From the Georgia State University News Hub, originally published August 5, 2015.
Chika Oduah is one of fewer than 10 international journalists reporting from Nigeria
By Jeremy Craig
Chika Oduah has gone where members of a police force dare not tread.
Reporting for Al-Jazeera in Nigeria, Oduah can tell of the dangers when facing Boko Haram, a terrorist group that has bedeviled the West African nation and kidnapped more than 200 school girls in the northeastern part of the country.
“In Nigeria, the police are afraid of Boko Haram, so they run away,” said the Georgia State alumna. “It doesn’t even make sense to travel with them.”
Oduah is one of fewer than 10 international journalists to have traveled to the area, so there are no best practices to follow.
She rode with a man she described as a hunter and vigilante against Boko Haram. He was willing to take risks, moving through a landscape of farms abandoned out of fear of the organization, where the government had cut off cell phone reception.
The smell of gunpowder permeated the air. And when Boko Haram fired at them, the answer was to floor their car’s gas pedal.
“Our strategy was to just keep driving when we got shot [at], because they were targeting the tires,” Oduah said. “But our companion who was in the car behind us had a grenade thrown at his car. We were able to get away.”
Reporting can be dangerous, but it’s a passion she pursues eagerly to tell the important stories of the largest populated nation in Africa. Nigeria is home to more than 173 million people, all with a story to tell, a story often written by someone in London or Washington, D.C., and not on the ground.
Oduah has been able to talk one-on-one with many of the 57 kidnapped school girls who did escape from Boko Haram, and has told their personal stories.
“I’ve been able to follow up on Boko Haram from a very humanitarian point of view,” said Oduah, who is of Nigerian heritage and grew up in Atlanta. “I’ve really been working to follow the story from different angles.”
There are other stories to tell, she explained, beyond the horrors of Boko Haram. A historic presidential election happened in March, where for the first time in the country’s history a sitting president was defeated.
And there’s another big story often untold by international media: enterprising youth of the country, many of whom are working to turn Nigeria into the Silicon Valley of West Africa.
“Seventy percent of Nigeria’s population is people under the age of 35,” said Oduah, who majored in journalism and anthropology at Georgia State.
“Youth in Nigeria are doing huge things, especially in social media and technology – inventing new gadgets and apps,” she said. “They’re trying to be change-makers in their world.”
Ever since she was nine years old, Oduah wanted to write, and now is writing for one of the world’s top international news organizations. And Georgia State, along with Atlanta, served as a great training ground.
“Atlanta was a ground for me to explore other cultures,” she said. “At Georgia State, the biggest thing for me, those two majors, helped me to hone my appreciation for cultures and learn how to not judge people from different cultures than your own.”
Photos provided by Chika Oduah at chikaoduahblog.com