About seven years ago, a terrorist cult described as “Boko Haram” for its abhorrence to western values and civilisation, clashed with the authority in a bid to re-emphasise their right to exist as outlaws in Maiduguri, a city that’s more than just a political territory and capital of the present-day Borno State. Maiduguri is a memorabilia of glory amongst the Muslims of northern Nigeria and one of the earliest doors of Islamic civilisation and scholarship in West Africa.
Maiduguri may not be that militarily mighty city of scholarship of the legendary Kanem-Borno Empire even post-2009, but it was a beautifully diverse and functional city in the landlocked region. Its devolution into what the distant media describes as a dystopia exposes the vulnerability of our security arrangements, which was exploited by the bereaved extremists.
They lost their spiritual leader, Muhammad Yusuf, in the chaos. They lost their homes, and what remained of their senses. And since their doctrine portrays us as infidels, we have become victims of their barbarity.
Even though the killings in northeast Nigeria were not televised, shots from the killers’ guns, explosions from suicide attacks and videos of death threats by leaders of the Islamist cult have made headlines of local and foreign media. Thus, creating an image of a perished city and region, and a dejected people. The narrative sharply ignored the extraordinarily resilient private citizens who have risen against the bogeymen and living a life of courage, of admirable audacity!
From Abuja to Washington, the terrorism and counterterrorism was only a poverty porn to gullible media consumers. I was one of the gullible, one of the minds trained to see Maiduguri as a city in its death throes, one a single attack away from collapse. I declined invitations to weddings of friends and associates in Maiduguri, afraid its almost a stretch of the unholy caliphate proposed by the mentally ill Commander of the bloodthirsty group. And there was a confusing scenario of the abduction of over 200 girls at a school in Chibok, southern part of Borno, to cite as a reason to be wary of the seemingly elusive group.
This poverty porn wasn’t effectively challenged by a media organisation, nor by the propaganda of the Public Relations unit of the Defence Headquarters. It’s happening on the social media and inspiring stories in the mainstream media by a Maiduguri-based photographer, Ms. Fati Abubakar. Through the lens of her camera, we are being introduced to defiance of the people of Borno, their day to day struggles, conviviality, drama, style and colour!
He social media platforms on Twitter and Instagram – Bits of Borno – feature portraits of the people of northeast Nigeria going about their lives, going to school, partying at weddings, celebrating festivals and, more than these, allying against the existence of their biggest threat. Like the peaceful world away from theirs. And her camera was probing in its coverage of the city, its filth and gilt, highs and lows.
I find Fati’s media reconstruction of the established narrative of Borno as a place resilient and people unbowed, inspiring and essential in countering the dominating poverty porn that saturates the mainstream media. What she sells isn’t sentimentality, it’s a parallel narrative; a certain reality.
As a photographer, she must’ve seen a distorted image and “photoshopped” reality of the place she knows very well and wasn’t impressed that the bigger lenses didn’t consider the big picture worthy of documentation. Asked about her inspiration for this one-woman crusade, she cited photography as a childhood hobby that few with her, in time, and thus she “highlights problems in communities, documenting cultures, urban poverty, rural development and more.” She also cited the power and effect of imagery as reason for her choice of photography as a weapon for demolishing stereotypes and one-dimensional narratives.
Fati was trained in Nursing and then Public Health in Maiduguri and London, earning Bachelor’s degree and Master’s, respectively. She perceives Photography and Public Health as symmetric, that photography is a documentation of environmental factors that influence the life and health of the public, and hence the connection and her commitment to unravelling the realities of her surroundings through the lens, one image after another. She attributed her motivation to personal joy, frowning at the commercial enterprise that photography has become, with big weddings and celebrity events as areas of coverage.
For a native Kanuri, Fati’s attraction to Maiduguri is not a mystery. What defies understanding is her choice of a risky profession to counter the misrepresentation of Borno from the efforts of the Civilian JTF to the transactions of roadside petty traders. This is even more so in noting that her training has vast opportunities in relatively safe big cities, and that her photography project too could’ve been a money-making venture if she had chosen the commercial path. So, my prayer today is squarely for this subject, this phenomenal lady who’s chosen to show us the ordinary life of Borno, which is to us extraordinary!
