The Chief Press Secretary to the Governor of Kwara State, Rafiu Ajakaye has called on the Nigerian media to be patriotic in their reportage of ethnic related issues.
Ajakaye made the call on Friday while delivering a paper on ‘Culture, Ethnic Rivalry and the Role of the Media’ at a one-day seminar organised by 400 Level Mass Communication students of the Kwara State University (KWASU) in Malete.
Ajakaye noted that the media has a duty to use its manipulative influence to shape national discourse in manners that do not aggravate ethnic conflict.
Making reference to Kwara State, he pointed out that the language of the media in reporting issues bordering on ethnic and religious relations will go a long to determine whether a Fulani Prince from the Sheikh Alimi dynasty will be friend to an Igbomina Prince from Kwara South.
He said, “…the role of the media is critical in peaceful coexistence and development. Our perception of one another, the nature of our relationship, and the kind of rivalry that exists in our communities are largely influenced by what we read or see in the media. For example, headlines like Fulani herders burn churches in Katsina; Odua People’s Congress closes Igbo shops in Alaba market; Niger Delta militants kill Hausa traders in Port Harcourt are inimical to corporate existence of the country.”
He further called upon the media to align with peace journalism to address some lingering security challenges in the country.
“The media is encouraged to align with peace journalism, rather than war journalism which I’m afraid seems to be in vogue in our country today. War journalism plays up the so-called ‘elite positions’ which hardly represent the views or dreams of the majority. War journalism favours reporting only the differences between (warring) parties and downplays their similarities, previous agreements and progress on common issues.”
“The media, in my opinion, should consciously campaign for Nigerians to truly get to know and appreciate one another. The media should deliberately promote what unites us and play down divisive issues or report them in conciliatory tones. The current tilt towards war journalism — whereby a section of the media weaponises our differences in their style and language of reporting — is a disaster waiting to happen. We should never allow the mistakes of 1967 to happen again. Like many commentators have said, we are better off just reading and watching videos about Rwanda, Sierra Leone and Liberia. I appeal to schools of journalism and media studies nationwide to ensure that their students are made to visit Oru town in Ogun State, where war victims from Liberia and other places were sheltered, and other landmark communities where the Nigerian civil war was fought. While Graphics and Media Law and Ethics are great courses that should temper would-be journalists, such as knowing where national security is at stake, I humbly suggest that schools offering media studies should make deliberate efforts to give students deeper classroom reflections on how ethnic slurs, unhelpful narratives and negative innuendoes in the media aggravated ethnic rivalry which quickly graduated to hatred and then the civil war in which millions of Nigerians died.
“At this point of our national history, reporters will do well to understand the various socioeconomic challenges and global development issues like the climate change and the disappearance of the Lake Chad, for example, and how these developments influence migration and conflicts among various economic groups. This will help to put things in perspective, build empathy, and allow for a national consensus on sustainable solutions to what is purely ecological, humanitarian and economic problems. For instance, the stiff resistance to the so-called Ruga programme and its successor National Livestock Transformation Programme may have been inspired by negative media portrayals of the otherwise laudable initiative as an ethnic land grabbing agenda to foster an imaginary caliphacy. Sadly, apart from creating a wedge between different peoples, which is bad on its own, the negative portrayals may have denied Nigeria a golden opportunity to fight food insecurity and build a sustainable future for its growing population.”