In November 2002, the city of Kaduna in northern Nigeria erupted into racial riots leaving over 100 people dead. The riots began after an article in the national newspaper “ThisDay” questioned Muslims groups that had condemned the Miss World pageant which was taking place in the country by the time. The article said: "What would the Prophet Mohammed think? In all honesty, he would probably have chosen a wife from among them the contestants." Outraged Islamic leaders issued a ‘fatwa’, calling for the death of the article’s author. The incident has prompted the Nigerian media to take a hard look at their role in dealing with the country’s religious tensions.
In a two-part series, RAP 21 investigates how newspapers can manifest bias in their writing, and the differences between newspapers in Northern and Southern Nigeria.
Contribution by Olivia Allison Researcher, Rice University, Texas
Since Nigeria’s riots during its hosting of the 2002 Miss World pageant, Nigerian journalists in the North and South have assessed the media’s role in the country’s religious tensions. Pointing to media coverage of religious riots before and after the Miss World riots, journalists and media observers say the media has played a major role in the conflict with its frequently biased coverage.
Osaro Odemwigie, Media Rights Agenda’s publications editor, said the media has played a generally negative role in Nigeria’s religious dialogue. "I don’t think media has been helpful in the discussion," Odemwigie said, basing his comments on his content analysis of Nigerian newspapers. "Oftentimes journalists allow their own perceptions, beliefs and experiences influence what they put out-news stories are tailored in a way to make anger boil."
Many journalists point to the Miss World riots as an example of the how a newspaper’s comments can instigate a conflict: That year the young journalist Isioma Daniel wrote an article in the national newspaper This Day’s fashion section about the pageant. Daniel’s opinion piece stated in one sentence that the Prophet Mohammed would not have objected to the pageant. Instead, Daniel’s column said, he would have married one of the contestants.
This led northern Muslim leaders to proclaim a death-sentence fatwa against her, and riots erupted in several northern cities. These riots directed new wrath from the north at the southern media’s coverage of Islamic issues. Most Nigerian newspapers are based in the south, specifically in Lagos, and are owned by southerners- usually Christians. Therefore, Northern journalists say, most national papers are incapable of covering northern religious crises, of which there have been dozens, issues accurately and objectively.
"Most of the religious news covered by the south are negatively reported," Abuja-based New Nigerian’s associate news editor, Auwalu Umar, said. "The north’s coverage of the riots is more objective because these things take place here, and a southern paper just sends a southerner who cannot penetrate the language or culture, so they just concoct reports." Umar’s sentiment that southern newspapers’ correspondents in the North produce inaccurate reports because they do not know northern society was echoed in most northern newsrooms. But more importantly, Umar’s judgment that northern journalists cover the religious crises more objectively sums up the debate between Nigerian journalists: While northern newspapers’ editors agree with Umar’s assessment, southern journalists say these northern newspapers view the situation through a distinctly religious lens. "The thing is with the Muslims, they have a theocratic worldview," The Punch’s correspondent Funsho Aina said. Indeed, in many interviews, northern newspapers editors claimed they had a responsibility to represent the Muslim worldview to their readers to counteract the southern, Christian viewpoint in the Lagos-Ibadan papers. Southern editors said the difference was that while religious Muslims ran northern papers, most southern newspaper editors were not religious.
"Nothing is owned by a born-again Christian. Ninety-five percent of owners are looking at the balance sheet, so you’re not interested in what morals your paper has-the moral is professional ethics," Akpandem James, editor of the Lagos-based Daily Independent, said. The question of objectivity goes beyond finger-pointing, however. Aina and other journalists said it is impossible to cover the religious riots objectively because too many lives have been lost."In principle, in theory, in the textbooks, you can always talk about objectivity," Aina said. "But to tell the truth, these facts impact so heavily on the lives of people, you find it very difficult to be objective. ... There’s always imbalance but it’s justified because it is a matter of life and death."