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Opinion

Focus on Africa: Keeping fake news out of Boko Haram war.

Nigerian journalist lauds army for working with the press in the Boko Haram war.

Nigerian Chief of Army staff Lieutenant General Tukur Yusuf Buratai
Nigerian Chief of Army staff Lieutenant General Tukur Yusuf Buratai nigerian army
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Ismail Musa is Defence correspondent at the public National Television Authority and the point man covering the military’s 9-year struggle to halt the bloodletting taking place on northeastern region of the country where the jihadist group is trying to set up an Islamist State.

Musa was with Major General David Ahmadu the army’s chief of Operations and his men in June, when they recaptured the northern Borno state town of Baga where the insurgents killed up to 2000 people.

He was also at the IDP camp of Rann in the Kala-balge local government area of Borno State, close to the border with Cameroon where early this year Nigerian fighter jets mistakenly dropped bombs intended for the enemy.

Ismail Musa was behind his Camera on the 22nd of December 2016, when the Nigerian military captured Camp Zero, Boko Haram’s headquarters in northern Nigeria, in an operation that completed the liberation of 14 local government areas.

He tells RFI that there is no place for a Christmas break for troops deployed in the flash point northern city of Maiduguri. He says the terrorists lie waiting for moments of demobilization at the frontline to strike.

Ismail Musa praised Nigeria's army chiefs for allowing war correspondents to do their work freely and with the best military protection possible. He says they now fully understand the values of fair reporting of the war and the role newsmen can play in combatting the fundamentalist ideology promoted by Boko Haram.

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FOCUS SON Ismail Musa EDL

Tens of thousands have been killed and million displaced since the insurgency broke out in 2009. 

Christmas jackpot

In Kenya, Daily Nation rolls out the traditional red carpet for Christmas but regrets that it’s become one occasion when Kenyans go out of their way to splurge.

The publication says, that after the discount galore that shut many eyes to the multiple demands on Kenyans’ pockets, Christmas is not so merry as the so-called ‘Njaanuari’ blues looms.

There won’t be any January blues for 39 year-old Ezekiel Oimba an employee of the Kenya Ferry Services.

The Star reports that Christmas came early for him when he won the SportPesa mid-week jackpot of Sh22 million Shillings (a whopping 189,000 euros).

The father of four told the newspaper he kept quiet for a few minutes when he got the text message on Saturday evening.

Oimba says his new millionaire status will enable him start his dream project in the real estate business and confessed to reporters he planned to first take his family to whatever destination they will ask him for Christmas.

Christmas without love?

And in Zimbabwe the State-owned Herald’s editorial today is about the many ways to love thy neighbor this Christmas.

Always take them into consideration when you make merry with loud music, honking cars and all the fights. If people could learn to love their neighbours as themselves, the publication argues, then we would not be witnessing so many lives lost each year on the roads due to behaviours and attitudes exhibited in the prodigious merry-making. Let’s remember there is always a tomorrow, concludes the Herald.

 

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