The unfolding anarchy and violence in Nigeria are serious matters, and every attempt must be made to keep the public informed. A documentary that investigates and examines government failures, while centring on victims and their families would have done that. Giving boastful, bloodthirsty criminals a global platform serves only two purposes. It provides free publicity for terror and enables the BBC to push viewership figures on social media.
It has simply gotten out of hand.
Journalists and now a global media organisation of repute, the BBC, which should know better, are becoming tools for terrorists, even if unwittingly, by amplifying the faces, voices and stories of killers and marauders who are still operating with impunity across Nigeria.
The public interest argument seems to have been misunderstood, some may even say misrepresented, to enable sensationalist reporting that is very unlikely to be allowed on screens in the United Kingdom. By not upholding the same standards as they would uphold in the UK, in their work in Nigeria, the producers of BBC Africa Eye, in their latest documentary titled The Bandits Warlords of Zamfara, have provided a global platform to terrorists and can be accused of becoming an accomplice to terror in the name of reporting it.
When Communications Professor at the University of Toronto, Mahmoud Eid, coined the term Terroredia, in his book Exchanging Terrorism Oxygen for Media Airwaves, Eid argues that there is now a relationship between terrorists and media professionals in which acts of terrorism and media coverage are exchanged, influenced, and fuelled by one another. Since it was written seven years ago, it would appear the case Eid was trying to make is now quite self-evident, especially in Nigeria, where, increasingly, propaganda videos and statements by terror groups, as well as features on terror leaders, are finding their way into mainstream media. We can now easily identify, for example, the faces of the major kingpins responsible for the widespread kidnappings and killings that are occurring on a daily basis in the Northern part of Nigeria, no thanks to having their pictures and videos splashed all over the pages of newspapers and on our television screens, almost as if they are Nollywood A-listers.
None of this has helped our inept government, led by President Muhamadu Buhari, to find and arrest these blood-thirsty criminals. The pressure has also not stopped the administration from playing ostrich and finding an effective way of tackling insecurity. These are some of the public interest arguments put forward by those defending the featuring of predatory criminals on national and now international media platforms.
The arguments also include an assertion that hearing from terrorists helps us understand the conflicts better and therefore come up with solutions. Under the guise of public interest, this is the argument that BBC Africa Eye seems to be presenting, to justify its decision to actively give copious screen time to self-confessed murderers and kidnappers, who are still actively involved in attacking communities, killing, kidnapping, pillaging and generally making life brutish and a living hell for the people of Nigerias North-western state of Zamfara and beyond.
The two promotional clips released for the documentary, the Bandits Warlords of Zamfara, feature a marauder who should remain nameless here, confirming that he was part of those who raided Jengebe girls secondary school in the state, abducting over 300 students, with the attendant horror these sorts of crime normally entail, and releasing them, after the payment of ransom. Evidently, the BBC Africa Eye team also had no problem utilising footage that appears to have been shot by these self-confessed criminals, because this makes it into the second trailer. No media of repute would take this decision because it is generally understood that these sorts of videos are recorded by terrorists for one thing only: propaganda.
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