Yesterday, Reuters reported that another terrorist attack on an army base in the village of Metele in northeastern Borno state occurred on Sunday, leading to the loss of 100 brave soldiers. One of the officers who spoke to Reuters said “The insurgents took us unawares, The base was burned with arms and we lost about 100 soldiers. It is a huge loss.” As we speak, hardly any Nigerian media platform has reported this news in the papers, causing many Nigerians to question if there is a conspiracy between the Buhari administration and the media to under-report Boko Haram attacks.

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What is very curious and quite disturbing is the fact that the morning after such an attack, most of the major Nigerian newspapers did not deem it necessary to report this news. It is also quite damning that the day after the President Buhari announced his Next Level campaign, these same newspapers reported this as front page news.



Nigerians have instead, had to look to International media outlets such as Reuters and The New York Times to report without bias, the actual state of security in the country





Recall that the Federal Government in September 2015 had called for a media blackout on Boko Haram activities. Speaking during a visit by the Acting Director, Defence Information Colonel Rabe Abubakar, the Managing Director of the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) said that as long as the media keeps using sensational headlines, the insurgents would have a reason to continue. “We are helping Boko Haram with our headlines, if we stop those headlines, Boko Haram will fizzle out because there’s no incentive”



Many Nigerians have called this an unnecessary gag on the press to discourage them from reporting the incompetence of the Buhari administration to battle the security challenges it promised to resolve while it campaigned for office. In September, Nicholas Ibekwe, a journalist with online media platform Premium Times posted a tweet alleging that soon after the Minister of Information, Lai Mohammed, was appointed, he met with sections of the media and “begged that news about Boko Haram should be relegated from the front to the backpages”. He continued that this might be responsible for the complacent reporting of the conflict in the northeast.



The under-reporting of the attacks on Nigerian security forces and territories by the Nigerian media has prompted a sustained backlash against the presidency and the ruling APC by social commentators who continue to call out the government for devoting funds to announce the election bid of President Buhari on the front page of major Nigerian dailies, while relegating the real issues facing Nigerians to the backpages.






Debo Akinbami is a Social Commentator and writes from Ibadan

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