Aftermath of Paris Attacks: Only A Fool Thinks All Lives Matter Equally…

I am tired of Africans demanding that western media outlets should treat news from Africa with the same severity, sympathy or attention—what stops the many African billionaires and millionaires from setting up strong media outlets like the CNN and others to tell the African story?

It’s pathetic and grossly offensive to say, my mother should treat your problems (not her son or daughter) with the same urgency she would treat mine. That’s just being stupid.

What about Africans telling our own stories?

We have countless African media platforms out there which do not even report on attacks in Africa and you want CNN, BBC, Huffingtonpost, RT and others to do the reporting for you? They have their own stories to tell, that will always be their priority and I will be amazed if they did not do that, and rather placed ours first.

Despite facebook’s global status, it’s a western tool— American for that matter and it has strong western allies and friends. So what’s the problem if it rolls out a tool that allows people to shade their profile photos with the flag of France in solidarity a few hours after the Paris attack?

You sit under your cocoa tree on free Airtel Facebook credit and just talk; you don’t care about your own issues and things affecting your neighbours—you don’t even read African blogs or media platforms, and you expect those western ones you read to shift their focus to you.

Who born dog? A dog! And who born cat? A cat!

Instead of discussing how we can also begin to build robust media outlets like the Russians and Chinese have done, the whole continent has become news parasite, depending on the west for coverage. That’s a shame.

And for those who said the Beirut bombings were not covered, visit the various Middle East media outlets—it had extensive coverage with still on going discussions.

We expect too much from people who have their own problems to deal with—once again, why can’t the entire African continent have a single vibrant media outlet like CNN to tell our stories as we want it?

You sit on Facebook and accuse Facebook of placing somewhat great value on western lives—I don’t think it has done so and even if it did, it is well justified, though pathetic. Find out where facebook’s largest investments, support, partners and revenue come from.

How many of us Africans using free Airtel Internet to be on facebook have ever advertised anything on Facebook or bought any of the Facebook shares?

We won’t set up ‘anything’ and when others do, we want to dictate to them where their focus should be—demanding that we become their prime objects of interest.

We surely have problems! We are not even discussing the in and out of the attacks, the cause, the effects and the prevention, rather its coverage. That’s our intellect right there.

Some Africans love to write for western media outlets and read those rather—you can do all that but don’t expect them to ignore their problems or treat yours with the same magnitude of attention.

Everyone takes keen interest in their own problems, or problems close to home—of course except when you are an African.

Check out the western blogs and see the extensive coverage and commentaries on the Paris attack just within 24 hours and ask yourself; do we do the same when we are hit down here in Africa?

We can’t even run successful campaigns about anything without the west jumping in to support. Ah!

What happened to ‪#‎BringBackOurGirls‬, I guess Boko Haram brought them all back. Instead, the west starts ALS campaign to raise large amounts of money and almost every African including our celebrities jump on that—parasites.

Perhaps, we don’t know that until the lion learns to write and tell its story, the narrative will always glorify and be about the hunter.

Every life matters but you will be a fool not to know that, a cat’s life matters more to a cat than to a dog.