David Smith Establishes Radio Station To Fight Boko Haram Insurgency
A Canadian broadcaster, David Smith, has established a radio station focused at combating Boko Haram insurgency and its ideology . The channel, Dandal Kura, will air on shortwave from Nigeria to discourage people from violence. Dandal Kura, Kanuri words for meeting point, targets mainly the Kanuri and Hausa-speaking communities of Nigeria where Boko Haram has conducted a brutal insurgency since 2009. Mr. Smith, a veteran crisis and conflict news reporter, distinguished himself by setting up radio stations in crisis areas to preach the gospel of peaceful coexistence in war-torn areas. He cut his journalism teeth during the Apartheid in South Africa in 1985, and despite being of Canadian descent, worked for the ANC-owned radio station, Capital Radio, against the P.W. Botha-led National Party. Mr. Smith describes Apartheid as “terrorism”. He set up the first UN-supported conflict-zone radio in the Balkan region in the 90s during the war in Yugoslavia, and later establishe...