The wide princely latitude that public officials have accorded foreign
media correspondents to the detriment of local media did not start
with President Buhari. Most state contracts for major public relations
assignments have over the years been traditionally ceded to foreign
media platforms.
For watchers of the Nigerian political scene, the only controversy
that followed the election of President Mohammed Buhari to the exalted
office of the Presidency erupted from unlikely quarters. It was some
kind of controversy among mainstream foreign media over whose bragging
right as the first to run an interview with the newly elected Nigerian
President was the most authentic.
Drawn in the fray were Aljazeera, BBC correspondents in Nigeria and
Christiane Amanpour. While this controversy lasted the media handlers
of the newly elected President seemed to be treating the local media,
at best, as doormat. Not even the likes of Channel Television’s
Kadaria Ahmed stood any chance. And the local media seemed to have
accepted this as the norm. No one would raise a hue.
The wide princely latitude that public officials have accorded foreign
media correspondents to the detriment of local media did not start
with President Buhari. Most state contracts for major public relations
assignments have over the years been traditionally ceded to foreign
media platforms. Former Presidents Olusegun Obasanjo and Goodluck
Jonathan followed this path as if it were some kind of physician’s
prescription.
I once asked Manji Cheto, a fascinating political risk analyst,
specializing on sub-Saharan Africa, about this trend and its
implication on the capacity of local journalists in Africa and she
asked rhetorically; “how many African journalists lead coverage on
Westminster or Capitol Hill, yet look at the faces that dominate front
row briefings in African capitals?”
Cheto nevertheless acknowledges the debilitating poor funding of the
African media and how foreign journalists have risked their lives and
gone extra mile over the years to tell many of Africa’s most complex
stories. No doubt the number of local journalists getting article
appointments or working as correspondents in foreign media is on the
rise, says Cheto. However, many foreign media and journalists see
local journalists as only fit as fixers or as in my personal
experience as merely a pathway to needed news source.
According to observers, poor funding or lack of investments in local
media in Africa to empower them set development agendas for their
respective countries has led to venality in the media in Nigeria and
Africa, which undermines the role of journalists in mobilizing public
consensus to demand accountability on the actions of government.
It requires highlighting that local journalists are by no means immune
to daily professional hazards that beset journalists. According to the
Committee to Protect Journalists, of all the journalists who were
killed around the world in the course of their work, 90 percent are
locals. Many of these locals were journalists who were engaged as
fixers, translators and drivers for pittance by some foreign
reporters, many also died reporting for their local medium but little
is known their sacrifice.
Journalists are at risk, in Niger Republic, Nigeria and Cameroun
reporters were either detained or threatened in the bid by these
governments to control information coming out from the Boko Haram war
zone, where the group has so far killed and displaced hundreds of
thousands of people. Also, in faraway Pakistan, the likes of Ahmad
Zaidan, an Aljazeera journalist, known to have severally interviewed
senior Al Qaeda leaders including Bin Laden was recently labelled a
terror collaborator by authorities in US. Zaidan denies this though.
Zaidan decries the discrimination and double standards by the US (and
other western countries) and has this to say, “if Peter Bergen is
meeting Osama bin Laden, or Robert Fisk is meeting Osama bin Laden, no
problem,” he said. “But if a non-Westerner is meeting some wanted
people, he should be doubted?” I am particularly drawn to Zaidan’s
dilemma because it highlights the challenges and frustrations that I
have faced in reporting Boko Haram over these years in Nigeria.
I have been arrested, detained once and “invited” 48 times by
security agents in Nigeria between July 2009 to December 2012 alone
and have had to repeatedly turn down requests to interview Abubakar
Shekau, spiritual leader of Boko Haram in order avoid such profiling
the likes of Zaidan and co have suffered. Ironically, the biggest
challenge to journalists is not terrorists or those claiming to defeat
terrorism but the media itself that often profiled their colleagues
adversely in the name of rivalry.
For me, Zaidan captures the journalist’s professional motivation when
he says that, “our job as journalists is to reach out to everybody. We
are some sort of go-between in cases where the two parties
[adversaries] are not talking to each other.” It is demoralizing when
the lives or rights of western journalists (or journalists working for
influential media houses) are placed above those of their local
African or Middle Eastern colleagues working for relatively unknown
medium in the frontlines.
The fear of every local journalist in the frontline today is, will I
get that international pressure, attention, and support when I dare to
tell the story? These have added to the overall confidence deficiency
that are often noticeable with local journalists, and unless
journalists irrespective of their race, nationality or religion are
accorded the same respect and rights, local journalists will live in
peril and despair.
Salkida is a journalist and conflict analyst. He can be reached on
twitter @contactSalkida