By Mairo Muhammad Mudi
Immediate past Governor of Bauchi state, Barr. Muhammed Abdullahi Abubakar never shies away from identifying with unconventional or unprofessional media platforms.
I choose to call the many social media platforms belonging to the North, unconventional or unprofessional because most of us that write and have literary interest without prior journalstic training
could wake up, create a page on Facebook and other social media outfits and name the platform and start disseminating posts in the name of news.
I know other people most especially trained journalists and other media organisations have shown their concern blaming these platforms as agents of fake news and other unprofessional conducts.
For me, I beg to make a case for my colleagues because these type of platforms make up for the gross neglect by our Northern bigwigs who don’t give a damn about setting up Media outlets and funding them apart from very few persons who have the North at heart. These few can never match the giant strides made by southern press whose only selling point is lashing at the North and its leaders.
Their propaganda war against the North is legendary. The voices we have in the North through their Media Houses can’t be heard under the barrage of deep, deafening and strong voices of Southern Media.
What is most unsettling is that those that are being lashed day in day out by the Southern press, prefer to give their adverts, support and attention to this same southern press at the expense of the Nothern Media. Only few Media Houses in the North survive this sort of negligence by Nothern stakeholders and money bags who prefer to romance the Southern press most of the time.
This is the reason why some Media in the North could not survive or those that are interested won’t dare to venture into the muddy water of news reportage or news dissemination to match the Southern press.
The emergence of social media, to some extent is a blessing to the North which gave many people most especially the Youth to talk back at those antagonistic to northern development, its culture and leadership. Many became emergency journalists and bloggers even without any professional training or experience in the field of mass communication.
Those who choose to be professional get few fellowships on the platform but now the voice of the North is being heard. They stood by their leaders even though it is still same old song of these Nothern leaders preferring the Southern platforms than the Nothern ones. I heard of a Southern platform that charges a lot of money from our politicians in order to get mentioned while for free the Northern platforms feature their activities. The only time they get attention is when they publish any negative news against them that they get threats from their foot soldiers for daring to speak ill against their principals.
These are the same persons that never appreciate effort of social media influencers and Internet warriors who stood for them for nothing.
This is where I have to give it to the former Governor of Bauchi State, Barr Mohammed Abdullahi Abubakar who, while in office identified these platforms and engaged them by giving them jobs to sustain their platforms where they were being paid stipends to run their pages. I could identify a lot of Nothern pages that benefit from this laudable gesture.
So it didn’t come as a surprise that even though, M.A as he is fondly referred to, has become one of Zuma Times Top Special 30 where he was massively endorsed by many of our followers.
In an interview, the former Governor said he felt it was very necessary to encourage those platforms for what they were doing and also he saw it as an avenue to keep the youths engaged and employed. He said it is the responsibility of every leader to support them because he believes it is high time they were given opportunities to match those of the South because the southern press are also being supported and patronised by their leaders hence becoming this strong.
On behalf of Zuma Times teeming followers, staff and management, I will like to congratulate his Excellency for being one of our Top Personalities and also thank him for making Zuma Times and other platforms like ours grow to this stage.
