Regardless of government’s interventions or not, the security situation in Nigeria is still gruesome. And now, it’s become more horrifying in the Northwest. Even the persisting tug-of-wars between herders and farmers on a daily around the remote parts of the Country’s Northcentral region and the Northeast’s Boko Haram insurgency are now nothing to be compared with the deadly gunmen’s attacks that have beclouded the Northwest.
In actuality, before everyone’s eyes, northwestern Nigeria has now become the safest haven of active terror groups. And notably, the unprecedented increase in violent attacks has been defying the kept-up narrative amongst analysts that the northwest is relatively peaceful compared to the northeast.
Troubled Zamfara, a state which is one of the worst-affected recently by the activities of armed gangs who terrorise rural areas, kill and abduct innocent citizens, was where terrorists warned communities to sign a truce with them to access their farms while they also attacked communities in Maradun Local Government Area of the state, where they killed many locals and abducted no fewer than 30 girls. (https://www.vanguardngr.com/2023/06/bandits-kill-scores-in-zamfara-abduct-over-30-girls/) while a couple of years before, around November 2021, according to UNHCR, an estimated minimum of 11,500 inhabitants fled from a nearby state Sokoto, after experiencing similar suppression, seeking asylum to neighboring country Niger Republic.
Generally, Nigeria’s north-west regions are afflicted by tremendous crises such as attacks by criminal groups and armed bandits, while kidnapping and robbery along major highways are also not left out. In recent times, the crisis has kept on increasing owing to an upsurge in banditry attacks, which have resulted in extensive displacement of people in the region.
Northern Nigeria, and particularly north-western states, have also witnessed escalating intercommunal violence since 2011. Increasing numbers of armed gangs and gunmen have as well added to the growing violence in herding and farming communities.
These armed groups engage in what looks like planned attacks which figure cattle-rustling, rape, looting of recourses, kidnapping, murder and adopting innocent residents to work for free on their (the bandits’) farmlands.
In recent years, attacks caused by armed banditry in the northwest have generated hundreds of thousands of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in the north-west.
This crisis trend then cannot be fully understood outside the context of climate change, environmentally induced migration, indigene-settler dispute, contested land and grazing rights, competition over the ownership of mineral resources discovered, under-governed spaces and low administrative presence, and the politicization of the conflict, which have metamorphosed into deadly crises that now threaten national security.
But while trying weather the plaque and putting an end to how these people’s own houses turn to their very graves by the day, one of the most effective and blisttering approaches keeps being the rigorous drudgery of the media.
To affirm this standpoint, Thomas Jefferson, the United States’ third president said “were it left for me to choose whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without government, I shall not hesitate a moment to choose the latter.”
There is no gainsay to that information is power and its insights impart any public discourse. To effectively address the problems in Nigeria’s Northwest, the media need to embrace to the task of uncovering events of all terror groups and then follow them up with post-news investigations. Also, by giving prominence to reportage of incidents immediately as they occur. While as well, journalists who have been mentored and trained should deploy their capabilities into impactful on-sight reporting.
For any activity to get noticed, it must be reported by the media. The media ought to then make national security atop its principal agenda so as to make positive impacts. Another push that should be considered is when TV and Radio stations discuss conflict more, treat it specifically and prioritize its influence by its constant communication – if possible, organize debates on the issues by way of agenda in carrying out in-depth analyses of the issues in fuller appreciation of the “publicist” role every media person plays as this will go a long way in petering out insecurity in the region.
Another standpoint to this was when Joseph Pulitzer, an American newspaper publisher and editor who in his time was one of the most decorated journalists in the United States, said, “there is not a trick, swindle, crime, dodge or a vice which does not live by secrecy, but when these things are exposed, described in the open, attacked publicly and ridiculed by the press, it’s the resulted public outry and reactions that will surely sweep them away.”
Journalists and researchers, at the end of the day, should now be provided by the government and other private, non-profit media organizations with improved welfare package for adequate trainings/workshops, symposia and seminars which would figure modern crime reportings among others and also insurance cover for them to be motivated to engage more in dare-devil stories and reportage in the interest of the public.
Lastly, the security agents need to work closely with the media personnel for effective crime fighting. All of these are what are pertinent to keeping all journalists, presenters, analysts and the similar up-to-date in nowaday trend in mass media, as that will resultingly tackle insurgency in all fairness and other forms of criminal activities that prevail in and uglify the Nigerian treasured region of Northwest and the country at large.
