Day: August 2, 2019

Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari has come under fire for stacking his new cabinet with ageing party loyalists despite hopes he might opt for more technocrats in his final term.

The senate this week approved the list of 43 ministers after the former military ruler finally settled on their names some two months after his inauguration in May.

Buhari, 76, is yet to hand out their portfolios but already his choice of stalwarts from his All Progressives Congress (APC) party has caused dismay.

“One would have expected that the president would shop for more people with more expertise” to assuage worries about the future, said Abiola Akiyode-Afolabi, head of Abuja-based Transition Monitoring Group organisation.

She said she doubted the ability of those chosen “to push the agenda for development for Nigeria”.

Buhari faces a raft of challenges in his second term at the helm of Africa’s most populous nation — from tackling a grinding Islamist insurgency and spreading insecurity to trying to bolster a fragile economic recovery.

During his first four years he earned the nickname “Baba go-slow” after he took six months to name a cabinet and was seen to proceed with decisions at a glacial pace.

Far from cutting lose for his second, and final stint in power, he now appears to have fallen back on familiar faces.

In a country with more than half the population under 30, not one of the ministers is less than 40 years old.

Only seven of those chosen are women.

“16.3 percent representation is abysmal,” Ndi Kato, a 28-year-old female politician told local media.

“We have an abundance of qualified women and we have been advocating throughout the process of selecting ministers. The disrespect of tossing out the requests of women like it doesn’t matter is traumatic.”

‘More patronage’

Analysts said the decision to reward loyalists and keep key players in place means there are unlikely to be major reforms in the years ahead.

Fourteen of the ministers in the new cabinet served Buhari during his first term from 2015 to 2019.

Among those coming back are heavyweights like Babatunde Fashola, a former Lagos governor, transport minister Rotimi Amaechi, who ran oil-rich Rivers state, finance minister Zanaib Ahmed, foreign minister Geoffrey Onyema and education minister Adamu Adamu.

“Rewarding APC powerbrokers will improve party cohesion in the second term but also risks eroding first-term gains in curbing patronage,” said the Eurasia consultancy group in a note.

The president appeared to be prioritising APC unity and making up for 2015 when some leading backers in the party complained they had been overlooked, the group said.

“It also signals to party officials that Buhari will condone more patronage and possible leakages from government coffers than during his first term,” it said.  

The opposition People’s Democratic Party (PDP), which is still challenging Buhari’s election victory, has been quick to criticise the government selection as uninspiring and unable to tackle the challenges ahead.  

“In recycling failed yesterday’s men for today’s assignment, President Buhari and the APC have left no one in doubt that they have no vision to move our nation out of the economic and security predicaments into which they have plunged us in the last four years,” the party said in statement.

Rooting out graft

Anti-graft crusaders also worried that the appointments did not look promising for attempts to seriously tackle Nigeria’s endemic corruption.

Rooting out graft was one of Buhari’s big pledges in 2015 and he has promised to step it up this time round.

But critics have accused him of using the corruption crackdown to target his political opponents.

Debo Adeniran of the Coalition Against Corrupt Leaders (CACOL) pressure group, pointed to new ministers with major questions hanging over them.

Although Adeniran did not give their names, Fashola has been asked by CACOL to step down over fraud allegations while at the helm in Lagos.

Goodwill Akpabio, a former opposition leader, senator and governor of southern oil-rich Akwa Ibom state who defected to Buhari’s ruling party ahead of the 2019 elections has also faced accusations of looting his state treasury.

Another name is former information minister Lai Mohammed, who has been summoned by a court to clear his name over a phony contract awarded in his department.

“I don’t think there was due diligence on the nominees. Otherwise, the president would not have considered many of them,” Adeniran said.

“For Buhari’s integrity and fight against corruption to be taken serious, he has to do away with many of his appointees.”

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As a new Ebola outbreak rages in Congo, two of the first Ebola virus patients to be successfully treated in the United States during the deadliest recorded outbreak five years ago are reuniting with their doctors.

Dr. Kent Brantly and Nancy Writebol were among the four Americans who were treated and recovered at Atlanta’s Emory University Hospital in 2014.

They plan to join Emory medical staff for a media briefing on Friday, the fifth anniversary of Brantly’s arrival. He was the first to come to Emory after being infected while working in Liberia.

A third former patient, Dr. Ian Crozier, had planned to join them but is back in Congo, helping to fight the current outbreak.

The outbreak in Congo is the second deadliest recorded and has already killed more than 1,800 people, nearly a third of them children.

The 2014-16 outbreak in West Africa killed more than 11,300 people.

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A U.S.-trained Kenyan bomb disposal technician stood in a field showing colleagues from more than 20 countries how to collect evidence after the detonation of a roadside explosive.

Security experts who met in the Kenyan capital Nairobi this week say African nations must do more of such intelligence-sharing to counter weapons widely considered the greatest threat to their security forces: improvised explosive devices (IEDs).

Popularized by insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan, homemade bombs were deployed by militants in nine African countries last year and killed about 3,600 people, according to U.S. Defense Department figures.

Some groups now use the weapons in complex attacks targeting civilians, including in January when a suicide bomber and gunmen from Somalia-based al Shabaab stormed an office and hotel complex in Nairobi, killing 21 people.

African officials at this week’s meeting, organized by the U.S. military, acknowledged IEDs pose a major challenge to their forces, in part because the devices are constantly evolving as are the militant groups who use them.

“The enemy adapts faster than we react,” said a Western official at the conference who asked not to be identified.

‘Common enemy’

Training for Africa’s police and military forces has typically focused on ways to avoid and defuse IEDs.

Now governments are looking to the next step: attacking networks that deploy them. This requires new skills, including analyzing remnants of a bomb to glean information about who made it and how it works.

But acquiring that intelligence is only half the battle, U.S. military and FBI experts told the conference. Ensuring it is disseminated throughout national security agencies and shared with counterparts in other countries is the other half.

Groups such as al Shabaab and Nigeria-based Boko Haram launch attacks in multiple countries, they reminded the conference.

“Unless intelligence is being shared at the appropriate levels and in a timely way, we’ll never get ahead of the curve in dismantling these networks,” said Matt Bryden, director of Sahan Research, a Nairobi-based think tank.

The amount of cooperation between security agencies varies in Africa, said Michael Solis, who helps lead counter-IED programs at the U.S. Africa Command.

“It is still a very nascent concept to share information,” he added. “We had the same evolution in the U.S. … We went through it decades ago, and now we have an effective multi-agency security sector.”

Kenya, which is improving its bomb squad with training and support from the United States and other Western nations, is further ahead than most, U.S. experts said.

“It’s essential for the military and the police to work together, so that we can win the battle against the common enemy,” said Patrick Ogina, senior superintendent of the Kenyan police and deputy head of its bomb disposal unit.

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Stephanie Frappart has been appointed as the referee for the European Super Cup between Liverpool and Chelsea, making her the first woman to officiate a major UEFA men’s showpiece event.

UEFA announced Frappart’s appointment on Friday, adding that the Frenchwoman will lead a team of predominantly female officials, with Manuela Nicolosi of France and Michelle O’Neal from the Republic of Ireland serving as assistant referees. The 35-year-old Frappart was also in charge at the Women’s World Cup Final between the United States and the Netherlands.

UEFA President Aleksander Ceferin says: “I have said on many occasions that the potential for women’s football has no limits.”

It is not the first time a female has refereed a men’s UEFA competition match. Switzerland’s Nicole Petignat officiated three UEFA Cup qualifying-round matches between 2004 and 2009.

The Super Cup is the traditional curtain raiser to the season, between the winners of the Champions League and Europa League. This year it will take place at the Besiktas Park in Istanbul on Aug. 14.

Fans Celebrate US Women’s Soccer Team’s World Cup Win at New York Parade

Frappart also became the first female referee to officiate a French league match in April. She has been promoted to the pool of French top-flight referees on a permanent basis for the upcoming season.

Ceferin adds: “I hope the skill and devotion that Stephanie has shown throughout her career to reach this level will provide inspiration to millions of girls and women around Europe and show them there should be no barriers in order to reach one’s dream.”

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U.S. President Donald Trump spoke with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson about trade, next-generation 5G mobile networks and global security, White House spokesman Hogan Gidley said in a statement on Friday.

Trump told Johnson during a call on Thursday that he looked forward to meeting him at the G7 economic summit in France later this month, the White House said.

The United States is pressuring its allies, including Britain, to avoid using equipment from Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei Technologies Co Ltd in its 5G mobile networks. Washington says Huawei is a national security risk.

Britain’s National Security Council, chaired by Johnson’s predecessor Theresa May, had decided in principle to give Huawei limited access to sensitive parts of the 5G network. But the council has yet to make a final decision, and Johnson is more publicly aligned with Trump than May was.

Trump has pushed for a trade deal between the United States and Britain following the latter’s planned exit from the European Union.

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