By Farooq Kperogi, Ph.D. Twitter: @farooqkperogi Journalists like to think they are the mirror of society. In fact, a famous American...
By Farooq Kperogi, Ph.D.
Twitter:
@farooqkperogi
Journalists like to think they are the mirror of society. In
fact, a famous American journalist and author by the name of Arthur Brisbane
(1864-1936) once said, “A newspaper is a mirror reflecting the public, a mirror
more or less defective, but still a mirror.”
This notion gave rise to the idea that the news media
“reflect” reality. But insights from cultivation theory in mass communication
tell us that the news media do not reflect reality; they cultivate it instead. Although
the theory originally studied how heavy TV viewing distorts our perception of
reality, it has been extended to explain how the news media’s habitual framing
of news skews perception of reality in general.
I see a lot of media cultivation of “reality” in the
coverage of “Fulani herdsmen” in the Nigerian media. This cultivation has been
so successful that it has established inescapable mental frames. One of these
mental frames is the conflation of “Fulani” ethnic identity, “herdsmen,” and
murderous criminality. Even President Buhari, who is half Fulani (a quarter
Hausa and a quarter Kanuri—by his admission), uses “Fulani herdsmen” as a
stand-in for the murderous criminals that are ravaging several parts of
Nigeria.
But here are the facts. Most Fulani people are not cattle
herders and, although most cattle herders in West Africa are Fulani, there are
hundreds of cattle herders who are not Fulani. Most importantly, though, most
cattle herders are NOT criminals or murderers. The fact that there are cattle
herders who commit crimes does not make all cattle herders criminals, nor is it
sufficient to equate cattle herding in and of itself with criminality, although
cattle herding is, as I argued in my January 20, 2018 column titled “Existential Threats of Nomadic Pastoralism to Nigeria,” anachronistic.
The Nigerian media, however, have chosen to make “Fulani
herdsmen” the lexical substitute for “criminals” or “murderers.” Even when the
media are not sure who committed a crime, it is typical for them to attribute
the crime to “suspected Fulani herdsmen,” not even “criminals suspected to be
Fulani herdsmen,” implying, in essence, that to talk of either “Fulani
herdsmen” or “criminals” is to talk of the other. This violates a cardinal
journalistic principle that says “when in doubt, leave it out.” If you only
“suspect,” which means you’re not sure, why rush to give an ethno-occupational
identity to the suspects?
On the other hand, where the Fulani are the victims of
murder or any crime, their ethnic identity—and the ethnic identity of their
tormentors— is often concealed, as happened in Benue recently where the murder
of 7 Fulani cattle herders by Tiv militia was reported in the national media
with the following headline: “Bandits kill, burn 7 travelers.”
The invidious, ethnically colored media narrativization
about “Fulani herdsmen” and “murderous crime” has become so mainstream that
most Nigerians have now been programmed to associate criminality with and
murderous intent to any Fulani cattle herder. To get a sense of how unfair this
is, imagine alternative scenarios involving other people. If a Baatonu farmer
commits a crime, for instance, you won’t read a headline like “Baatonu farmer
kills herders.” (I am Baatonu, by the way). You will never read a headline like
“Ogoni fisherman murders farmers.” You will never come across a headline like
“Yoruba mechanic slaughters customer.” Nor will you see a headline like, “Igbo
spare parts seller kills man.” And so on so forth.
I warned of the dangers of ethnic and occupational
stereotyping in news reporting in at least three columns (see, for instance, my
October 10, 2015 column titled “‘Fulani herdsmen’ as Nigeria’s New Devil Term”
and my February 4, 2017 column titled “The Dangerous Criminalization of Fulani Ethnicity”). In the February 4, 2017 column, I pointed out that “Criminalizing
and pathologizing an entire ethnic identity is often the precursor to
genocide.”
It didn’t come as a surprise to me when I read of the
February 1 murder and burning of 7 innocent Fulani cattle herders by people who
have been programmed to associate criminality with all Fulani cattle herders.
Early last year, some man by the name of Apostle Suleiman had told his church
members to extra-judicially murder any Fulani person they saw. “And I told my
people, any Fulani herdsman you see around you, kill him,” he said in a widely
circulated video. “I have told them in the church here that any Fulani herdsman
that just entered by mistake, kill him, kill him! Cut his head!”
He said this precisely because of the unreflective
conflation of “Fulani herdsmen” and murderous criminals that the media have
caused to percolate into the consciousness of Nigerians.
A few weeks ago, a certain Sayo Ajiboye, who introduced
himself to me as the President of the Redeemed Bible College and Seminary in
Texas, USA, called me after reading one of my columns on the unfair media
portrayals of Fulani cattle herders. He said until he read my article, he
hadn’t consciously thought of the fact he also grew up with Fulani herders in
his hometown of Ilesha in Osun State several decades ago and that Fulani
herders kept his father’s cattle for him in trust—like they do elsewhere.
But the continuous demonization of “Fulani herdsmen” in the
media had put him in a state of suspended animation. He wasn’t able to make the
mental connection between the Fulani people he grew up with—and that still live
peacefully in his community—and the demons the media report on. If a highly
educated man like that is only just now coming to this realization, imagine
what everyday consumers of Nigerian news think when they see a Fulani cattle
herder. The truth is that the vast majority of Fulani cattle herders are
peaceful, everyday people with the same needs, anxieties, and hopes as the rest
of us.
This is not by any means intended to lessen the dangers and
existential threats that foreign cattle herders pose to Nigeria. Nor do I
intend to be understood as implying that Nigerian Fulani cattle herders don’t
commit crimes. There are criminals and good people in every ethnic group and
occupation. To insist that any group is free of criminals or is composed only
of criminals is to denude such a group of its very humanity.
I should point out, too, that Miyetti Allah is as culpable
in demonizing Fulani cattle herders as the news media have been. In claiming to
represent Fulani cattle herders and admitting to several mass murders, they
make even innocent bucolic Fulani cattle herders in various communities objects
of suspicion and targets of righteous anger.
Look at this March 27, 2017 press statement from Miyetti Allah Kwara State chairman by the name of Usman Adamu, for instance: “Fulanis
from across the country and neighbouring countries gathered here last week and
they requested for my permission to go and retaliate but I insisted that they
should sheath their swords… See what is happening in Nasarawa, Zamfara, Jos and
other states. If you see what our Fulanis did in Imo, and if you are Muslims,
honestly, you will cry, and if somebody said it was Fulanis that did that, you
will not believe it.”
That’s a chilling self-confession of mass murder that
implicates millions of innocent Fulani cattle herders. With “leaders” like that,
do innocent Fulani cattle herders need enemies?
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