Vice Chairman of the Presidential Committee on the North East Initiative (PCNI), Alhaji Tijani Tumsa, has urged journalists to focus on the interest and survival of Nigerians in the coverage and reportage of the Boko Haram insurgency in the region.
Tumsa stated this yesterday during the closing ceremony of a 3-day training workshop on conflict sensitive communication for the media and information officers of security and response agencies in the North east, organised by PCNI and facilitated by the Centre for Crisis Communication (CCC) held in Maiduguri from 23th – 25th of this month.
He said the seminar was a response to the need to collaborate and collectively counter Boko Haram terrorism in the North east by government response agencies and private media organisations. He added that collaboration among and between government response agencies as well as private media organisations was highly needed in the ongoing war against the terrorists and its violent ideology, pointing out that the region is not just a part of Nigeria but a gateway to the country’s economy and those of the Sahel region, which makes it a strategic to the nation.
He warned that news and report framing, whether by the government response security agencies or private media organisations which is a function of interest of individual should consider national interest first. He expressed the hope that at the end of the seminar, the participants would gain insights into conflict communication, countering violent extremism and the need for collaboration among various response agencies of government and the private media houses.
