Telling The True African Story: African Media's Job, not CNN's

I have been following tweets from the recently trending #SomeoneTellCNN and in truth, some of them are just too amusing. The issue in the centre of it might have ignited some cheeky comments after it but at the heart of it all is an ongoing concern for the continent of Africa.
As US president, Barack Obama prepares to visit his father's country, Kenya, a CNN reporter wrote an article on the security concerns of the US about the visit. The opening of this article had described Kenya as a "terrorist hotbed" and it sparked a flood of vitriol from Kenyans and for understandable reasons. It read, " President Barack Obama is not just heading to his father's homeland , but to a hotbed of terror ," they followed it up with a chyron on television that looked similar.
The obvious displeasure of Kenyans and Africans at large in this is a subject matter that has been with us as far back as the origin of Africa's relation with the rest of the world: misrepresenting of Africa in the global media. When these things happen, whenever I observe occasional representations of this issue, as I do with other issues, I ask myself two central questions. Why did it happen is the first question, and it leads me to the second; who should prevent it or address it?
First of all, there is no way of evaluating Africa's representation to the world without being a little ashamed of what our society has labeled itself. The world sees Africa mostly as the dark continent where bad news are naturally birthed. This is so because this is the image western media paints and this is so because they (western media) do not owe it to Africa to present them sweetly to the world.
To be fair to CNN and their from friends in the west who will be happier to address Africa as a terrorist hotbed than as the new home of economic growth, I have to admit that the need for their own business health thumps the need for Africa's pride. Corporate media houses are nothing but news retailers. To be profitable, they need to retail only the news that sells. The headlines, "ISIS-linked terror group runs rampage in northern Kenya" and "Boko Haram kills scores in Northeast Nigerian town" will sell better than "Polio is reported to be eradicated in Nigeria" or "Public health enhanced in Botswana".
These headlines won't flood in page views and high ratings which is what media businesses are all about.
We cannot continue to rely on the rest of the world to help us tell our stories then attack them when they don't tell it the way we want. Media agencies which are indigenous to Africa should be primarily responsible for telling our true stories to the world and build a better image of Africa in the minds of the global audience. To be able to achieve this, African media houses must work hard to create a global platform of audience that is massive and influential while being objective. I am not suggesting they begin to paint untrue pictures of Africa or mislead the world about Africa in any way, all I'm saying is that they have to begin to broadcast those news about Africa that western media would consider not profitable enough and try as much as possible to correct the negative and false impression western media creates about Africa.
To do this, they on their own have to be as powerful and authoritative on their own right. This means commanding just as much audience and being more trustworthy as a news source. It would obviously take years to attain that level on a global scale but we have to begin now. Currently, I can't see any African media empire that comes anywhere near CNN and Aljazeera in clout but with modern day universality of ICT, challenging them in ideology and opinion won't be that mountainous.
I however have to correct a notion that might be brewing in my reader's mind right now. When I say "African indigenous media houses" I am certainly not talking about State-run media houses. We have seen those aplenty and have seen how they failed to perform in this regard. Instead of seeking a global audience to educate about their home country, they get more concerned about publishing propaganda and false reports to deceive the local public about the activities of the regime in power. That was the state of African broadcasting in the early decades of the Republicanization of African States. Sadly, modern day independent media in Africa seem to have inherited that spirit and are hence lost in a myopic enclave of local political trumpet blowing rather than tell the true stories of their people to the world in an objective manner that makes them appealing.
It therefore has to be said to my Kenyan brothers and the rest of Africa that CNN and the western media do not owe Africa the responsibility to tell African stories the way it suits us, our own media houses do. This tells us that inside the belly of every single tweet in the #SomeoneTellCNN trend, there should be #SomeoneTellAfricanMadia awareness.

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The Srebenica Massacre: what is in a name?

Let us talk about this matter that kept me arguing furiously for over an hour with an old man I met at the bus station today. He had one of the daily newspapers he was reading and he turned to me to complain of President Buhari's non vote on the issue at the UN Security Council. He was very livid about the idea of someone as high as the president of a sovereign country sitting on the fence or worse still undecided about "such an important matter".
Well, I took my time to calmly explain to him why if I was in the President's shoes I would have done same. We ended up debating this for the entire time -which was nearly an hour- the bus ride lasted.
But really, what is to be gained if the Srebenica massacre was officially crowned to be 'genocide'?
In this post in particular, I am not interested in opening up the tired debate on what exactly is genocide or when can we truly really say genocide has occurred. That on its own is open for the lawyers at The Hague to keep busy with for the rest of their careers. What I am interested in establishing is how will it help the families of the victims and the rest of the world if we get to award that hideous event the title of genocide.
Whether we want to call it genocide or not, the killing of those unarmed and retreating Muslim fighters remains deeply sinful and must be punished by what the legal full measure is. Seeking to declare it to be genocide really holds no legal value. The act, if you know the story, remains an inexcusable war crime irrespective of the intent behind it. Because the line that might exist between the killings of Srebenica and a legally accepted act of genocide should be that of the intent behind it. If we can go on and establish intent, the only thing we will achieve from it is a deepened animosity.
Without doubt, separating males between the ages of 12 and 77 from any tribe for massacre looks so much like ethnic cleansing, but fighting to wear on it a certain tag twenty years later has no effect on the forward looking of all concerned. What does have effect is to punish all the perpetrators of this undeniable crime of cold blood murder and ensuring that its like is not repeated anywhere in the world. It is a different matter altogether if we need to do this in order to fully punish the perpetrators. If being able to establish it as genocide will help a court arrive at a more suitable sentence for those proven guilty, or if it is been pursued so as to aid a process of compensation for the victim's families, then by all means we must obtain the "genocide" title for that sad event in Srebrenica.
This is however not the case. I agree with Russia's UN Ambassador, Vitaly Churkin; it would lead to greater tension in the region and would be counter productive.
So far, the non recognition of the Srebrenica massacre as genocide by the UN has not stopped the UN tribunal at The Hague from convicting a lot of people in to the killing. Likewise, the recent failure to name it so will not hinder further convictions and prosecutions if any evidence is found against anyone suspected to have taken part in it.
Killing remains killing. I do not need any international body to title an act as genocide to know that a man who has conducted an extra judicial killing on an unarmed fellow has committed a severe crime that must be punished gravely.

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Book Haram: a mystery to common sense

I'm sure some of us have come across this particular story of Miriam on in the news lately. Miriam was a Boko Haram abductee who escaped from the camp and told her story to a BBC reporter.
Something in her tale made me begin to reconsider my confidence in security forces fighting the terrorists.
Miriam's story goes like this when put briefly. She is 17. She was taken from her village six months ago when Boko Haram took over her village. She escaped six months latter and returned to her same village where her people live without Boko Haram oppression which means that government forces have taken her village back. She is heavily pregnant. She was held in a small room along with about forty other women and girls.
These are what were gathered from her story as reported by the BBC.
Now these are what I would deduce from her story. There are other girls and women still in captivity in that same place she escaped from. The town where she was held would not be too far from her village which is now under government forces. A heavily pregnant 17 year old won't be able to run a very far distance without being caught up with by her captors.
Now here is my question. How can the Boko Haram have a base in a runable distance from government forces and yet not found in all those six months?
What has security forces done with any Intel she can share to rescue the other women.
This raises question over the sincerity to the fight against Boko Haram and the competence of these forces.
This is an embarrassment to common will.

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Syrian Crises: the moral tragedy of war

I have not at any time of my life lived in a war zone. The closest I have been to war was as a seven years old kid during the June 12 post-election riot in Lagos, Nigeria. I can remember watching from the balcony of our house as some soldiers rounded up a number of rioting young men and beat them to pulp. The men managed to squeeze away from the beating party with something left of their lives except one of them. When the soldiers had gone very far away from our street, we the bloody civilians gathered around the body of the young man.
As little children at that time, it was of excitement to watch it all happen. But today, each time I hear of news of war or any violence on going anywhere in the world, I think of that incidence. I think of people, and even children in that place having that experience. In the case of Syria, I think of the experience occurring a million times worse than what I had.
What we have going on in Syria right now shames humanity. The casualty figures are staggering, yet we seem to be used to it. This is what wars and news of wars do to the human mind. We hear of a war somewhere and we just expect to hear next a substantial figure of deaths and destruction following. Whatever manner of story that would have been unacceptable to our sense of morality becomes anticipated and then excusable. Wars kill our morality. It gives justification for the reach into the darkest corners of man's wicked heart.
About 250,000 lives have been lost since the start of the Syrian war in March 2011 that began as a pro-democratic protest in Deraa. Both sides of the war have been alleged by the UN Commission to have committed acts against human rights like torture, rape, cold blooded murder, abduction and civilian sufferings like denial of basic living amenities amongst other war crimes. Civilian gatherings have been deliberately targeted by both parties which several times had resulted in massacres.
In August 2013, someone or some persons took a hold of rocket launchers loaded with rockets that contain sarin, a nerve chemical weapon. Being well aware of what this chemical would do to the humans who will be in its landing area, he or she sent it on its way to land in Damascus. This was done to harm thousands of people who have not offended him or her in any way, people he or she had never met before. This is a shocking exhibition of a mind swept clean of conscience. War was the excuse.
ISIS and the religious sectarianism now thrown in the mix of the matter has added unholy complexity to a severely outrageous crises.
It isn't that Syria has become the worst of wars in the history of mankind. But the fact that we can still descend this low questions the truism in the concept of human social advancement. We would want to believe that today, we are closer today to our conscience and finer in inter-human relationships than our father's forefathers were. For instance, slavery was rational and acceptable five centuries ago, today we shun it. Why have we not reached the social and moral advancement enough to shun the dirtiness of war or at least fight it with some decency like adhering to the Geneva War Convention.
In the course of writing this, I have thought of the Holocaust, I have thought of Concentration Camps, I have thought of Biafran babies during the Nigerian Civil war and I can say that wars mocks our haughty shoulders of superiority over the beasts of the wild. Wars murder our morality.

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Matters in Our World Right Now

ISIS
Just about a day after US airstrikes pounded the city of Raqqa where ISIS had adopted as the capital of its Caliphate, the Islamic terrorists have recaptured a town close to it from Kurdish led forces. This leads me to ask just how much the airstrikes are working. Do we begin to think of a different strategy like the coalition contributing ground forces? But then that reminds me of post 9/11 Iraq...scratch that. Let's try a little more airstrikes or something entirely new.

Greece
The "No" vote in Greece that rejected terms of an international bail out is giving serious concern to creditors. The government in Greece with scant space to celebrate this victory must come up with a better plan. I think that will be the hard part. I'm thinking that next plan would be to create a new currency that will be used to finance Greek banks which are currently entirely broke. This will be a clear signal of asking to leave the eurozone. I'm still not sure who stands to lose the most from Greece's exit from the eurozone but I guess there are other ideas in the heads of both Greece ruling party and EU ministers of finance.

Boko Haram
Despite the emergence of a new party in government that swore during the campaign to have the silver bullet against Boko Haram, the terrorists are seemingly waxing stronger and more ruthless. In the past one month that the new government got into office, number of attacks have increased and more frequent. In only two days there have been up to five attacks in several different states that are outside the north east states that they were confined in to at the close of the last government.

In other issues, Lionel Messi has again failed to win another international final. Life can be hard at times, even to the god of soccer.

Cheers everyone.

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The Major Victims of the Syrian Crises

I wouldn't have to think too far to determine who are the major victims of this seemingly endless and multifaceted war happening in Syria right now.
The war has claimed so many lives. It has seem so many families scattered and displaced. It has destroyed so many exotic UNESCO Heritage sites. It has done an incalculable damage to the country that is perhaps irreparable and unforgettable. But none of these will be a bigger victim than those little humans whose innocence it has plucked out prematurely. The ones whom it has denied a stage of life as sacred as childhood. They are the ones who will live the longest with the most unpleasant memory of bloodshed and tragedy in their heads. To these ones, all forms of normalcy of life has been deprived and all they have is a struggle to sustain life at whatever cost.
These are the major victims of the war in Syria. The Syrian children.
In a report released recently by UNICEF and Save the Children, the child labour that has resulted from economic desperation of displaced families is threatening to cause a lost generation of Syrian children.
According to this report, one of three street based Syrian children in Lebanon are girls. A bigger danger to the rest of the world lies in the fact that these children are more prone to coarse recruitment by terrorists and rebel groups. This report puts the ratio of children in the Kurdistan region who have been approached by armed groups at one out of three.
There is also the health risk that comes with matters like this. The dire lifestyle they are forced to adopt will only lead to health hazards and we sadly will not be able to rule out sexual abuse where these children are concerned. This raises the risk of STDs not only for these children but their immediate society. Three out of four of the children working in the Zaatari refugee camp in Jordan have reported health problems at work and those who do agriculture work in Mafraq and the Jordan Valley have 22% of them injured while working.
With this report, one does not need to be told what sort of danger this represents not just to Syria but to the region and even the world. These children are obviously forced out of schooling, baring any quick intervention they will have no choice than to live their lives on the backside of life. This is the backbone of the "lost generation" fear of the authors of this report.
Wishes are not horses but I beg to ride on this one for the sake of the good of these children and the world they will grow up and live in, that those who are involved in this war have a rethink and resolve matters.

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The French Army and Their Soldiers in Africa Must Tread With Care

The two French soldiers recently involved in the allegation of child molestation and sexual abuse in Burkina Faso have been suspended. This is according to the French defence ministry.
The piece of evidence against these soldiers was a video camera picked up by the father of one of the victims who is a five year old girl. This seems to be evidence that leaves little to debate about as it concerns the guilt or innocence of the accused.
Notwithstanding, the French military police are currently on the case to make a clear investigation.
These soldiers, being part of the 220 troops France has spread across Africa to help fight or check terrorism, should know better than to get involved in any act that undermines the success of the common mission.
There is something perhaps unfairly sensitive and delicate about a foreign troop occupying a country. The trust from the locals is on a premium and an impossibly high standard of professionalism and morality is expected from the foreign troops but they must live up to it if their mission must succeed.
The thinking is thus; if you are sent all the whole thousands of miles from your country to help me live a standard life, then you must be a heck of a great guy with no stain. Any foreign troop needs the full backing and trust of the locals, not only for the overall success of the mission but the safety of their lives.
After a similar incident happened in late 2013 through mid 2014 in the Central African Republic also involving French Soldier -for which fifteen are under investigation- this I'm afraid is wanting to become a trend. The French authorities as I can see recognizes the concern in this and the need to react rightly.
"This is an army that confronts [such accusations] head on," said the army's chief of staff, General Jean-Pierre Bosser.
"Either these cases are true, which would be extremely serious," he said. "Or, they are not proven, which is just as serious [because]... all our soldiers will be perceived as child rapists."
This is what they won't want. What has to be done now is for the trials of those soldiers to be as transparent as possible. If they are found guilty, let the authorities be implacable and if they are not, the transparency of the trial will leave no room for mistrust.
The French government must be commended for sending soldiers to check terrorism in Africa, but the soldiers must also be made to be at their best behaviours else, they become the terrorists.

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Gay Right: The World Has Bigger Problems

"Wherever we stand on this gay marriage right debate, whether we are clad in a coat of many (rainbow) colors or in self righteousness, if we can only look thoroughly at the world around us and what desperately demands our greater attention we would realize there should not be any debate at all in the first place."

I have had very good behaved friends in my childhood years who were more comfortable in the company of girls. They talked like girls and walked like girls. That was when being "gay" meant being happy and the idea of a man kissing another man was not an existing idea. I later in my adulthood came to realize that one of those boys who was actually my closest secondary school friend was homosexual. He had not infected me with homosexuality, so the homophobic club should drop the fear of homosexual epidemic that could lead to Sodomic Apocalypse.
The reason I chose to hold this commentary is the recent SCOTUS decision to legalize same sex marriage that has sparked outrage both inside the US Christian community and the rest of the homophobic world (think Mugabe's marriage proposal to Obama). While this was going on, the world -or those who cared about it- was grieving for the multiple attacks by ISIS and their loyalists in three different parts of the world.
That same week, a kid in Charleston, USA sat for an hour in a Bible study meeting before pulling out his gun and killing nine of his fellow Bible students.
I might be wrong but I believed the world would rather have neighborhoods where men sex men than one where men kill men unprovoked.
Similarly, an orphan would rather be parented by two women or two men who sleep with each other than live on the street without love and shelter.
Right now, the world has poverty, diseases, homelessness, infant mortality, terrorism, tribal strife and global warming to fight. I do not think it wise to add homosexuality to it because in the end, homosexuality does not kill anyone.

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