The minister of Information, Labaran Maku, disclosed this after Wednesday’s cabinet meeting presided over by President Goodluck Jonathan at the State House.
Maku said the meeting was essentially devoted to reviewing the Monday morning bombing at Nyanya bus park, with a view to taking pro-active measures for prevention.
The minister said that council was displeased with the unprofessional way some newspapers and television houses showed the pictures of dismembered bodies.
“We observed with regret that in spite of the great job the media has continued to do, we saw also that the way this incident was reported in the last two days has been really very insensitive. Council noted that it is really very unprofessional that newspapers and most of the televisions just unleashed gory pictures,” he said.
While urging the media to report events factually as they occur, he stated that extra care must be shown in reporting sensitive occurrences like the Nyanya explosion, for the psychological health of citizens and the image of our nation.
“We collectively feel that those gory pictures that were splashed on the front and inner pages of newspapers and the television screens could not have been the case. It showed disrespect for the dead, disrespect for the living and absolute lack of sensitivity to the health of the public”, the minister said.
Responding to President Goodluck Jonathan’s presence at Peoples Democratic Party, PDP unity rally in Kano a day after the bombing, Maku said it was not an insensitive act.
“It was a loud statement that terrorists can never stop this country from moving and from working,” he stated.
Maku noted that on the day of explosion, the President suspended his trip to Ibadan for the centenary of the Olubadan as well other engagements.
“One thing that terrorists want is to paralyse the society and to make sure that they keep you and I at home, frustrate every normal activities of society. They will continue to do it again and again, so that when they strike, government stops and everything stops, they will be very happy,” Maku said.
He said the pain of the attack is more to the President than any other person, adding that Jonathan has “suffered psychologically as a result of this criminality which terrorists carry out to distract the public and disrupt the normal activities of government”.
According to him, the intention, among others, is to set people against the government, to demoralise and disrupt the administration from achieving its set goals.
Maku appealed to politicians not exploit the suffering of the people just to score cheap political points, adding that the council underscored the need for the nation to be united against terrorism.