President Muhammadu Buhari yesterday accused media organisations of bias in reporting conflicts in the country.
He made the accusation during an interactive meeting with the Nigerian community in China yesterday.
He said while security agencies were doing their best to curtail clashes, the Nigerian media should complement the efforts through objective and informed reportage.
“To my disappointment, the members of the press in Nigeria do not make enough efforts to study the historical antecedents of issues that are creating national problems for us,” the president said.
He therefore appealed to the media to understand the cultural and historical implications of some of the misunderstanding especially between herders and farmers.
Buhari, who is in Beijing for the seventh Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, explained that due to the effects of climate change, a farm that used to belong to five people now belongs to 50 and that the weather condition, particularly the rainy season, has become unpredictable.
He partly blamed the farmers/herders controversy on the shrinking of the Lake Chad, which according to him has forced many cattle nomads to seek greener pastures for their herds in other parts of the country.
According to the president, he is not intimidated at the prospect of a credible process in the 2019 general elections.
“I have no fear about free and fair elections because that is what brought me to the present position. I know what I went through, and very few Nigerians could boast of trying four times.”
Buhari’s complaint about the media came as the Nigerian Army also condemned what it described as a flawed reporting of its operations against Boko Haram.
