BY ARKA TECH
Within four days of each other, on Jan. 3 and Jan. 7, terroristic acts resulting in the loss of lives were committed in Baga, a city in the state of Borno in northeast Nigeria, and then in Paris.
The attack carried out by Boko Haram in Baga is the highest escalation in violence that this specific Islamist extremist group has brought about in a single attack since its inception in 2002. Anywhere from 150-2,000 people were killed in the attack, and the area is still under control of the group whose name can be translated as “Western Education is Forbidden.”
In Paris 12 people were killed — 10 cartoon journalists employed at the satirical magazine “Charlie Hebdo” and two police officers who were present because of erstwhile threats made against the weekly publication — after a series of caricatures depicting the prophet Muhammad were published.
Death in any manner always seems an unnatural occurrence to the living, but obviously in this case the egregiousness of both attacks is exacerbated by the senseless infliction of such an ultimate punishment upon innocent citizens.
Boko Haram’s assault is particularly poignant because similar organized massacres have killed around 5,000 civilians in striving to create a separate Islamic State from 2009-14, although previous attacks experienced a far lower rate of efficacy in their attempts to propagate Salafi jihadism along with religious genocide.
Maina Maaji Lawan, a senator representing the occupied region, has said up to 70 percent of his constituents’ land is under extremist control, and it is approximated that more than 1.5 million residents have fled to places like nearby Chad.
The sheer amount of people affected should have made, over the course of the past few years, worldwide news headlines consistently, thus encouraging world leaders to offer increased humanitarian and, if needed, military help.
Never doubt, the human spirit reaches its highest form when altruism becomes the norm instead of the exception.
And though the West is in no way ignorant to the centuries of ideologically driven warfare, there does seem to be a collective desensitization toward the plight African countries that’s caused somewhat of an acceptance of the situation as is.
The Paris attack within hours had become a pervasive story throughout the world. In the days following, citizens and world leaders alike took to the streets in a sign of solidarity in the midst of violent threats and disregard for human life.
The situation in Baga, however, received no significant attention until the days following the “Charlie Hebdo” deaths. The Nigerian president Goodluck Jonathan made no comments in the aftermath of Boko Haram’s assault on his country, yet he sent his condolences to France, condemning what happened.
The status quo seems to be one of silence among officials, possibly more concerned with the upcoming election in Africa’s most populous country.
And this common suspension of consciousness is echoed by its relative — when being compared with the Paris attack — lack of media coverage in the U.S. and other Western countries.
The draw of the Paris story for journalists is an easy one to grasp: A media outlet responsible for the dissemination of information, no matter the quality, was attacked, meaning free speech itself has been threatened by terrorism.
And it is right for the journalistic community to rise up against deleterious forces sparked by a corrupt will that evokes fear in the hope of silencing dissenters and strengthening their own framework of thought.
But this isn’t necessarily why the “Charlie Hebdo” killings casted a shadow of negligence over the ongoing deaths and oppression in Baga.
As consumers of a product, the masses control what is supplied to us by the specific demands we make.
The product being news, the majority of the Western world is simply more interested in, and therefore demands more news about what happens in countries closely aligned with our cultural background.
This isn’t to say we don’t care about dearth and destruction in Africa, and a major reason for the lack of news that cannot be overlooked is accessibility.
Paris is a city of more than 12 million people. Baga is a small town of fishermen and farmers, the connectivity from which to the outside world has been cut off nearly completely by Boko Haram. It’s simply harder to get news from a militantly occupied region in Africa than it is one of the biggest metropolises in the West.
Regardless, the way in which the coverage of these two events was handled should at least serve as a reminder of the news consuming public’s proclivity toward stories relating to those of their own ilk.
Yet newspaper men and women are taught to follow a strict checklist when searching for newsworthy events, the first criterion of which is impact.
So it’s puzzling as to why Baga, where far more people have been affected and killed, did not see the result of a world unified in admonishment against what we know to be absurd. It engendered no hashtag that will be forever recorded in the annals of social media.
Maybe the ultimate revelation that comes from the atrocities is that human life and the loss thereof isn’t always the most impactful aspect of news.
Not at least where ratings dictated solely by our reactions and habitual click of the mass’s finger is concerned.
The Arka Tech 