When the Rwanda madness boiled over, a local radio it was that directed the grim orgy of point-and-kill.
Here, “point-and-kill” is leisure lingo for local pepper soup gourmets. But the Kigali party was a grisly affair.
So, when Radio Mille Collines belted out the order, “Cut down the tall trees!”, “Crush the cockroaches!”, the globe was awake to perhaps the greatest horror since Hitler.
The “tall trees” were the tall, gangling Tutsi, who though a minority, monopolized political power. Their hunters were the Hutu, the bitter majority, bent on throwing off the Tutsi yoke.
When the smoke cleared, on the Rwanda genocide of April-July 1994, Radio Television Mille Collines rebranded the media as nation wrecker, from nation builder.
Yet, its hate broadcast lasted one year: July 1993 to July 1994.
The Rwanda genocide would be 24 years this year. But the Nigerian media appears to have learnt nothing from the Rwanda media’s road to catastrophe.
This is clear from the base role the media had played — and continue to play — in the crises, real or contrived, that have faced the Muhammadu Buhari presidency.
For President Buhari, it has been one year, one major crisis: Niger Delta Avengers bombing expedition (2015/2016), Nnamdi Kanu IPOB’s ferocious harvest of hate (2016/2017) and the herdsmen killing spree (2018).
In all of these, the media would appear bent on stoking the fires, than snuffing them out.
The especial grouse appears the president’s Fulani nativity; which a hysterical segment — more or less the bulk of the southern press — appears determined to scapegoat and demonize to the hilt.
Media-bred hate can only build a road to Kigali, paved with innocent skulls, blood and gore. After Rwanda, should any country ever traverse this route?
Still, make no mistake. Nigeria is a federation of many ethnic nations, each with its cherished world views and idiosyncrasies; not to talk of mutual but thick prejudices, fanned by ancestral feuds, real or apocryphal.
Such feuds and prejudices, therefore, bob up in the media, no matter how careful the gatekeepers are.
Besides, all politics is local. So, it is a function of the willy-nilly federalization of the Nigerian media that Daily Trust, for instance, would push for northern interests, just as The Punch would for the West, Daily Sun for the Igbo South East; just as Vanguard would cast its lot with the southern, oil-rich minorities, in the fierce contestation for plums, in the Nigerian space.
The media, as traditional champion of local rights, fits pat into that fray, in the best tradition of crusading journalism.
But crusading for rights is one thing. Recklessly baiting catastrophe, is another. In handling these crises, the media has tended towards the second than the first.
The result is a media roaring as rabid ultra-nationalists and ethnic chauvinists; spreading hate, baiting doom and pushing a poisoned pool of bigotry, to the unwary, as an immaculate spring of fairness.
Take the opener of the crises, the bombing spree of the so-called Niger Delta Avengers.
Now, this was a criminal gang drafted — or which drafted itself — into the political space, following the the loss of presidential power, by local boy, Goodluck Jonathan; and resultant loss of gravy, by local parasites.
That appeared the make-good of the threat to make Nigeria ungovernable, should President Jonathan be voted out. The tragi-comedy, of one government becoming a fugitive to another, added to the suspect Avengers campaign.
While the bombs boomed, Government Ekpemupolo aka Tompolo vanished, a fugitive from the law, wanted for alleged jumbo sleaze. It would appear a legitimate supposition, therefore, to claim that the Avengers bombing had more to do with covering Tompolo’s tracks, than fighting for Niger Delta rights.
Yet, much of the South-South media, with most of the southern media in tow, framed this ultra-dangerous precedent as some Niger Delta liberation struggle. It was not.
Now, resorting to violence, just because you lost a free election, is an atrocious precedent, which an enlightened media ought to slam as a concerned and concerted bloc.
If today, a southern group resorted to bombing just because it lost an election, what stops a northern group following the same formula tomorrow?
After the Avengers, came the IPOB campaign — a rabid, hate-filled denunciation of the rest of Nigeria. Though popular among the plebs in South East streets, it put the Igbo and their interests at loggerheads, with other parts of Nigeria.
Again, the southern media cheered on this madness, until another lunatic fringe from the North gave the Igbo residents there an 1 October 2017 exit deadline — or else! That triggered a chain of events that eventually turned Nnamdi Kanu a fugitive from the law.
The herdsmen killings, that broke with the new year, put the president exactly where his traducers want him — the hysterics against Fulani criminality, with not a few even suggesting presidential complicity and sweeping ethnic guilt by association!
Again, no pity for killer herdsmen. Killing is a grievous crime that must be stiffly punished by the state.
But to now frame it as an exclusive Fulani crime is the apex of stupidity. Yet, that’s the line much of the southern media push — and with such hate, rabidity and brazenness.
But the terrible news just broke that Islamic State (IS) fanatics, with their penchant for vicious killing, may just be operating in Nigeria.
That doesn’t automatically put in the clear, the criminal colony of herdsmen. But it shows the folly — and danger — of a one-track media criminalization of a group, when others could well be the culprit.
Besides, in the present seasonal hate-for-hate orchestra, the herdsman and the media could well be two sides of the same hateful coin.
The herdsman unleashes terror in the grisly field. The media counters, with own fervency, in the air, in the press and, of course, in the (anti)social media.
It is terror for terror (just like an eye for an eye that makes everyone blind), that dooms all.
Such rabidity should be infra-dig for the media, except Nigeria is doomed to the road to Kigali.
Between Fafowora and Opaleye
Last week was, for Ripples, a sumptuous feast in humanity, from a young old man; and an old young man.
Young old man, Ambassador Oladapo Fafowora, 77, consultant to The Nation Editorial Board, retired — and was his sent-forth an event to remember! That was January 17.
Old young man, Abolade Opaleye, Esq., maritime lawyer and family man extraordinaire, turned 60. It was January 19, and all roads led to the Oriental Hotel, Lekki, for a sumptuous birthday bash, with class and glitz.
But what made it for Ripples was the gush of testimonies, about the duo, on their humanity, their decency, their hearts of gold!
Ambassador, happy retirement sir. They don’t make them that suave any more. To Opaleye, old young man, well, life begins at 60 — so no retirement for you yet.
Thank you both for being a riveting tutorial in basic humanity. Would sure love to be like you when I grow up!
