African social media are buzzing with anger and indignation at what they see as the world’s comparative indifference to the horrendous massacres by the Nigerian jihadist group, Boko Haram, in Borno state, compared with the huge attention that has been given to the terrorist attacks by other Islamists in Paris.
About 40 world leaders joined French President, Francois Hollande, for Sunday’s huge “March of Unity” in Paris in solidarity and sympathy with the cartoonists and journalists of the French satirical journal, Charlie Hebdo, and other victims of the attacks in Paris. The killers are apparently linked to al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and/or to Islamic State (IS) also known as Isil and Isis.
The hashtag #JeSuisCharlie (“I am Charlie”) has gone viral and sympathy demonstrations were held around the world, including in Johannesburg and Cape Town, at the weekend.
Meanwhile, Boko Haram killed as many as 2 000 people in terror attacks in towns and villages in Nigeria’s north-east state of Borno over the past week.
Most of them died when the group overran the town of Baga on the shores of Lake Chad.
The Nigerian government put the death toll at 150 peopleand dismissed reports that 2 000 people had died as the result of “speculations and conjectures ... peddled by a section of the press”, the ministry of defence said.
The figure of 150 dead, determined from surveillance and investigation, included many dead terrorists, it said.
On Saturday, a bomb strapped to a suicide bomber – reportedly a 10-year-old girl – exploded in a crowded market in the Borno capital of Maiduguri, killing about 20 people.
On Sunday, another two children were suspected to have been used as suicide bombers in a market in north-east Nigeria, witnesses said, killing three people.
Sunday’s blasts struck at an open market in the town of Potiskum in Yobe state, frequently attacked by the Sunni Muslim jihadist group, Boko Haram.
A trader at the market, Sani Abdu Potiskum, said the bombers were also about 10 years old.
“Has the world even taken notice?” tweeted one Levi Kabwato after this latest atrocity. “Where are the African hashtags? The outrage? African media response?”
And Clayson Monyela, spokesman for South Africa’s Department of International Relations and Co-operation, tweeted: “The situation in #Nigeria though… fellow Africans dying daily in numbers. I don’t see any emergency UNSC meetings.”
The comparison between the two situations is indeed striking. The death toll in the Paris attacks seems to have been 17, versus the apparent thousands in Borno state over roughly the same period.
And as the journalist, Tolu Ogunlesi, pointed out in an article last week in the Theafricareport.com, Boko Haram now controls just about as much territory as IS/Isil does in Syria and Iraq as both expand the hardline Islamist “caliphates” they are creating in their respective regions.
“Boko Haram is as critical a threat to world peace as Isil is, and by not treating it as such the world is doing itself a grievous disservice,” he wrote.
Yet, the international response has been way out of proportion, with countless hours of TV and radio news and commentary and millions of column inches of newspapers devoted to the Paris attacks and very little to those in Nigeria.
Why is this? The opinion, implicit or explicit, of most of the commentators on social media is that it is the old story of African lives being valued less than French (or other Western) lives and Africa generally not being considered as important as Europe.
That is unfortunately probably true to a degree.
But there are also other factors at work.
One is the comparative novelty, and therefore newsworthiness, of a terror attack by Islamist extremists targeting journalists for lampooning the Prophet Muhammad. That raised special issues about freedom of speech and expression.
And there is also an important question of what Africa itself is doing to raise awareness of the Boko Haram menace.
In one of his contributions to the raging Twitter debate, Monyela said: “Over 2 000 people killed in a terrorist attack & the world observes & moves right along.”
But he also added, significantly: “Has anyone seen a #Nigerian Gov statement on this?”
Someone replied to his tweet about the UN Security Council not having called an emergency meeting by asking: “Why is Ecowas (the Economic Community of West African States) not calling an emergency meeting? Therein lies the issue.”
Monyela responded: “By the way, #Nigeria is a non permanent member of the UN Security Council. I agree that Ecowas & AU (African Union) must lead tho. Africans are dying!”
Indeed. As with the Ebola epidemic and some other security crises, such as that in Mali, it looks as though institutional Africa is again leading from behind.