TBT: African Edutainment

The global community tends to primarily prioritize issues of the Western world made up of first world countries that receive extensive media coverage when confronted with tragedy. Recent violent occurences that had extremely devastating loss of life include the following:

Charleston Church Massacre in North Carolina, USA on 17 June 2015.
Paris terror attacks, in France, on 13 November 2015.
Brussels airport terror attack, in Belgium, on 22 March 2016.
The Orlando Mass shooting at a gay club called Pulse on 12 June 2016.

All of the above were tromendous tradegies that killed innocent people . The home countries of the tragedies grieved, the world empathized and mourned with them. The global community rallied with prayers, Facebook filters of support and vigils. The unity of people throughout the world against such atrocities restored the belief in humanity and the power of unity through empathy.

However simlar degrees of senseles violence in places like Gaza, Syria, Iraq or Boko Haram’s terror in Nigeria is met with global indifference and minimal media coverage. Terrorism, violence or even natural disasters like the devastating flood in Ghana are also tragic and also deserve media coverage as well as empathy from the global community.

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Furthermore in the words of Godfrey Reggio

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In an endeavour to inspire positive change. I would like to center an African country called Nigeria. A country that had 270+ girls kidnapped by Boko Haram on 14 April 2014. These girls still have not been found, the hashtag #bringbackourgirls is no longer trending. Thus so is the relevancy of these girls’ safe return. Additionally, conflicts between Boko Haram and the Nigerian government has resulted in the death of 20,000 people in six years and increased homelessness to more than 2.6 million Nigerians.

This is not an attempt at oppression olympics or comparing global wounds of devastation.

It is not to dismiss or invalidate other African countries. It is to challenge the stereotypical narrative of African complacency and victimization. Through historic accounts of inspirational Nigerian resistance against colonial and internal oppressive adversity.

The video below centers Nigeria’s complex yet interesting history. That provides evidence of strength that I hope is encouragement from past accomplishments against repression to rise up against Boko Haram and bring an end to their terror on that culturally opulent African state.

Here is to an educational Throw Back Thursday.#eTBT