Why Blame the Foreign Media for Facts Reported?

Dismay comes to mind when one witnesses the anger of certain Nigerians who react negatively to the negative portrayal of the country in the foreign press, given the events leading up to the fairly successful centennial commemorations and award ceremony held recently in the nation's capital. In the reportage of these media was the juxtaposition of the violence in the North East of Nigeria with the seeming impassiveness that was typified by the incredulity of the award recipients at the Abuja ceremony. A cross-section of Nigerians who nitpicked these reports implausibly heaved the blame for the status quo on these foreign media who enjoyed the way things are.

It was so dismaying, it felt nauseous. I take fact wherever it comes from, and this is the fact of the matter. You can't blame them for writing what our government should be blamed for perpetrating. Were they the ones that included Abacha's name in the roll call of honour? Or are they the ones to make sure 20 innocent and promising young girls, whose parents sent to school for a brighter future, who have siblings like you and I, but are now being repeatedly raped and physically assaulted even as we converse online, are rescued? Are they the ones? Or maybe because those girls do not have consanguineous links to us, and are not our flesh, just like the young boys whose throats were slit when they escaped the hail of bullets are not our brothers, we talk like we have no feelings, like life means nothing to us.

Perhaps, if we had lost someone in those inhuman brutalities, while witnessing the coronation of corruption (raising to beatific sainthood and putting up for emulation many of whom are responsible for the spate of violence in the country today) with the highest honours in the land even while our tears were still cascading down our cheeks, perhaps we'd not point fingers at those who write from outside. Had we not given the foreign press cause to pen down these atrocities, maybe we could play the cynic with justification.

But having such supine, churlish and imbecilic leadership can only attract such opprobrious writing from abroad.