EDITORIAL
Subjective Reporting Meant to Incite
Janurary 7, 2012
International news reports about the Nigerian situation is as usual very one
sided and subjective. While
it is now very normal for the media to tow the line drawn by the world’s leading
developed countries in a mass image destruction campaign against Muslims across
the world, the imbalance in the Nigerian situation is beyond proportions. Since
Christmas, all international news sources continue to carry hourly news about
the Christmas bombing at Madalla. Did
they do the same when the shoe was on the other foot, in an equally sensitive
event, yet more heinous? No.
I was in Nigeria
during the Eid-el-Fitr of August 2011 and literally caught up in a serious
situation passing through the city of Jos on my way to the city of my birth
about an hour drive from that city. What might have contributed to our safety,
as we pass by the city unsuspecting that any such thing was occurring at another
part of town, was our choosing to pass through the city, instead of using the
by-pass (a circular highway that travelers use to avoid city traffic). Some
Muslims who started fasting a day earlier than most of the Muslim world were
celebrating their annual Eid after a full month of fasting on the 28th of August. That was a
day before majority Muslims across the world celebrated theirs. Those Nigerians
celebrating that day had already fasted 30 days by then.
Most people who went to the praying ground where a much
more serious attack by Christians occurred, parked their cars within the park
and some by the roadside in order to reach an open prayer ground to
pray. Because of the distance one has to walk to the praying ground, some who
arrived with their kids decided to leave them with their older siblings in the
car to wait for their return. Others who arrived last minute also decided to do
the same, i.e. leave the kids in the car to rush and catch the annual Eid prayer
service.
No sooner than the Muslims complete their prayer, the
neighboring Christian population pounced on them using mostly local
weapons. Very few fire-arms were reported to have been used. Most victims were
hacked to death, while some had their heads cut off using machetes. Others were
however burned alive. Most of the victims burnt alive were children between the
ages of three to seven sitting in their cars waiting for their parent. Women
and the elderly were also not spared. Other children who made it to the ground
with their parents were also among those hacked down by machetes.
The sheer hatred and the raging genocidal tendency that
has plagued the capital city of Plateau State, Jos - has contributed to more
than a decade of similar massacres. But this particular incidence, probably due
to its double jeopardy situation was gruesome.
The main violence from previous years was mainly based on
ethnicity. The perpetrators with the support of the state governors and a times
security force also, use to target Hausa Fulani. Now the Christians attack on
Muslim during their annual religious prayer service [Eid-el-Fitr] was a double
kill for those who target others based on both religion and ethnicity.
Another striking difference is the attitude of the
leadership of the two religious bodies. Since yesterday, and not for the first
time, the Leadership of the country’s Christians from the Christian Association
of Nigeria, has been seen on TV making remarks you would hardly hear from the
Muslim leadership, a group that has endured much more and for much longer than
the recent occurrence against Christians. We have never heard his Nigerian
Counterpart, the Sultan, utter such inciting words and threat.
The casualty for the August incidence, for
example, was much higher than the Madalla incidence. No one could put an
accurate figure. Rows of cars were burnt as their owners were chased on foot
and hacked down. No one who knows the details of both incidences will compare
the victims from that incidence to that of the Church Bombings of Madallah, a
town in the outskirts of Abuja. Evidence? Watch this video. [We must seriously
caution you that it is extremely graphic, however] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24Ym0g5Tobw
Not many around the world even head of that incidence,
talk of sympathizing with their families who watched their loved ones killed
burnt alive and eaten by Christians. Reports of cannibalism were supported with
videos and sms video messages that were recorded and circulated around the
country. Some victims to this day could not locate the bodies of their loved
ones, burnt alive and eaten by the perpetrators.
Jos has suffered successive crisis since 1999, where most
of the time Muslims have been targeted by residents with the full support of the
plateau civilian government. Neither the state nor the federal government [both
under the leadership of Christian civilian governors and President] cared much
to punish the perpetrators.
But a few months later, after a similar religious service
attack on Muslims, the bombing of the Madalla Church during Christmas, which
some sources attributed to a revenge attack [for the Muslim celebration attack
in Jos] has raised much more heat. It attracted much coverage nationwide and
around the world.
This publication has consistently called the attention of
the authorities of Nigeria that they have to be consistently objective in their
approach to every incident. While the country has always been heterogeneous
ethnically and religiously, not at any time or any government has the country
been subjected to the open use of violence for political point scoring.
It appears that such subjective media reporting local and
international is meant to incite and win sympathy at the same time. But in a
country where both religions believe in each individual accounting for his true
actions before God, how can these actions be justified. Cooking the books and
distorting facts do not veil them from the eyes of God, who loves all his
creation and ensures justice between them.
The Nigerian civilian authorities headed by Christian
Presidents for eleven of the thirteen years of civilian rule since 1999 have
utterly failed to maintain law and order and the records are there for all to
see. While any killing should be condemned, no one has the right to bear false
testimony to the reality on the ground, whether local or international
sources. Like all professions seeking to serve the community, journalism
carries with it the ethic of social responsibility. Credibility and objectivity
must be its hallmark!
An
editorial by The Optimist Voice. www.theoptimistvloice.com
(c) The Optimist Voice. All Rights Reserved.
