SENSATIONALIZATION AND INTERNATIONALIZATION OF CONFLICT REPORTAGE: SYNOPSIS OF RELIGION, MEDIA AND ETHNIC DIVISION IN NIGERIA
1Usman Muhammad & 2Ibrahim Danmaraya
1Department of Political Science, Kaduna State University
2Department of History, Kaduna State University
Corresponding author: Dr. Usman Muhammad
Email: Danmaraya77@yahoo.com; Muhusman2020@gmail.com
ABSTRACT
There is no doubt that Nigeria have witnessed a plethora of conflicts that have shaken her foundation since independence. This challenge has brought about hardship, poverty and backwardness especially as the conflict we witnessed, hit hard the economic fiber of the Northern part of Nigeria. Kano and Maiduguri, have long historical connections to the Arab trans-Saharan trade, long before the 18th century to date, those two have not only been a seat of trade, but of religious strong hold of Islamic civilization and culture. The various crises of Maitatsine conflicts in the second Republic and the subsequent crisis during the military regimes of Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida to date have their roots in the perceptions and wrong conception of different and diverse cultures. Added to the heterogeneous nature of Nigeria, the various reportage of the media, and their regional prejudices, and biased reporting, has accentuated those fault lines to not only sensationalize them, but internationalize the various conflicts along vertical and horizontal divisions. This paper has focused on religion, media, and ethnic divisions in Nigeria and how the heterogeneous nature of the country became a burden and liability, rather than beautiful asset and tourist haven. With the inception of democracy in 1999, one would have thought, ethnic and religious crisis will wane, contrary to that, Nigeria witnessed an avalanche of those conflicts and crisis, the media has been traditionally divided between the North and South, all reporting with prejudices often and ethnic idiosyncrasies, and cultural ethnocentrism a synopsis of this is what the paper have discussed as a development challenge. The methodology is analyzing the hang-over of colonial division that is a cog in the wheel of progress in the 21st century.Even as it is, the Crisis between the Fulani-herdsmen and the Farmers has been in the burner with devastating consequences of confused methods to solving them. While the Federal Government of Muhammadu Buhari is favouring Grazing Colonies, a fall out from the various states that have implemented the anti-grazing laws, most states in the federation have rejected such solution. This indeed has been very well criticized as failure by the former president Olusegun Obasanjo. Ironically, the RWANDAN genocide has similar trajectory in the history of ethnic cleansing and pogrom, the crisis in Bosnia at the Heart of Europe, has similar history of biased media reportage, and some other pockets of crisis in Africa and around the world. Solutions have been identified and recommendations offered.
