Feb. 28, 2024

The United Nations (UN) has expressed its readiness to partner the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on the production of news in local languages across Africa.

Mr Ronald Kayanja, the Director, UN Information Centre (UNIC), said this during a courtesy visit to the Managing Director of NAN, Malam Ali Muhammad Ali, on Wednesday in Abuja.

Keyanja attributed inability by the media in Africa to project countries in the continent positively and promote the understanding of news content in vernacular as major challenge of Journalism profession within the continent.

According to him, East Africans promote Swahili as the biggest language on the continent, saying the UN wants to promote Hausa as its second indigenous African language because of figures.

Kayanja said: “From Swahili, you have Hausa as the second largest language on the continent.

“So, the UN has six major languages, we have added Hindi because of India, as you know, and parts of all the other countries.

“We have added Swahili and we are adding Hausa for obvious reasons. It has nothing to do with Amina Mohammed, because she’s Deputy Secretary of the UN, no, it’s out of the figures, the numbers make it so evident.

“You see BBC Hausa, you see Al Jazeera always, because of the numbers. I know you are not there yet, but maybe that’s something we can work with you on certainly, as future initiative.

“For us, we are also developing it as language of communication within the United Nations because of the reach when you look at the Sahel, a major region for us Hausa is major.

“Recently, when we had the challenges we had in Niger and we wanted to monitor the media, of course, everybody told us we have to monitor the Hausa media. Then you can understand what is happening from where people are”.

He described Hausa as a language that had become useful in an area the organisation might work on.

“As a non-Nigerian appointed to the country, many friends including relatives asked me, are you going to Nigeria? Please, Boko Haram?

“One of the challenges in Africa is that we are not good at journalism that projects our countries positively.”

“Bad news is good news. How many have been killed in Benue? I am not saying we don’t report about that but until I came to Nigeria, I didn’t know about the great things happening in this country. I had to see them myself.

“When you travel all over the country, there are many wonderful things happening in this country, but if you only consume the media, especially the social media, you may think this country is on fire.

“So that’s what I always tell my journalist colleagues. I think we are undermining ourselves. When you look at the U.S., for instance, how many people die every day of gunshot? But you don’t see that as headline.”

Recalling his work experience in Asia, Kayanja said, “the news media tells more about their achievements, scientific innovation; but somewhere they would say so-and-so killed so-and-so but not their headlines.”

This, according to him, implies that when you read China Daily, Singapore, news from Malaysia, and so on, much of what they cover is what they are achieving as a country.

“We are done with this university, this innovation as headline. Yes, they will cover the bad, but Africa somehow, the journalism we are trained to, is journalism that reinforces a stereotype that nothing good is happening in Africa.

“Absolutely, we have obligation to change that. Nigeria, I told you as a person who has worked in a number of African countries, has lots of great things happening in it.

“There are challenges like any other country; but the problem is even the consumers of our media, once you project that, you make them lose hope.

“I have the feeling that the Japa syndrome has to do with how the country is projected. Yes, it is difficult, some of the hard times and so on, but in this country, I have seen great innovations.

“There are some people who work with fantastic, most intelligent people which you will find are Nigerians, the problem is that actually, you don’t see that in the media so much,” he added.

He urged the media to always create positive vibes in their reportage which should always be credible and balanced.

“It is painful to see that as Africans, we always pull down ourselves,” saying the Western media with its mind set also does not see anything good in Africa.

“For them, of course, nothing good happens here, and that is what is projected; but if we also try to show nothing good is happening, it is big concern,” he said.

Responding, Ali said although the local language used for content production was strictly English, measures would be employed by the agency through technology to adopt the use of vernacular.

“It is something we think we are going to resurrect. Only if we make this transition to the challenge posed by technology. If we make that, then eventually we see us doing vernacular because we want to reach the largest.

“If you look at the new news feed now, especially social media, young people, people below 35, the millennials, the Gen Z, what is their media consumption habit? They rely mostly on social media.

“Most of their attention span is very brief. If you cannot capture their imagination in the first 90 seconds that is a minute and a half. Forget it, you are not going to get anything.

“So, we will try to segment our products to meet certain specific audience requirements,” Ali said. (NAN)