By Umar Adamu al-Amin
I don’t read newspapers a lot, but I am an Internet aficionado; I make up for my lack of a robust newspaper reading culture by reading stuff online. A few days ago, having read an excellent article published in Blueprint newspaper about Yobe being a ‘microcosm of Africa’s development paradigm’, I decided to type the name “Yobe State” on Google to see what sorts of things will come up. I am originally from Yobe State and, although I live outside of it now because of work, I pay periodic visits to the state.
I was frankly surprised by what I saw on Google. Most of the items that came up in the search results were based on Nigerian newspaper reports about the state. Of course, there are plenty of thoughtful and even accurate portrayals of the state in many of the reports I read. But quite a number of others were so scary I wondered if they were actually about the Yobe state that I know.
If your perspective about and knowledge of Yobe State is informed only by the things you find on Google, therefore, you would be forgiven if you thought that nothing happens there except Boko Haram attacks.
As anyone who lives in Damaturu—or who frequently visits Damaturu— and other parts of the state can testify, there is an unimaginably wide gulf between the reality in the state and some of the scary media portrayals that I found on Google. Undoubtedly, there are occasional outbreaks of violence in some parts of the state—just like it’s the case in many parts of Nigeria and the world—but the fact that this violence is usually associated with Boko Haram, the bogeyman of the Nigerian media, makes it seem like the state is more dangerous than it really is. It wrongly and unfairly eclipses all the good things happening in the state.
Before I am misunderstood, let me clarify that I am not denying or making light of the fact that groups of beer-drinking and substance-abusing hoodlums (hardly the picture you would associate with people having anything to do with Islam) occasionally unleash violence on innocent people in Damaturu, and that defenceless people often get scared for their lives when such unfortunate incidents occur. I am only saying that in spite of appearances to the contrary, violence, turmoil, chaos, fear, and confusion are not the defining attributes of life in Yobe State.
As someone who studied mass communication in the university, I am not in the least surprised by all this. One of the crucial features of Western media reportorial tradition, which we inherited in Nigeria, is the tendency to privilege news about conflicts. In America, they say “if it bleeds, it leads.” That is, any news about death and destruction and violence, however isolated, always takes precedence over other competing news values. That is why, for the most part, news in the West— and in countries that inherited their tradition— is often about the displacement of routine, that is, about things that don’t happen always.
Because the news media love to highlight deviations from everyday happenings (captured very aptly in the journalistic maxim that says “when a dog bites a man it’s no news, but when a man bites a dog it’s news”), we are often presented with a distorted, often fragmentary and occasionally false, version of reality. When deviations from everyday reality get reported often enough, those deviations in time seem like the norm. For instance, if there is no single incidence of violence in a place for years, the media won’t report that because that’s normal.
However, if just one incident of violence occurs in the same place that has been peaceful for years, it becomes news, not only because violence displaces routine, but also because reporting it is good business for the media. So media portrayals can make a place seem like a violence-prone hellhole if only six or fewer isolated incidences of violence occur in that place that is otherwise peaceful. Since we never read about places when they are peaceful and normal, we unconsciously assume that the places must be violent because of media reports of occasional violence there.
It is this consideration that has led many media scholars to argue that the news media do not “reflect” reality; that they instead “construct” reality. The “reality” of Yobe State in some of Nigeria’s news media and in Google search results is a constructed, unbalanced, fragmentary, and inaccurate reality. It does not capture the peace, orderliness, and sanity that exist in most parts of the state outside Damaturu. It says nothing about the many non-indigenes who have called Yobe home for years and who still feel safe in it in spite of everything. It says nothing about the welcoming, friendly and resilient spirit of Yobe people. It says nothing about the legendary hospitality of the people of the state. It says nothings about the fact that the occasional violent upheavals in the state won’t last forever; that many states in the past that were consumed by violence are now peaceful and that the scourge of Boko Haram—and politically motivated groups masquerading as Boko Haram—is a fleeting phenomenon that will someday be history. And, most importantly, it says nothing about the efforts of the state government and the elders of the state to contain the occasional outbursts of violence and build bridges of confidences in the state.
The image of Yobe State that I gleaned from Google search results didn’t tell me that Governor Ibrahim Gaidam has reached out to security agencies in the state to tighten up loose ends in the security apparatus so that violence can be preempted before it occurs. It hasn’t shown me that the state government has brought together elders, community leaders, religious clerics, and traditional rulers, and high-ranking government officials to fashion out a way out of the circle of violence that has enveloped the state lately. What it also hasn’t shown me is that the governor often says that the violence in the state is manufactured by his political detractors who want to distract attention from the many unprecedented achievements he has recorded in healthcare, roads, job creation, agriculture, etc., which have made him the darling of ordinary folks in the state.
During a recent media interview, the governor was quoted to have said: “Those who instigate and fund unscrupulous youth to engage in these mindless acts of destruction would themselves not allow their own children to do this. This shows that they know their actions are evil and bad. Why then would they destroy the future of the children of other people by instigating them to commit evil? Let us remind them that the long arm of the law will one day catch up with them. But whether they are brought to account here on earth or not, they will one day die and will be held to account by the Almighty God. God is enough for them.”
From Google search results on Yobe State, which are refracted from some of our national and local media, we also don’t get to know that some reported cases of “gunfights” or gunshots that caused mass hysteria in the state capital were actually security operatives firing indiscriminately in the air to scare potential terrorists. The governor has called out security agents on this and implored them to stop the practice forthwith.
Yobe State certainly isn’t a perfect place. Like every place in the world, it has its own fair share of challenges, but it is not nearly the hellhole it has been cracked up to by constant media reports of occasional violence in the state. There is a lot more happening in the state than Boko Haram violence. And anyone who has been in the State over the past two years, when Governor Gaidam came to power, would tell you that, compared to a few years back, Yobe has made outstanding, almost surreal progress in education, roads construction, housing development and maternal and child health. In Yobe today, Governor Gaidam has also enthroned a democratic culture built on humility, respect for the people and passion to measure the worth of officials on the basis of their service to the people.
I hope people living outside the state and the country get to know that the image of this quiet, agrarian Pride of the Sahel is just being sullied by some exaggerated and inaccurate media reports. Most importantly, I hope this opinion is indexed in Google search results!
al-Amin, a social affairs commentator, writes from Bishop Oluwale Street, Victoria Island Lagos