holes to find derogatory excitement that will be celebrated through their media. For instance, not many a media in this clime did celebrate with screaming headlines to salute the transparency that accentuated the just-concluded polls in the country, but as usually influenced by their known idiosyncrasy, they quickly focus to pinpoint faults and trumpet them to stir the hornet’s nest. This grotesque reportage has attained a dimension where these foreign media begin and end any story concerning Nigeria in a picture that portrays irredeemable division and uncontrollable corruption.
The only good thing they report about the country is the abundant deposit of crude oil. For instance, how does one explain the constant reportage in any story about Nigeria where they usually begin with “the Muslim North” and “the Christian South”, “a Christian President from the South” or “a Muslim presidential candidate from the North”? Who told them the northern part of the country is 100 per cent Muslim or the southern part constitute wholly of Christian residents or indigenes? Such adjectives usually are aimed at causing division and creating suspicions along religious and ethnical pathways. When northerners begin to suspect the South that their plight would suffer when a southern leader take over the rein of power, tempers are usually flared at the slightest provocation.
This was mirrored in the recent post-election bedlam in parts of the north; a region where majority of youths and elderly are only informed from Hausa service programmes broadcast by foreign media. Also, it is so bad that they can never end any story relating to the country without indicating the fact that Nigerians are corrupt. From the BBC, the Associated Press, Reuters, CNN, Skye news and lots of them, none is innocent in this regard. The corruption index in the country may be on the high side; no country is immuned from it, and it should not be a consistent phrase that should be used to stereotype every Nigerian. This is the economic implication some of these foreign media have contributed in the country. Maybe they are working towards making their prediction a reality that the country would secede come 2015?
Our leaders both present and past have, in many instances, given nudge, wittingly or unconsciously to the prolongation of this neo-colonial imperialism by patronising foreign media with first-class privileges on issues of national interest. We all know how the news of the ailment and saga of the late President Musa Yar’Adua broke: Nigerians only got to hear his ailing voice and health condition on BBC, despite the fact that we have many capable private and government-owned media that would have professionally deciphered the content of the message in the local parlance that could have been effectively digested. Likewise, the presidential candidate of the Congress of Progressive Change (CPC) Muhammadu Buhari, gave his first reaction on BBC in regard to the killings in the recent post-election violence. I think it is high time our government checked the pattern of broadcast and checkmated the tendency of using this medium continually to fuel crisis in the country.
Nevertheless, we will forever remember the distasteful event that underscores the electoral exercise where many lives were inhumanly snuffed out, despite the fact that the polls were adjudged to be the most transparent and fairest Nigeria has conducted in decades. Many families are left in a lugubrious state from the residual of this deadly mayhem. From observation, foreign media have, in no small measure, contributed in abetting divisive outburst through their pattern of reportage and in the manner in which they harp continuously on the flimsiest of brouhaha in Nigeria until they snowball into a conflagrated quagmire.
The post-election mayhem is not an exception. One is flummoxed that most times, maybe deliberately, they chose to neglect those laudable happenings taking place in Nigeria, but pick holes to find derogatory excitement that will be celebrated through their media. For instance, not many a media in this clime did celebrate with screaming headlines to salute the transparency that accentuated the just-concluded polls in the country, but as usually influenced by their known idiosyncrasy, they quickly focus to pinpoint faults and trumpet them to stir the hornet’s nest. This grotesque reportage has attained a dimension where these foreign media begin and end any story concerning Nigeria in a picture that portrays irredeemable division and uncontrollable corruption.
The only good thing they report about the country is the abundant deposit of crude oil. For instance, how does one explain the constant reportage in any story about Nigeria where they usually begin with “the Muslim North” and “the Christian South”, “a Christian President from the South” or “a Muslim presidential candidate from the North”? Who told them the northern part of the country is 100 per cent Muslim or the southern part constitute wholly of Christian residents or indigenes? Such adjectives usually are aimed at causing division and creating suspicions along religious and ethnical pathways. When northerners begin to suspect the South that their plight would suffer when a southern leader take over the rein of power, tempers are usually flared at the slightest provocation.
This was mirrored in the recent post-election bedlam in parts of the north; a region where majority of youths and elderly are only informed from Hausa service programmes broadcast by foreign media. Also, it is so bad that they can never end any story relating to the country without indicating the fact that Nigerians are corrupt. From the BBC, the Associated Press, Reuters, CNN, Skye news and lots of them, none is innocent in this regard. The corruption index in the country may be on the high side; no country is immuned from it, and it should not be a consistent phrase that should be used to stereotype every Nigerian. This is the economic implication some of these foreign media have contributed in the country. Maybe they are working towards making their prediction a reality that the country would secede come 2015?
Our leaders both present and past have, in many instances, given nudge, wittingly or unconsciously to the prolongation of this neo-colonial imperialism by patronising foreign media with first-class privileges on issues of national interest. We all know how the news of the ailment and saga of the late President Musa Yar’Adua broke: Nigerians only got to hear his ailing voice and health condition on BBC, despite the fact that we have many capable private and government-owned media that would have professionally deciphered the content of the message in the local parlance that could have been effectively digested. Likewise, the presidential candidate of the Congress of Progressive Change (CPC) Muhammadu Buhari, gave his first reaction on BBC in regard to the killings in the recent post-election violence. I think it is high time our government checked the pattern of broadcast and checkmated the tendency of using this medium continually to fuel crisis in the country.
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