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IF THIS IS NOT GENOCIDE THEN WHAT THE HELL IS?

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POLICE SHOULD LEAVE FEMI FANI-KAYODE ALONE

IF THIS IS NOT GENOCIDE THEN WHAT THE HELL IS?

 

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“We do not have evidence of Israel committing genocide in Gaza”- Gen. Lloyd Austin, Secretary of Defence of the United States of America.

 

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Never in the history of humanity and in the comity of nations has such an asinine, puerile and indefensible statement been made by a high-ranking Government official.

 

It reflects the dishonesty, wickedness, insensitivity, depravity, deceit, hypocrisy, double standards, moral bankruptcy, unconciable inhumanity, malodrous disposition and spiritual turpitude of the Biden administration.

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You cannot wish away or dismiss the truth no matter how bitter and you cannot deny the facts no matter how ugly.

 

Andrew Mitrovika, a columnist with Al Jazeera, captured the events in Gaza graphically and clearly when he wrote the following. Permit me to quote him extensively. He wrote,

 

“The cataclysm that you and I are witnessing in Gaza is a genocide in the awful making.

It is not an “onslaught”. It is not an “invasion”. It is not even a “war”. It is a genocide.

The apocalyptic scenes and sounds in Gaza are proof that a cruel, occupying army is intent on achieving its overarching aim: the annihilation of what remains of an already shattered slice of land and the indiscriminate killing of helpless, exhausted children, women and men.

Over decades, a succession of immune Israeli governments and their useful proxies, the rampaging settler militias, have waged incremental genocide, bit by bit, with the explicit approval, consent, and encouragement of Western governments – who, in a predictable show of performative solidarity with a ruthless ally – have bathed their tourist attractions in blue and white or the Star of David.

Go ahead, you craven enablers, show the world your true and rank colours. We will remember.

Make no mistake: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – along with his racist gang of brutish (by nature, temperament, and vernacular) cabinet ministers – have been aching, for a long, frustrating time, to abandon the let’s-teach-Palestinians-a-lethal-lesson spasms of violence in favour of the much more satisfying wholesale destruction of the Gaza Strip.

The monstrous plan is as plain as Netanyahu’s wretched character: Be done with Gaza by erasing Gaza.

 

Anyone, anywhere, in any forum who denies this fact is either a liar, blind – or willfully, happily, and comfortably both.

 

 

This is not “righteous” payback or vengeance. It is – I repeat, for the legion of complicit hacks and stenographers who, remarkably, have never noticed, let alone given a damn, about the perpetual suffering and trauma of Palestinians – a genocide.

If my blunt indictment stings, I challenge any of the historically illiterate columnists and American TV news celebrities who have rushed to Israel to burnish their credentials as “foreign correspondents” – with their hairstylists, makeup artists and writers in tow – to disabuse me, and much more importantly, the Palestinian diaspora and their allies, of our belief that a murderous genocide is unfolding in that besieged enclave.

These insufferable hypocrites are again tarring Palestinians as “evil predators” while praising Israelis as “solicitous saints” for warning grateful Palestinians in Gaza that they’re going to kill them en masse.

 

These fawning Israel loyalists have likely not once stepped inside the barbed-wired walls and fences that encircle Gaza or interviewed any of the millions of human beings who, for generations, have endured the loss, theft, deprivations, indignities, humiliations, and, of course, lethal ferocity committed by an apartheid state.

It is a familiar, surreal minstrel show that reduces an old, complex story into a pat, easy-to-digest clash between black and white for countless equally callow, geography-allergic Americans who are convinced that carrying a passport is “woke”.

 

The white hats – the Israelis – are always the innocent victims. The black hats – the Palestinians – are always the guilty perpetrators.

 

Hence, the cavalier disregard for the almost incomprehensible human consequences of Israel’s blatant annulment of that, by now, silly, anachronistic term: international law.

 

Stop the stuff of life – food and water – from getting into captive Gaza. Fine.

 

Stop fuel and electricity from being delivered to homes and hospitals. Fine.

 

Bomb United Nations schools sheltering desperate Palestinian families from the incessant carpet bombing. Fine.

 

Attack ambulances to bar them from ferrying mangled children to darkened hospitals where they require urgent care. Fine.

 

Unleash white phosphorous to burn Palestinians to the bone. Fine.

 

Dispense with the canard of “precision strikes” to prevent “civilian casualties” and revel, instead, in turning Gaza into Fallujah, circa 2005. Fine.

 

Seal the prison that is Gaza tighter to make escape and hope impossible. Fine.

 

Then demand that 1.1 million people move to nowhere within hours or face, in all likelihood, a certain death. Fine.

 

 

On appalling cue, the usual gallery of preening presidents and prime ministers has deplored the atrocities committed by the black hats – while applauding, as a necessary and welcomed rebuttal, the atrocities committed by the white hats.

 

So please, would fantasists stop imploring the International Criminal Court (ICC) at The Hague to do something, anything, to hold “both parties”, including, Israel, to account?

 

It has not happened and will not happen because the ever-compliant ICC knows that it must not offend, and will not offend, the powers that be in Washington, DC who run the whole fraudulent farce.

 

Meanwhile, Netanyahu – who, just a few weeks ago, was excoriated for being an indicted crook facing a corruption trial on a slew of fraud, bribery, and breach of trust charges as well as having an authoritarian’s DNA – has been rehabilitated by US President Joe Biden and obsequious company as the Middle East’s shining avatar of resolve, resilience and morality.

 

Such is the diseased “moral” compass of Biden and his pedestrian confederates in London, Paris, Berlin, Brussels, Canberra and Ottawa.

 

 

Still, it’s hardly surprising that feral colonial powers – given their hideous record of killing and disfiguring so many innocents, in so many scarred places – would offer their blanket endorsement to another colonial power responsible for killing and disfiguring so many innocent Palestinians in Gaza and beyond yesterday, today and tomorrow.

 

But know this: Biden et al do not speak for millions of citizens who they purport to represent, but who will continue to stand steadfast with unbowed Palestinians and their just and humane cause.

 

Despite all the nonsense and posturing by the “international community” about “resolving the crisis through diplomacy”, this dystopian-like horror has been the “end game” all along: pulverise every square inch of Gaza and its people into dust and memory.

 

The risible “two-state” solution is a sick illusion promoted by slick, Ivy-league-educated diplomats like US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and the other Israeli war-crime apologists who preceded him – fused, as they were and are, to their “partners” in Tel Aviv like conjoined twins.

 

Blinken has travelled to Israel at the behest of his boss to “greenlight” genocide. We will remember that, too.

 

A malignant regime, motivated by a poisonous combination of ultra-nationalism and fanaticism, knows that its sinister goal is in tantalizing sight.

 

There will be more horrors to come. But Palestinians will not be broken. They will persevere and prevail. It will be hard and take time, but they will rebuild” (CONCLUDED).

 

Andrew Mitrovika, the author of these powerful words, has hit the nail on the head.

 

His views and indeed his conclusion that genocide is indeed being committed in Gaza represents the thinking of millions of people all over the world.

 

Western leaders and all those that are still lost in their vain and self-inflicted fantasy of “no evidence of genocide in Gaza” should read his powerful and insightful words carefully and come to the conclusion that what is happening in Gaza is downright evil, ought to be described for what it is and roundly condemned.

 

Claiming that there is no evidence of genocide in Gaza is like saying that there is no evidence of the holocaust in Nazi Germany and that there is no evidence of the trans-Atlantic slave trade or slavery in America, Europe and the Caribbean in the 18th and 19th century.

 

It is like saying that there is no evidence of the hideous atrocities, horrific barbarity, daylight robbery, psychological torture, emotionel abuse, wholesale deprivation, unalloyed humiliation, shameless graft and mind-boggling pillaging that the western colonial powers of Great Britain, France, Holland, Belgium, Portugal, Italy, Spain and Germany unleashed and foisted on their former colonies in Africa, Asia, South America and the Middle East.

 

It is like saying that King Louis 11 of Belgium did not kill 10 million Congolese Africans, that Vladimer Lenin and Josef Stalin did not kill 25 million Russians, that Pol Pot did not kill 2 million Cambodians, that the Hutus of Rwanda did not kill 1 million Tutsis, that the Turks did not kill 1 million Armenians and that the Americans did not literally exterminate the Red Indian population in their country.

 

It is like saying that there was no terror attack in New York on 9/11 and that there was no terror attack in Moscow a few weeks ago.

 

It is like saying that the Spanish did not eliminate a quarter of the native and indigenous population of South America, that the British did not wipe out millions of the Irish and 3 million Bengali Indians, that the Serbs did not murder 20,000 thousand Bosnians and that Argentina did not exterminate its entire black population.

 

It is like saying that 20 million people were not killed in WW 1, that 50 million people were not killed in WW11 and that America did not drop a nuclear bomb on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki killing hundreds of thousands.

 

It is like saying that the ethnic cleansing of 80,000 of the Herero and Nama people of Namibia by the Germans never took place and it is like saying that the mass murder of 3 million Igbos by Nigeria never took place.

 

It is like saying that the war that is being waged in Gaza by Israel is against Hamas and not against the Palestinian people.

It is like saying that the war started on October 7th after the attack on Israel by Hamas and not 75 years ago after the unleashing of the horrific Nakba on the Palestinians and the illegal occupation of their land by the Jews.

It is like saying that the Israelis have always owned all the land in Gaza and that the Palestinians never lived in or had a historical stake in it.

 

It is like saying that the Zionists did not murder hundreds of innocent and defenceless Palestinians in the village of Deir Yassin.

 

It is like saying that the Christian Falange Lebanese militia, with the full support of the Israelis, did not butcher thousands of Palestinian Muslims in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatilla.

 

It is like saying that the 1948 “Nakba” in which 750,000 Palestinians were butchered and ethnically cleansed, forced from their homes and scattered and displaced by the Zionists never took place.

 

It is like saying that the terror attack by Hamas in Israel on October 7th in which 1000 Jews were killed never took place.

 

Finally it is like saying that the air strike by the Israeli Airforce on Eid in which three sons and three grandchildren of the leader of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, were targetted and murdered never took place.

 

 

Those that insist on perpetuating the monstrous mendacity that there is no genocide in Gaza and that indulge in such egregious falsehood, self-serving perfidy and outrageous lies are not only malicious, mischevous, malevolent, ignorant and sociopathic but also totally and completely insensitive, misinformed and possibly insane.

 

They look but they refuse to see and they listen but refuse to hear.

 

They have no truth in them and they are nothing but ferral psychopaths and intellectual barbarians.

 

They are a coven of dark, dangerous and deviant manipulators and an unholy gathering of shameless and sinister cultists, charlatans and gangsters who are in the grip, power and service of satan.

 

That is precisely why many refer to them as agents of the dark forces and acolytes of the principalities and powers that rule our world and refer to the Zionists whose interests they seek to further and protect as founding fathers of the Synagogue of Satan and devil worshippers.

 

For the record there has never been a war in history like the one in Gaza in which 80% of the country has been decimated, 100% of the population displaced and 50% of those that have been killed are children.

 

In his contribution, Christian Hedges, an American jourmalist, whilst on his assignment and coverage of the war in Gaza said “children have been shot in other conflicts I have covered but never have I watched as soldiers enticed children like mice into a trap and murder them for sport”.

 

All this and yet the American Secretary of Defence, General Lloyd Austin, has the effontry and nerve to proclaim that there is no evidence of genocide in Gaza!

 

Someone needs to ask this misguided and facetious man just how many Palestinians need to be slaughtered before it fits into his definition of genocide!

 

It is painfully obvious that he has a low intelligence quotient, he has a myopic and shallow mind and that his reasoning and logic is little better than that of a village idiot.

 

Only the cruel can deny the horror of Gaza and claim that what we are witnessing there today is anything other than mass murder, ethnic cleansing, crimes against humanity, war crimes, collective punishment, starvation and genocide all of which constitute specific and clear violations of both international law and the law of war and all of which have made Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his Ministers, his Intelligence Chiefs and his Military Commanders candidates for prosecution at the International Criminal Court at the Hague.

 

 

Those that claim that this is not the case are devious-minded specious liars and blood-lusting warmongers who are feeding fat on the blood of the women and children of Gaza and who deserve to burn in hell.

 

Not only have Joe Biden and his entire Government become enablers of the crime of genocide but, given the fact that they are providing vast sums of money and deadly arms to the Zionist state to achieve their bloody enterprise, they are also complicit in it.

 

The blood of 35,000 innocent and defenceless Palestinians, including 15,000 children, are on their collective hands.

 

This blood will cry to God in heaven for vengeance and speak against them into eternity.

 

Joe Biden and his administration will ultimately regret the blind, irrational, inexplicable, indefensible, unjustifiable, unrestrained, unconditional and relentless support that they continue to offer the Jewish state which, given the events of the last six months, has transformed itself into a murderous, totalitarian fascist apartheid settler- colonial state and a hideous enclave of bloodthirsty genocidal maniacs, child killers, mass murderers, land grabbers and vicious, cold-blooded Nazis.

 

It is fair to say that all the demons have left hell and now reside in Israel.

 

(FFK)

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Is Yahaya Bello the Sinner or the Sinned Against?* By Smart Origbo

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Governor Yahaya Bello Reveals His Preferred Successor

*Is Yahaya Bello the Sinner or the Sinned Against?*

By Smart Origbo

For unsavoury reasons, the story of the immediate past governor of Kogi State, Mr Yahaya Bello has literally seized the media space in the country, week-in, week-out.

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The hide -and seek game between Bello and the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), blew open a forthnight ago when the anti-graft agency decided to “catch” Bello right in his house at the Wuse district in Abuja.

The agency had barricaded the street forbidding even residents from entering or exiting the street. The planned arrest turned a fiasco as the sitting Kogi State governor, Governor Usman Ododo was alleged to have nestled Yahaya Bello into his car and driven him out of the vicinity, basking in the immunity that covers him and even his car.
Ever since then, the polity had been agog with the issue of Bello. Opinions have been divided whether or not the former Kogi governor is the sinner or the one sinned against.

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The way the EFCC has presented Yahaya Bello to the polity, with all the accompanying drama, is that Bello is a thief who must be stripped at the market square for maximum shame. But those who are more circumspect and critical in criminal procedures have faulted the approach of the EFCC.
Those who so believe, argue that the EFCC has breached the due process in an attempt to hastily humiliate the former governor, having pasted on him the tag of a crooked thief, without allowing the court to do so.

Perhaps it is in the fear that this may happen that the former governor had secured a court order forbidding the anti-graft agency from arresting or harassing him. But the EFCC in believing that Yahaya Bello has a case to answer, had appealed against that order. While the appeal is yet to be heard, the EFCC moved his men, in a gestapo fashion, to go for Bello’s jugular. This happened few days to the date the said appeal by the EFCC was due to be heard in the court.

So the question arises: why the haste to breach legal due process on the part of the EFCC, thus causing a needless social hoopla? If the anti-graft commission was so sure that it could do as it pleases, regardless of the provisions of the law, then why did it bother going to court to vacate the order stopping it from inviting, arresting or harassing Bello? Yes, nobody (including Yahaya Bello) is above the law, but is the EFCC above the law?

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It is doubly tragic and ironical that the EFCC is currently being run and headed by Ola Olukoyede, a lawyer of over 22 years experience. So, which part of the law he read permits him to pre-empt the pronouncement of the court by deciding to do as he wants, regardless of constitutionally laid down procedure?

Indeed, even if the EFCC had a good case against Bello, the way and manner it has gone about it has despoiled the case fundamentally. And this prosecutorial incapacity is one reason the EFCC had lost many of its good cases in the past. Does the EFCC need to be schooled on the basic ethos of the law which pays great attention to, not what done, but how done?Little wonder that the EFCC has, on its own accord, now withdrawn the appeal against the court injunction restraining the EFCC from arresting Bello, allegedly on the grounds that events have overtaken the appeal. What events have overtaken it? A sham claim!

It is even more curious to know that the same EFCC Chairman is a Pastor. As a senior clergy man, his actions both in private and public appearances should, like Ceaser’s wife, be above board. But sadly, this outing of Pastor Olukoyede is shamefully dirtied by procedural impropriety, fueling suspicion that his actions are politically motivated. A case of the voice of Jacob and the hands of Esau.

What is more? In all the back-and-forth of the matter, the EFCC has not been able to prove that it actually formally invited Bello for questioning over the pending allegations of money laundering. The closest to this was when the EFCC chairman, himself recently said he had put a call to Bello inviting him to his office for interrogation. No formal letter of invitation was ever sent to him. What if it is not true that Olukoyede is not telling the whole truth? It is certain that if the EFCC had formally invited Yahaya Bello, they would have long circulated the letter on the social media.

Did the EFCC not breach the process by suddenly sending its men to arrest Bello without formally inviting him for questioning? Even a suspected criminal, with bloody hands, is presumed innocent until proven guilty by a court of competent jurisdiction. This is what the law prescribes. Mr Olukoyede should know this. Neither he nor the EFCC can be a judge in their own case. It is when this process is duly followed that prosecution is not seen as persecution.

Even if indeed, Bello is a sinner and has some questions to answer, the EFCC has turned him to a man more sinned against by seemingly bungling the prosecution procedure. Justice and the route to it must be freed from emotion, propaganda and media trial. Until the EFCC learns to follow due process, its actions and inactions will continue to smell political.

Its best antidote is strict adherence to the rule of law.The EFCC cannot resort to self-help by side-stepping the provisions of the law. It must show its committed adherence to legal and judicial due process in securing convictions of accused persons.

The EFCC had furthered its affront on propriety by demanding the refund of the so-called school fees paid by Bello for his children in an Abuja high-nitch school. The school allegedly refunded the said fees which were paid in dollars, out of the intimidation tendencies of EFCC. The EFCC has a case with Yahaya Bello, not the school. So, coercing the school to refund the fees paid is clear case of institutional bullying.

In all, the law in any society is put in place to shield the citizenry from any form of political or institutional thralldom and so the EFCC, no matter how important and needed its role(s) might be in getting the system to function effectively, must be seen to be doing the right things at the right time and in the right way. Anything short of that will be a perfect prescription for chaos and crisis.

*Origbo is a lawyer and public affairs analyst*

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Yoruba Week: Sanwo-Olu’s Administration Writes Lagos Assembly

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Yoruba Week: Sanwo-Olu’s Administration Writes Lagos Assembly

– Sets date for celebration

– Assembly holds a minute silence for late Ezeife

 

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A letter from the executive arm of the Lagos State government to the state House of Assembly has announced a decision to set the last week of September every year for the celebration of the Yoruba culture.

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The decision of the government followed a resolution passed by the Lagos Assembly at a sitting held on September 19, 2023.

The Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Tourism, Arts and Culture, who signed the letter dated April 8, 2024, told the lawmakers that the state would start the plan ahead of the celebration.

“Sequel to the resolution of the House at its plenary of Tuesday, 19th September, 2023, on the activation of Yoruba cultural heritage and a special day to be assigned as Yoruba day, I have the directive to officially convey Mr. Governor’s approval for the last week of September as Yoruba Week,” a part of the letter, which was read by the Clerk of the House, Barr. Olalekan Onafeko, stated.

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Commending Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu and his cabinet for the decision, Speaker of the Lagos State House of Assembly, Rt. Hon. Mudashiru Obasa, described it as a good development.

He described the Yoruba culture and heritage as very important just as he stressed the need for its preservation.

The Speaker said the House is ready to support the executive to ensure the success of the planned Yoruba Week.

Meanwhile, the Lagos State House of Assembly on Monday held a minute silence in honour of the late former Governor of old Anambra State, Chukwuemeka Ezeife, who was buried recently while the House was on recess.

Speaker Mudashiru Obasa described the late politician as a pan-Nigerian who supported the Yorubas and the National Democratic Coalition (NADECO) especially during the dark days of military reign and following the struggle for Chief MKO Abiola.

“We remember how he proudly stepped down for Olu Falae back then in 1999,” Dr. Obasa said.

 

Yoruba Week: Sanwo-Olu's Administration Writes Lagos Assembly
- Sets date for celebration
- Assembly holds a minute silence for late Ezeife

Eromosele Ebhomele
Chief Press Secretary to the Speaker of the Lagos State House of Assembly.

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SIX MORE BOKO HARAM TERRORISTS SURRENDER AMID MNJTF’S LAKE CHAD BASIN OPERATIONS

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*SIX MORE BOKO HARAM TERRORISTS SURRENDER AMID MNJTF’S LAKE CHAD BASIN OPERATIONS

 

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As the Multinational Joint Task Force (MNJTF) progresses with Operation Lake Sanity 2, Boko Haram hideouts in the Lake Chad Region, spanning Cameroon and Nigeria, are seeing an increase in surrenders. Recently, 6 additional terrorists have surrender, laying down their arms from 17 to 27 April 2024.

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On 17 April 2024, a 19-year-old Boko Haram terrorist named Alhaji Ali surrendered to troops of 403 Amphibious Brigade (Baga) of Sector 3 in Monguno, Nigeria. Initial investigations reveal a 3-year affiliation with Boko Haram’s Buduma faction. Ali, hailing from Masarram on Lake Chad Island and residing at Duguri, highlighted the growing discontentment within the group.

Furthermore, on 25 April 2024, 2 more terrorists, Haoudou Sedik, 37, and Kadja Ousman, 21, turned themselves in at Blangua, Cameroon, to troops of Sector 1 in the Darak area of southern Lake Chad. Investigations reveal their origins from Chad, residing in the localities of Kami-Wari and Kourea, respectively.

The surrenders continued on 26 April, when Mohammed Abdulraman, 38, his wife Sadiya, and their two children (aged 13 and an infant), bearing one 36 Hand Grenade, surrendered to Sector 3’s 403 Amphibious Brigade at the Kwatam Turare axis, Baga, Nigeria. Abdulraman, identified as a foot soldier since 2017 in Sharama, cited internal crisis and the influence of MNJTF’s Operation Nashrul Salam as reasons for their defection.

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Likewise, on 27 April 2024, Yusuf Umaru, a 25-year-old, surrendered to the troops of 19 Brigade, Sector 3, in Kekeno, within the Kukawa Local Government Area of Borno State, Nigeria. During the initial investigation, Umaru revealed that he had been abducted by Boko Haram militants along the Monguno-Maiduguri road in 2020. He stated that during his captivity, he was forced to work as a storeroom keeper in one of the terrorist group’s camps located on the islands of Lake Chad.

The MNJTF calls upon other Boko Haram terrorists hiding in the Lake Chad islands and adjoining communities to cease hostilities and embrace peace. We reiterate our commitment to restoring lasting peace and stability to the Lake Chad Basin, encouraging terrorists to follow the path of those who have already surrendered.

 

SIX MORE BOKO HARAM TERRORISTS SURRENDER AMID MNJTF'S LAKE CHAD BASIN OPERATIONS

ABUBAKAR ABDULLAHI
Lieutenant Colonel
Chief Military Public Information Officer
29 April 2024

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