When will the World sing “it is coming home” for Nigeria? By Aliyu Abdullah
POLITICS DIGEST – #itscominghome trended globally and it catches on like a wildfire. Well, unfortunately, it hasn’t come home for England in the Euro 2020 Finals, but there’s a great lesson to learn from this especially for the rest of the countries, Nigeria inclusive.
The English Media has proven to be patriotic and effective when it comes to shaping global opinion towards their country in a positive light, something that has become difficult to be seen in other countries, particularly developing nations. We are never proud of our own countries, we do not know how to celebrate our successes let alone our potentials, we are so eager to wash our dirty linens in the global space and therefore risk alienating support even from willing allies. This trend can be seen from every sphere of our life, from our sports to issues bedeviling our nations.
In my country Nigeria, where we are facing the menace of insecurity in forms of terrorism, banditry, kidnapping and violent secessionist movements, we live in a time that we needed the best opinion on the country even for the sake of that hand of friendship, partnership and alliance to fight these insecurities and we cannot get all that if we are constantly being portrayed as a country that is unwilling to fight these menaces at the very least or even supportive of any of the criminal activities at the most. No ally, friends will be willing to do extend that hand of fellowship except for their pecuniary or national interests.
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I could recall after the infamous 9/11 attack against the United States of America, the then United States Government did everything to galvanize global support to their war on terror, their Media helped in great deal and soon after the attack, their was a global condemnation and responses to the Al-Qaeda Terror group. There was military response from United States allies, and there were international legal instruments sponsored by the United States in basically every platform used by the comity of nations. These international bills got the necessary number of States required to be passed and became international instruments which were taken by individual member nations to domesticate in their countries even when the target of the terror groups was only the United States at that time. The power of patriotic media made it a global concern and the world rallied around it with all the support needed to fight the terrorism.
A decade later, Nigeria got its first share of the acts of terrorism, and has since then been fighting the terror group and other new forms of terror basically. The support from the countries we supported wholeheartedly then, is now lukewarm at best. Not until recently under President Muhammadu Buhari, Nigeria could not even purchase the necessary weapons needed to fight these terror groups in its enclave, largely because the citizens and the media painted a narrative of human rights abuses like never seen before anywhere, forgetting the country was and still at war. The then Government of Goodluck Jonathan will later use this as a valid reason for not succeeding in the terror fight, rightly or wrongly so.
Today, although we still have some concerns on human rights issues in the battle front, the major reason for not getting the international community behind us as United States benefitted from after the 9/11 is simply our own doing. We are unable to shape an opinion that will make the world listen and pay attention to Nigeria and help us in this fight. There are many ways to support a country like Nigeria. There is intelligence gathering and sharing from those with superior equipment and assets, there are those countries who acts as safe havens for sponsors of terrorism and other crimes as long as money is involved, and I am yet to see a global response to such countries. After all, the developed world is more concerned with other issues, that it seems to them what we are facing is just a local problem, but it is not, every of our insecurity challenge has an international dimension. A persistent and dwindling security concern for the most populous nation in African continent should really be a source of worry, a great concern even to the most stable country in the world.
We need our media to tell the story to the world in a way that we will attract support, partnership, and not condemnation, after all the Government of Nigeria is doing all it could given the sets of circumstances and resources at its disposal.
When will the world sing our “It is coming home” hashtag in unison.
Aliyu Abdullah is a Special Assistant to the President on media & Publicity
