Media, Ethnic Profiling And Kadaria

BY SIMON REEF MUSA

There is no greater falsehood than the perception that the assumed profiling of the Fulani ethnic group is tied to media reports. A Nigerian journalist, Kadaria Ahmed, recently claimed that our country is being driven down the valley of ethnic bushfire on account of reports that tend to portray the Fulani in bad light.

I have never met Kadaria. As a media practitioner of many years, I have come to appreciate the way and manner journalists are most times treated with disdain and only courted when they are needed to do certain things for those in the corridor of power. Even those in public office not living up to their mandates, oftentimes blame the media for their woes.

A society gets the type of media it deserves, so they say. Media practitioners are part of a society and they can only report what they see and report as told by eyewitnesses. That of course, does not remove the fact that certain devious citizens who most times take advantage of the loose regulatory framework of the profession to unleash fake news on the larger society.

Those who have taken the liberty to take the media to the cleaners over ethnic profiling are either being ignorant of what is happening in Nigeria or are simply playing mischief. How do you blame the media for sketching a particular ethnic group in a bad light with the aim of throwing the entire country into the bottomless pit of crisis? Should the media go silent so as to avoid being accused of being complicit in terror attacks unleashed on Nigerian communities by blood-thirsty bandits?

As I pen this piece yesterday, the Niger State and the entire country are still groping in the dark over how to resolve the quagmire surrounding the abductions of 27 school children, three teaching staff, two non-teaching workers and nine family members of abducted staffers living in the quarters of the Government Science School Kagara.

Earlier in the week, a video clip on the kidnap of several scores in the same state had gone viral, with the kidnapped victims subjected to several traumatising shots by the bandits. The faces of the abducted persons with their children is symbolic of the dilemma we have found ourselves as citizens of a besieged nation.

The Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Muhamamdu Sa’ad Abubakar III said out of 10 persons arrested for kidnapping, about seven to eight are of the Fulani ethnic group. When the media reports what the Sultan says such, in what way(s) does that amount to negative profiling? When abducted persons are taken to the bush and exposed to the horrors involved in ransom payment, must they be forbidden to narrate their experiences and the language their abductors used in carrying out their lucrative business?

It is tragic that Kadaria who should know and expect to rise above the trappings of ethnic sentiments is the same person attempting to drag the Nigerian media in the mud and blaming them for reporting conflicts. Of course, I agree that national security sometimes is put on consideration for certain information to be hidden in defence of the overwhelming majority.

Whatever the media report, the capacity of closing the gulf and dictating what should be reported by the media has decreased considerably over time. The advent of social media has made everyone a journalist. For someone to insist, like Kadaria, that the press is engaged in ethnic profiling amounts to playing to the gallery in a bid to muddle up the security issues confronting our nation.

Without any iota of doubt, our own Kadaria got it wrong when she lampooned her professional colleagues who have contributed so much for the unity of our country. As my colleague and former Chairman of the Abuja Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ), Mr. Jacob Edi wrote on his Facebook page, “No group of professionals have paid greater price for the unity of Nigeria than journalists. This country will burn if they publish the information at their disposal in the line of duty. And sadly, they get little or nothing… not even recognition. Failed governments are known to still blame the media. Sad, isn’t it?”

It is sad that while the country is burning and the North from which Kadaria hails from is passing through one of its darkest periods, she seems to be at home with perspectives that are completely not in the national interest. To speak in line with people in the comfort zone is not the hallmark of journalism.

If the demons of banditry are to be eliminated in the North and the country in general, we need truth to be told, no matter whose ox is gored. No doubt, some members of the Fulani ethnic are involved in criminal abductions, but that does not amount to labelling the entire Fulani group as criminals. What we must insist as a nation is that terrorists and criminal groups turning Nigeria into flourishing oases of crimes must be flushed out of our forest reserves and brought to justice. The criminal enterprise of kidnappings and other forms of criminalities are not perpetrated without the collaborating efforts of other ethnic groups. It is the prerogative of the government and other relevant security forces to put out of business those profiting from the raging state of our nation’s insecurity.

We may continue to embark on deodorizing insecurity by calling on amnesty for bandits in order to elongate our long night of suffering, but we must embrace the painful decision of carrying the battle to the doorsteps of the terror gangs as was recently declared by Governor Nasir Ahmed el-Rufai of Kaduna State. Anything less than carrying a total war against bandits is tantamount to elongating the evil days ahead.

Kadaria’s criticism of the media is meant to serve as a needless distraction and, so, media practitioners must not be distracted or succumb to such blackmail. A nation that does not appreciate the need to expose evils from all quarters, no matter the ethnic divide, cannot survive the rigours of building blocks of unity for national growth.

The Nigerian media has always been a partner in national development and has never been used as a pawn for disunity. What the military forces should do is to create a platform for regular briefings with members of the Fourth Estate of the Realm. Journalists have never been in the vanguard of creating divisions; they have been involved in bringing to the public happenings and beaming searchlight on discourse for national unity and development.

Enough of Kadaria’s unsubstantiated claim of ethnic profiling by the Nigerian media. Journalists don’t create news; they simply report news.