Je Suis Nigeria?

Tragedy is in no short supply already this year, but with the attacks in France, some tragedies are seemingly more important than others. That’s the discussion going on right now around the recent massacre of 2,000 Nigerians by the militant Islamist organization Boko Haram.

Entire villages have been burned to the ground, along with the people who lived in them. Religious leaders in Nigeria claim that the U.S. and Western allies have turned a blind-eye to the attacks, calling for help in stopping their reign of terror.

 
In regards to the Nigerian government’s own military, there is an obvious deficiency and underlying problem of corruption going on that renders them useless against Boko Haram. Their leader, Goodluck Jonathan has made promises in the past to better equip his military, but there doesn’t seem to be an end in sight to the violence, unless the West gets involved. With how little coverage it has gotten on the news, people wonder how much blood has to be shed for it to become a priority?

The international community certainly recognizes these atrocities, but solidarity alone is not going to change anything for the people of Nigeria. The Archbishop in Nigeria calling for action said: “We believe there is a lot we can share in terms of security information. I would have thought by now they would be able to help Nigeria. There has to be a concrete collaboration between Europe and America to bring this to an end.”

While the sentiment may be that the Western world’s leaders are dragging their feet in response to the cause, the citizens have been making their voices heard. This dissonance found between the governments and their people is on full display on social media websites like Twitter and Tumblr. Similar to how the nationwide response to police brutality are being led by the dialog that has been going on in social media for the past six months.

Twitter has also applied the “Black Lives Matter” hashtag to bring awareness to the problem with underreported and sometimes unreported stories of black death. In fact, on the same day that the attack was carried out on French magazine Charlie Hebdo, al-Qaeda detonated a bomb that left 37 people dead and over 66 injured. It seems that anyone who receives their news from cable TV that they are unaware of just how many people of color die on a regular basis, from terrorist attacks especially.