JFC, WACC, OPM seek IDPs media blast
The extracts were presented in a
book, Muffled Voices: Monitoring Media Reportage and Portrayal of Internally
Displaced Persons (IDPs) in Africa, on Monday August 5, 2019 at the
International Press Centre (IPC), Ogba, Lagos, Nigeria.
Delivering his opening remarks,
Lekan Otufodunrin, President, JFC, disclosed that the survey was carried out
because observation of media coverage and reportage of IDPs revealed that
information on their welfare and living conditions are usually restricted and
not reported and institutional and humanitarian agencies’ addressing of their
needs are also inadequate.
And to address these needs in
Nigeria and across Africa, JFC, under the WACC Africa Region, partnered with
two other WACC-AR member
organizations, the All Africa Conference of Churches (AACC) in Kenya, and the
Sautiya Mwanamhe Kijijini (SAMWAKI) in the Democratic Republic of Congo to
conduct a media monitoring of select media in the respective countries with a
view to drawing attention to and galvanizing institutional and ecumenical
support for the protection, care and dignity of IDPs.
He then mentioned that the media
organizations monitored in Nigeria, six print newspapers (Punch, Nation, Sun,
Vanguard, Daily Trust, Leadership), and two online mediums (Premium Times, The
Cable), were purposefully selected because they have a national outreach.
Also speaking, Ola Erinfolami of
the National Commission for Refugees, Migrants and Internally Displaced
Persons, said that many people keep wondering who IDPs are and she explained
them as people of a country forced to move due to certain issues.
She revealed that there’s no IDP
camp in the south west of Nigeria but there’s a migrant centre in Ibeju Lekki,
Lagos for their care and counseling and to let them know life is not over for
them due to the conflict or other reasons that displaced them.
She added that they don’t force
them on where they should resettle and that every Nigerian has a role to play
in their care as we must all be our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers.
Speaking as well, Olayide Akanni
of the Journalists Against AIDS (JAAIDS), said the issue of IDPs is a crucial
area that attention has to be paid to as she visited a Benue State IDP camp
recently to speak about tuberculosis and she saw hopelessness in them about
returning to their former lives as Fulani herdsmen had taken over their
farmlands and killed those who returned previously.
She then sounded a note of
warning that since Benue is the nation’s food basket, if its people can’t farm,
it could result to food scarcity, a real problem for all.
The moderator of the presentation
was Betty Abah, a JFC Board of Trustees member, and she declared that everyone
should be concerned about IDPs because anybody can become a victim at any time
and she buttressed her point with the example of a respected Nigerian
professor, Niyi Osundare, who became displaced in of all places, the US.
Though the presentation and the
survey were to urge the media to step up the coverage of IDPs, Bisi
Deji-Folutile, a former editor of Saturday Punch claimed that the
media cannot focus on one issue, and that of IDPs has become like a problem
that won’t be solved and now there’s even no outrage again when people are
killed by Fulani herdsmen or Boko Haram insurgents, a case of great things
become ordinary.
She then adviced that the media
should focus more on bad governance and its effects as IDPs are a result of bad
governance and a bad government definitely cannot tackle the products of its
misgovernance.
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