We might be children of the global media, but so often the globe is reduced to a half-crescent moon. When its dark side is shown, it’s just that: dark, bloody and woefully degenerate. It's a portrayal that makes sure we don’t bother looking too hard.  But the kidnapping of schoolgirls from Borno is more than just Nigeria's shame. The minimal coverage it has received is symptomatic of global degeneracy, and reflects the short-sighted arrogance that causes history to perpetuate itself.

On April 14, 234 girls from Borno, Nigeria's most North-Eastern state, were taken from their schools. A few days later, the Islamic  militant group Boko Haram claimed responsibility for the kidnappings, and threatened to sell the girls. I could, with justification, compare this atrocity to the 2011 slaughter of 69 Norwegian schoolchildren, the 2013 Connecticut massacre of 20 primary students, or the ongoing case of Madeline McCann. The difference is that all of these received huge and rapid media coverage. The minimal, delayed coverage of the Nigerian kidnappings, and the even more delayed social response, is indicative of our assumption that what happens ‘over there’ isn’t particularly important. Sensational and heartbreaking, but, eventually, without global impact.

The thing is, their abduction affects us all, and I’m going to show you why. Nigeria is Africa's most populous country; 1 in 4 Africans are Nigerian. It is the 12th largest petroleum producer in the world, and the 8th largest exporter, and oil, as we know, is one of the commodity superpowers that run the world.

Although Boko Haram, the new celebrities of international terrorism, are attempting to establish a purely Islamic state governed by Sharia’h law, they do not own Nigeria’s oil. In fact, the North owns very few resources. Secession is impossible because Nigeria’s wealth is in the South, where colonial missionaries established Christianity. Since 2009 Boko Haram have waged ‘war’ upon the South, killing 900 people, many of them Christians, between 2009 and 2012. This has led to retaliations against Muslims.

The abduction of these girls and their forced marriages is an economic strategy. Women, be it a wedding ring or dowry, cost. These girls were taken so that their bridewealth could fund Boko Haram’s military campaign and that campaign, epitomised in their abduction, has the potential to put the world in jeopardy. 

Best described as an oil tanker on the brink of eruption, the conflict in Nigeria is more than a religious disagreement. Nigeria borders Cameroon, Niger and Chad. They border Libya, Sudan and the Central African Republic, which is still reeling from the Islamic militant group Seleka’s seizure of power in 2013 and the resulting civil war. Sudan is at war with South Sudan while Libya - well, remember Gaddafi and the Arab spring? These nations border perpetually war-ravaged Congo and Democratic Republic of Congo, famine-starved Ethiopia and Eritrea, civil war-torn, pirate-ridden Somalia - I could go on.

Let’s imagine for a moment a (not unlikely) escalation of the conflict in Nigeria. The most populous nation in Africa would have a mass exodus. It might happen slowly, families from the North seeping into other countries like an unchartered oil spill. Neighbouring nations would buckle under the weight of more dependents. Conflict destabilises the economy and resultant industries. It becomes too dangerous for the expats with expertise to come and gouge out the Delta and, in time, we see petrol prices rise, as in Sierra Leone's diamond ‘crisis’. We scream - capitalism, exploitation - but continue to pump blood-infused oil into our cars. Continental migration gives rise to more civil wars, more military juntas, more famine and more war profits, a chilling reminder of the Rwandan genocide which instigated  the civil wars in Congo and Liberia as migrants fled one nation to be embroiled in the turmoil of another.

The conflict in Nigeria concerns you. It doesn’t belong on the dark side of the global news because Nigeria’s political stability doesn't just affect the stability of the African continent and the millions of people that inhabit it. It reaches into our own comfortable, oil-saturated lives.

More than 200 girls have disappeared in a part of the world where CCTV barely exists, where the police force is explicitly corrupt, and political stability is a dream.  Their abduction and subsequent forced migration is an atrocity; their parents' heartbreak is unimaginable. Yet this event is in danger of being tossed aside as a flash in the pan news story.

We live in an interdependent world. What happens on the dark side of global news will one day show its face and haunt us. The abduction of these girls is a wake-up call. We need to pay more attention: 'over there' isn't that far away.