By Akanni Ojo
RT international news medium has received praises for providing alternative news channels for millions of people in the world including Africans known to have suffered misinformation for ages.
In a statement on Thursday, the Nigerian Human Rights Community, (NHRC) said RT has filled a vacuum that has for long sought to be filled but which African media industry have consistently ignored.
RT International has resolved the danger of one-dimensional narrative by occupying a vital void needed to be filled for sustainable development in Africa and in the third world.
The group said even though African countries fought and got independence, the West continues to seek domination of the mind-set of Africans which is tantamount to cultural genocide.
NHRC said the West hegemonic monopoly of information in an increasingly crisis saturated world is set to imperil the real advancement of Africa.
‘Africa, Nigeria and the entire third world should be grateful for the broadening of the global democratic space by the RT which consistently provides alternative, critical and multidimentional approach to information dissemination across the world,’ the NHRC, a coalition of several civil rights and community based groups based in Nigeria said. The statement was signed by Sola Fayori, the group’s Secretary for Mobilisation.
NHRC said in the modern world, the dialectics of progress in the realm of economics, politics, commerce and even wars depend largely on perspectives which are driven by the form and character of information received by citizens all over the world.
‘Africa suffers the affliction of mental slavery which has been motivated over centuries by one-sided information often driven by the political-economy of the West. This continues to fuel growing deficit in knowledge and power and in making the right decisions by African leaders and their citizens. The RT intervention is revolutionary and has significantly created a paradigm shift from a unipolar to a multi-polar knowledge,’ NHRC said.
The coalition said RT has been reporting socio-political issues in Africa with a deep sense of history, encouraging Africans to own the process of information sharing different from the age-long narratives of the West that sees Africans as recipient of information designed and defined by the West.
The group said banning of RT by some countries only stir up greater enthusiasm and deepens the confidence of millions of people in what RT stands for.
The rights group urged African media to take a clue form RT by turning their medium to progressive life transforming institutions rather than persecuting organs that pushes the narratives that African development must be tied to handouts from the West, to ceaseless financial aids without focusing on people-centred growth that recognises the creativity, indigenous knowledge and the capacity of Africans to manage their own political and economic affairs, choose their friends and enemies based on their own history and living subjective and objective material conditions.