HOW CHEAP IS LIFE IN AFRICA?

HOW CHEAP IS LIFE IN AFRICA?

A friend of mine once said to me that life is cheap in Africa but even cheaper in West Africa.

My initial reaction then was to protest and tell him that it was yet again another western bias to looking at things where Africa is involved.

Strangely, he only smiled and reacted differently. He said he would prove it to me and he went ahead to enumerate the many plane crashes and road accidents, which occur in these parts of the world (of course just like it is the case in some other parts of the world). However, he was quick to add that even a bicycle accident stood a 100% chance of being investigated, documented and results of the finding to be used in a way that it helps forestall future occurrences.

What ever your opinion and reactions to that position put forward by my western journalist friend is, I will like to know. But then, wait a minute, lets review an item in the news from day before yesterday.

Am talking about the case of a boat which left Oron in south south Nigeria and headed for Equatorial Guinea until it capsized killing a majority of the over one hundred passengers on board.

According to the BBC online, “Twenty-nine people have been rescued after a boat carrying about 130 people from Nigeria to Gabon sank, rescue officials say”.

The report went further to state that “ the vessel was initially said to have been carrying 160 people but officials say the real number was slightly lower”. I then ask, was this some sort of budget Boeing 737 or Airbus on water? That many people without emphasis on safety?

In some parts of the world, that is actually the population of an entire town ya know!

Then comes the even more infuriating thing, “There are unconfirmed reports that some of those on board were illegal migrants looking for work in oil-rich Gabon”. Leaving a more oil rich Nigeria to seek greener pastures in oil rich Gabon? What a distasteful irony!

Before heading up to do a radio show about this topic, I sat and pondered a few questions;

1.    Did that boat sail through legal areas?

2.    Why did anyone allow it sail without life jackets for everyone on board?

3.    What exactly is it that attracts Africans especially west Africans to other nations in Africa even when it is clear that should they put in similar efforts in their home cities they are likely to do well?

I guess should I be able to find the real answers to the questions, I might as well  be on the way to being that somewhat “phantom” king of Africa (Lol).

SOCIAL MEDIA AND GOVERNANCE...why the fear?

I spent some time today being part of a discussion panel made up of senior journalist colleagues and a social media expert. At the heart of our discuss was the topic "should government restrict the use of social media".

A few things flashed through my mind while at the event:

1. I was impresed by at the interest the topic aroused amongst other participants at the forum. It reminded me of how we all hold dearly our freedoms and will rise up to defend it whenever there is a perceived threat to such.

2. One of the panelist (Sani Barkindo) actually put it in clear terms that Nigeria has got the most abusive social media community in the world. This sure did not go without controversy. As to the truism ascribable to this statement, am sure there will be just as much persons who will be for it as there are those against. Perhaps, it will depend on who is asking as well as who is doing the answering (but your guess will be as good as mine).

3. One thing I seem to think we all shared similar perspectives about is the need for the exercise of responsibility on the part of the social media citizen, be it a conventional journalist or a citizen journalist. The idea behind responsibility took me aback to refocus on the consequences associated with the post Arab spring era. I remember asking myself if the orchestra-tors of the Arab spring will still be as proud about the revolutions that have followed their unimagined moves. However, despite divergent views, this is one area of convergence. There is a consensus that rules should be put in place to gag but instead to shape behavior.

4. The one question that kept racing through my mind before and after the panel discuss was; who is afraid of an unrestricted "social media and governance"? over time of observing happenings in the socio political landscape, it is worthy of note that one can categorise the reasons that lead to a growing fear factor withing government circles as thus:

a. Some people completely abhor equality in any form, and this is exactly what the social media creates. A situation where there is vertical communication across board.
b. There exist the fear of the un-known especially looking at what has happened to those who allowed the rise of the social media to go un-checkmated.

There are other factors that can be attributed to the fear factor regarding the proliferation of social media and unrestricted access.

I left the workshop however feeling better and told the audience in my summary that "...there is no point in time that the human race hasn't been able to surmount any challenge, and that is what makes us unique. It is now time for us to all agree and come together to review the social medial path and work out some agreements that will leave the world being freer and yet having more people being responsible and accountable in the virtual space so as to preserve our civilization".

BROADCASTING FOR DEVELOPMENT

Growing up all around Nigeria, one sure memory I have continued to keep is that of holding on to my father's variants of radio sets (gramophones, JVC, Sanyo, National,Trident amongst other transistor radios).

I never spared any chance in tuning into the next available station which was airing the next most interesting piece. The truth is that it sometimes never mattered even if it was a language I didn't understand that was the one used on the given station. I just listened and listened away (sometimes till I fell asleep).

For those of you wondering what era it is that I am talking about, it is the era during which at first there was no dedicated music station in the whole of Nigeria and then there came the first FM station which was followed by another and then another. As at 2012, the count of just music centric radio stations in Nigeria alone had climbed to over two hundred and of course, still counting.

Fast forward to our contemporary time; we have an unprecedented number of radio stations in Nigeria than there were in the whole of Africa back in the 1960's and yet there seems to be less coverage of development issues. You then wonder if we are moving forward in reality or just in activities and projects?

Wahtever your answer turns out to be, the truth remains that we live in an age where there is abundance in information and yet a somewhat drop in knowledge compared to the times past and the level of information there were exposed to then.

During a road trip around the middle belt of Nigeria sometime this year, I paid particular attention and kept looking at the various economic activities that were happening along the roads. You may be surprised to hear that I discovered after speaking with a local researcher on small informal business holdings that the overwhelmed orange and other fruits seller in Makurdi, the Yam seller alongWukari/Donga, the palm wine/ginger seller along Kwoi/Keffi road, the Palm oil re-seller along Suleja-Abuja road, the Chiken frying women in Saminaka, the fresh tomatoes and Potatoe seller in Bokkos/Riyom in Plateau state amongst many others actually do account for a multi billion naira fraction of our nations economy.

Then I wondered to myself, how come we in the broadcast media rarely ever cover the stories of this business persons where its not that of pestilence, squalor and frustrations arising from failed government policies and politics? I asked myself as a professional designer/creator of broadcast programming content, could it be that our listeners and viewers don't consider anything associated to these fellow countrymen trying to earn a living as interesting? Or is it that we have decided on our own as content providers that it isnt worth it?

Whatever our answers turn out to be, one thing I have come to realise is that there is no story that isn't worth telling. What counts is the audience that is in question. Funny enough, the one fact of our jobs which we often fail to remember is that you cant be judge and jury; hence we cant be producers and audience at the same time (even though we need to carry out post postmortems on our content often). Fundamentally, we need to allow the audience to decide what they love by giving them a wide variety to choose from.

Having said the above, let me just proceed to share with you my conviction as the whole of my thoughts are directed at achieving. When we broadcast and development isn't at the centre of it, then we are significantly just making faces in the dark (only us can tell what we are doing).

It is my believe that time has come whereby we need to look beyond our profit making motives in broadcasting and start finding ways to contribute our role in nation building and the uplifting of human standards of living amongst our people.

Having worked on both sides of the divide (private and public broadcast), I can tell you that it is very difficult to achieve a balance in reporting developmental issues irrespective of whatever side you are on. For the public media broadcaster, you have to deal with covering up issues and "exposing" government ineptitude or lack of care or lack of living up to fundamental roles. While for those in private media, the daily "hustle" is to deal with giving airtime to issues that are not "money generators".

My final analysis of the situation is that we need to do more planning in order to achieve a desired level in broadcasting for development. The following are some helpful steps to follow:

1. All broadcasters should first seat with their team of staff and understand what is happening around their immediate environment and take deliberate steps to following up issues.

2. All journalist in the team should first realise that they are like the proverbial Christian as depicted in the bible "being in the world and yet not of the world". This is on the back drop of the expectation that journalist are expected to stay objective and not be involved sentimentally in the stories they report (meaning when reporting lack of good roads in your area, you must be able to detach yourself from the emotional side of things, etc, etc).

3. Each station needs to realise the trend of citizen participation in the reportage of affairs as concern them and then take advantage of the various social media platforms to generate content in reporting development around them.

4. Once a premium is placed on the sanctity of human life in any community, you will soon start to see that broadcast journalist and fellow country men will start to ask fundamental questions whenever something happens to any human being in that community that i considered not right. This will perhaps end what has come to be referred to as "life being very cheap in the developing world". People will then stop thinking it is normal for roads to be bad and unrepairable, that it is is normal for hospitals to be without drugs and doctors and no one is held liable, that security is in the hands of "God" and other spiritual deities and not in the hands of those who have sworn to protect its citizens.

5. All broadcasters should stop seeing it that they are doing a favour to a group of persons who are disadvantaged  but are carrying out a fundamental role of our noble profession by giving fair and acurate coverage to issues of development.

I can go on and on to list the basis for why we should make reporting development a key role, but it must begin with us as individual broadcasters and then as corporate entities before we can make the long desired difference. It is no longer an option that we have to increase coverage for developmental issues, but we all as broadcasters must come to a realisation that our very own professional continual existence is dependant on how relevant we are considered to be.

In this age and time when it is "us" (conventional journalist) versus citizen journalism, I only do hope that we don't drive ourselves into non relevance and thereafter oblivion.