The Voice magazine July 2019 edition

ISSN:2588-8807

ISSN:1571-3466

Motto: Actuated towards Africa’s advancement

Volume 21. NO. 186 July 2019

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First complete African magazine published in The Netherlands since August 1999

New African Oil and Gas Exploration; Industry reforms lead at APPO CAPE VII

FIFA takes over management of African football! www.thevoicenewsmagazine.com

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Contents

The Voice Magazine Volume 21. No 186 July 2019 Edition

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Page 8 - Editorial: Ghana-Nigeria should cooperate to stop the violence & fight crime Pages 10 & 11 - Feedbacks – Pages for your letters Pages 12 & 13 - The Voice Achievers Award releases names of awardees for 2019 Page 17 - Parliament cautions media over stereotype reports about Nigerians Pages 18- 20 - ‘The root of priestly sin’: Kenyan Catholics rebel against celibacy vow Page 21 - Iran says it will respond ‘firmly’ to US aggression Page 23 - Missions Accomplished! Congratulations NIDO Germany!

Page 26 - High Court blocked an attempt to overturn a law banning gay sex in Kenya Page 27 - Rwanda bans all skin bleaching products Pages 28 &29 - How too much aid ended up hurting one of the world’s poorest countries Pages 30 & 31- New African Oil and Gas Exploration; Industry Reforms Lead at APPO CAPE VII Pages 32- 34 - The Ethiopian migrants braving Yemen’s war to find a better life in Saudi Arabia Page 35 - Failed coup sees Ethiopia Army Chief shot dead by bodyguard Page 46 – Three men found guilty of 2015 attack on Kenya University Page 47 - Sudan must end repression and let monitors in, says U.N. rights boss Pages 48 & 49 - Trump imposes new U.S. sanctions on Iran, including supreme leader Pages 52 & 53 - Poor state of medical practice in Nigeria Pages 54 & 55 - President Museveni has twisted Uganda’s constitution to cling to power Page 56 -Ethiopia PM picks Adem Mohammed as new Army Chief Page 57 – Inside Sierra Leone’s plans to connect capital to airport: 7km, $2bn Page 58 - Morsi ‘killed’ by Egyptian government, son says Page 59- Call for probe into ex-Egypt leader’s death Pages 60 & 61 - Zimbabwe Leader Wants New Currency Page 62 - US places entry visa ban on ICC prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda Pages 64- 69 - Sports stories around the continent of Africa

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Living positive

Eliane

Facts about HIV and social support • Having support from family and friends can be very helpful when dealing with your diagnoses.

• Peer-support from other people living with HIV can give you the motivation to empower yourself.

• Disclosure should be your own choice, but some countries have laws on disclosing your HIV status to others.

• Stigma can be a barrier to not talk about your status, but try and find someone who you can trust.

• Social support can be your friend, partner, close family but also your neighbour, or other person living with HIV.

Social support makes a difference Nowadays people living with HIV can have a good and healthy life. Having support from friends and family is key to create a sustainable healthy life.

Living with HIV and not being open about it was the hardest part. It took me ten years to be able to free myself. Every time my in-laws were visiting, I used to hide my medication. When friends came to our house, I moved my medication from the bathroom to my bedroom. And every time I needed to go to the hospital for my check up, I asked my neighbour to pick up my kids from school, and I told her that I needed to go for a control of my diabetes. She told me then that her husband has his controls at his GP and that I may not need to go to the hospital for that. So then I made up another story and that made it all very complicated! What did I tell to whom?

There was a point that I did not want to live with lies anymore.

I told my neighbour that I am HIV positive and that all those times I was just going for HIV check up in the hospital. I brought up the subject in a positive way. I told her how desperately I wanted to have children without HIV and therefor went to the hospital. This brought a smile upon her face, she could relate to that. She was, and still is, very supportive to me and my family.

I decided that my time to open up had come. And it was a relief.

My in-laws and friends were very supportive. No one rejected me because of HIV. When I was in Burundi in 2014, I told my own brother, but he did not believe me, until I showed him my HIV medication and the travel document from my doctor.

Some time after my disclosure I took part in the national HIV antistigma campaign ‘HIV uit de kast’, which made me become

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the face of HIV in my hometown Amersfoort and even in The Netherlands. Parents at school came to compliment me personally. People at the sports club who saw the poster in our local pharmacy, asked me questions about HIV. They really wanted to get up to date information, because many were still stuck with the images from the eighties, with people dying from AIDS. My husband and my friends around me make me feel loved and supported and I know they are here for me when I need them.

Now I am helping people every day because I use social media to share my stories, so people can connect and share their concerns or ask me advise. I came out and met many sisters and my HIV family has grown, I am connected to people living with HIV throughout the world. I used to feel alone with this, but not anymore. I have become a stigma fighter to speak for the ones who remain in silence. Thanks to the support of the people around me I have become the voice and the face of HIV in my community.

Hiv Vereniging The Dutch Association of People Living with HIV (Hiv Vereniging) represents the interests of all people with HIV in the Netherlands, irrespective of background.

We provide information about living with HIV and organise all kinds of meet-ups.

Servicepunt Our team of expert volunteers can be contacted for any question about living with HIV, by telephone on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays from 14:00 – 22:00 hrs, or by email: servicepunt@hivvereniging.nl.

See www.hivvereniging.nl

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Editorial

Ghana-Nigeria should cooperate to stop violence & fight crime It is most unfortunate that two friendly neighboring countries who have so much in common should not turn against each other over incidents of crime. Is it is true that crime is on the increase in Ghana? Yes but it is not only a Ghanaian problem, it is a global challenge as crime continue to increase.

The rich getting richer while the poor are getting poorer. No excuse of any type of crime and both countries of Nigeria and Ghana should come together to fight crime together, we are faced with this reality and that a solution need to be found for increased organized crimes like kidnapping for ransom, cyber-crime and armed violence need international cooperation.

The second stage is Ghana’s deportation of Nigerians; it has been a saga for years dating back to 1969 and 1973 respectively after maltreatment of citizens living in the other’s country. Relationship has since proved and the recent incidents is bringing an ugly reminder of the past and it must come to an end.

Nigeria and Ghana are among the most culturally and economically integrated countries in West Africa. Diplomatic ties between both countries are strong, but it recently went sour with the news of inhumane treatment of Nigerians living in Ghana. A generalization that Nigerians are into crime, an allegation refuted by the Nigerian High Commissioner to the country.

The Ghanaian Immigration Service (GIS) cited criminal offenses like cybercrime and prostitution and visa term violations as reasons for these deportations. But a closer look at the conditions surrounding this action makes it questionable.

These deportations may be negative for the integration of the West Africa region, especially if Nigeria retaliates in kind. Besides, Ghana is among the most respected African countries in terms of respect and preservation of human dignity. This action threatens that status.

What message are we sending to the European countries that are in the process initiating more stringent immigration policies on

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African immigrants? We cannot be hypocritical.

Ghana can do better. Ghanaians and Nigerians are brothers and sisters.

Deportation without due process is dangerous to the preservation of this relationship and threat to their businesses in Ghana should be addressed immediately and prevented from repeating itself.

Both countries share far too many things in common to treat each other’s’ citizens this way.

Ghana and Nigeria are guilty of Pastor Amb. Elvis Iruh Editor-in-Chief condoning this shameful policy in the past.

Of course, Ghana is undoing its own economy crisis therefore Nigerian Immigrants are been accused of taking over jobs of the local people and even willing to do it cheaper but again Nigerians living in Ghana are making significant contributions to the host country’s economy.

They pay millions of dollars for degrees in Ghanaian institutions and invest in well-performing businesses.

They are among the many categories of immigrants that aids the Ghanaian economy by significantly powering its Gross Domestic Product.

If Africans do not treat each other with respect and dignity, how can the continent and its people expect the rest of the world to respect Africans?

If Ghana does not wish to lose a good source of economic strength, it should consider treating immigrants with dignity, even while prosecuting them for criminal offenses.

These sort of clampdowns sends bad signals to potential lawful immigrant or investor. Besides, ECOWAS member states must adhere to the understanding that guarantees the fair treatment and safety of West Africans.

The Voice magazine The Voice magazine is editorially independent although we enjoys the support of our readers, subscribers, advertisers, non-­governmental organizations and in­ dividuals of like minds; however the magazine publishers are in no way af­filiated to any of these bodies or to any other ­ publishing institution or political interest or group.

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Volume 21

NO 186

July 2019 www.thevoicenewsmagazine.com

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feedback

Reaction to Raji’s letter

Sorry Raji, you seem to be getting this muddled up; you don’t influence selection of your referees if they don’t meet CAF tournament criteria or standards, which is practically most obvious in our case. That would amount to inducing a technical decision process; CAF no be Naija ooooo.

Rather you can appropriately query the NFF for the standard of our local league vis-a-vis poor training and performance of our referees which perhaps is the basis for CAF selection.

Also, you should not be narrowing down or isolating the ills in our football to the NFF president alone even if the executive buck stops on his desk; the entire hierarchy of the glass house and sports ministry are equally complicit.

The NFF president and by extension CAF’s shunning of our referees are just symptoms of a deep rooted cancer. Let’s be bold enough to similarly call out or name all names if we have to finger members of the cabal feeding fat on the

growth of our football and sports at large.

Am not a fan of Pinick, but the fact is that he doesn’t operate in isolation; be bold to also name the other reoccurring decimals and culprits, otherwise your persistent concentration an individual would appeal as being personal.

By Don Kefe Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Proud of our women footballers from Africa

Dear Editor, We need to keep on working very hard with the teams for the future. Overall I can say we come out with four good performances but we have to learn from the small mistakes we made with the Super Falcons, and for Cameroon team, they have to learn how to control their emotions even in the face of wrong decisions, they showed disrespect to their coach and captain pleading with them to continue with the match. The VAR experiment is not a success in my own opinion, they should not remove the room for human errors instead of wanting to turn football to a computer game.

Ann Odong Dear Editor,

We want free elections in Malawi

We cannot continue to be a Tipp Ex nation. Now it’s not just about who can become President, but setting our nation free & doing the right thing. Why can’t we run clean & fair elections in this country?

By Dr. Lazarus Chakwera @LAZARUSCHAKWERA

FEEDBACK Letter to the Editor Inexperience affected African females at the women’s world cup.

Dear Editor, Despite some of the negative comments in the press over the performance of the three females teams that represented Africa at the Women’s world cup in France. This is my observation, the team despite parading some professional players because they play abroad but they could not perform as a team, room for improvement, they need to have more training together and play together, some times their passes were not accurate, they could not find themselves easily on the pitch. Lastly in the case of Nigeria, the use of a foreign coach is a disaster, he seem not to understand

the game, how to make changes, pep talks during the games like other coaches, he stood there with his hands across his chest as if he does not know what to do or say. The technical side of the game really need to be improved but the girls could be proud of themselves, particularly Cameroon who put up a good fight in their match against English and the VAR decision worked against them.

Next time ladies, Africa must shine at the women’s world cup Alice Ogebe Paris, France

Atiku condemns coup in Ethiopia Presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the last general elections in Nigeria, Atiku Abubakar, has condemned the coup attempt in Ethiopia.

According to him, democracy has come to stay in Africa and Africans must accept that. In his twist, he says the coup attempt against the democratically elected government of Ethiopia Prime Minister stands condemned. Democracy has come to stay in Africa and we must accept this. As a democrat, my right hand of fellowship is offered to the people of Ethiopia.

Long live democracy in Africa says Atiku Abubakar.

No Nigerian referee at AFCON 2019

Dear Editor, No Nigerian referee officiating in the African Cup of Nations yet we have our officials occupying top positions in CAF, still we cannot influence certain decision as important as this one. What benefits have those slots brought

to Nigeria football? I am just thinking loud please.

By Raji Mohammed Lagos, Nigeria

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The Voice Achievers Award releases names of awardees for 2019 The final list of awardees for The Voice Achievers Award taking place in Nairobi, Kenya have been released after vetting and screening of nominations for 2019. These selected awardees were chosen for the list of well qualified individuals, companies and organizations contributing to the advancement of Africa. Candidates are drawn from various countries in Africa and friends of Africa from around the world.

On the final list are men, women and particularly attention was given to young promising personalities who cherish the future of Africa very much.

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The 2019 awardees will be joined by colleagues, families, friends and well wishes to celebrate their recognition and acknowledgement over a period of two days with a business summit to promote Kenya to the world of vast opportunities.

The Voice Achievers Award is one of the biggest African award dedicated to appreciating efforts and contributions every year to the advancement of the African continent through their activities.

The award is on its 10th anniversary this year and for the first time on the African continent hosted in Nairobi, Kenya. The awardees includes the following personalities: Her Excellency, Mrs. Isaura Nyusi, First Lady of the Republic of Mozambique, Dr. Kizza Besigye, Lady Justice Joyce Aluoch (rtd), Prof. PLO Lumumba, Ambassador Dr. Josephine Ojiambo, Arch Bishop Arthur Kitonga, Rev Mrs. Josephine Kitonga, Hon AbabuTerrah Namwamba, H.E. Gov. Kivutha Kibwana, RwandAir, Bishop Dawn Willis, Bishop William Tuimising, James Mureu, Dr. Swarup Ranjan Mishra, Rev. Ademola Afolabi, Emerging Leaders Foundation (ELF), Hon Esther Passaris, Connie Aluoch, Obi Emelonye, Lydia Tett Olet, Kevin Mulei, Dr. Kennedy Waningu, Angel Wanjiru Ngugi, Ken Wakia, Kadogo Naus-Nyawade, Ahadi Trust Kenya, Hon. Patriciah Mutheu Musyimi, Blue Cross Kisumu, Raphael Obonyo, Marc Broere, Rachel AkemHarumi, Hajia Zainab Kessington Momoh, Ambassador Comrade Jude Ebitimi Ukori (JP), Namusoke Asia Mbajja, Eva Nakato, Robinah Babirye, Sarah Munyi and Chief Dr. (Mrs.) Vero Tangbowei Emmanuel (JP) Potential and interested would be participants can find more information on our website at www. thevoiceachieveraward.com. You can still book your ticket as we have few spaces left.

Congratulations to all awardees for 2019.

Mauritania ruling party candidate wins presidential poll

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auritania’s ruling party candidate has been declared winner of the June 22 election winning 52% of votes cast and bagging a first round victory.

In the evening of Sunday June 23, the Independent National Electoral Commission (CENI) confirmed the victory of Mohamed Ould Ghazouani. He had been leading the results since polls closed.

Ghazouani had declared himself winner of the election hours after the close of polls forcing the opposition to accuse him and outgoing Ould Abdel Aziz of a “near coup.”

The opposition have since called for protests against the declaration of the elections body.

His nearest rival, Biram Dah Abeid, a prominent black Mauritanian slavery campaigner, got about 18%. Mohamed Ould Boubacar, who is backed by Mauritania’s biggest Islamist party, also got 18%, with support for the other two candidates in single figures.

About 850,000 votes out of 1.5 million have been counted.

The election was the first in the sparsely populated Saharan nation’s history since independence from France in 1960 to choose a successor to a democratically elected president.

Outgoing President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz surprised many of his compatriots and international observers by stepping aside after serving the maximum two five-year elected terms in Mauritania, a country of fewer than five million people comprising a large chunk of the western Sahara Desert.

His decision bucked a trend in which African leaders, including in Rwanda and Congo Republic, have changed or abolished term limits to cling to power.

Ghazouani, insider, former general and defence minister, has been heavily tipped to win from the beginning.

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SLAVERY CAMPAIGNER Ghazouani has campaigned on continuing economic and security progress made under Abdel Aziz, who since taking the helm in a 2008 coup, positioned Mauritania as an ally of the West against Islamist militants.

Under the leadership of the 62-year-old president, the

economy has grown and will receive an extra boost when a large offshore gas field starts producing early next decade.

But President Aziz has been criticised for not facing up to the country’s most searing injustice: the persistence of slavery. Tens of thousands of black Mauritanians still live as domestic slaves, rights groups say, usually to lighter-skinned masters of Arab or Berber descent.

That is despite the practice being abolished in 1981 and criminalised in 2007, the year before Aziz took power.

Aziz has made pronouncements denying slavery is widespread.

Abeid, himself a descendent of slaves, has campaigned partly on this platform. He and other opposition leaders also sought to tap into youth anger at high unemployment.

Unlike some other regional Western allies, Mauritania has largely been spared reprisals by jihadist militants linked to al Qaeda and Islamic State, who have devastated neighbouring Mali and Burkina Faso. This, together with the fact that the region’s jihadists tend to make announcements through Mauritanian media, have prompted critics to conclude a tacit peace pact between them — a charge the government denies.

Documents seized from Osama bin Laden’s Pakistan hideout in 2011 indicated al Qaeda’s leaders had discussed among themselves the previous year a possible peace deal with Mauritania’s government that would involve prisoner releases and payments.

The government denied any such deal existed and has credited its success preventing Islamist attacks to intelligence work and rehabilitation of imprisoned jihadists.

Ethiopian Prime Minister loses father

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tate media in Ethiopia have reported the death of Ahmed Ali, father of the country’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed Ali on Monday.

The Fana Broadcasting Corporate, FBC, report quoted a local government office as confirming the death. Ahmed Ali is already buried in line with Islamic norms.

PM Abiy is a Christian despite growing up in an Islamic setting. His father was Muslim whiles his mother was a Christian, the Reporter portal said in a March 2018 article chronicling his rise to power.

The report describes his father, Ahmed Ali, also known as Aba Dabes, Aba Fita; as being a respected elder in his small town where he lived with his family – Beshasha in Jimma Zone in Oromia Regional State.

“I remember when he was a child; he was very good at studying the Quran,’‘ Ahmed Ali told The Reporter. “He has always been interested to learn, study, and spend most of his time with elders,” he told the portal.

He is credited with significant contribution to the community by giving his own plot of land so that services giving centers such as clinics and telecom offices would be built.

Abiy is the 13th child for his father, who had four wives. His is a well-known and extended family in the area.

Abiy’s mother, Tezeta Wolde, a converted Christian from Burayu, Finfine Special Zone, Oromia Regional State, was the fourth wife for Ahmed. Together they have six children with Abiy being the youngest.

Malawi opposition chief takes MP seat despite disputing presidential vote

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ocal media in Malawi reported on Monday that opposition chief, Lazarus Chakwera, has been sworn in as a member of parliament in the capital Lilongwe following the May 21 elections.

The 64-year-old Chakwera who leads the Malawi Congress Party, MCP, was sworn in along with over 60 others at the Parliament Building. The swearing in for other lawmakers is set to continue today.

The Nation newspaper said Chakwera “took his oath of allegiance and office … amid cheers from scores of party supporters who accompanied him.” He is official the leader of opposition in Malawi.

The MCP is currently challenging the official outcome of the presidential vote which gave incumbent Peter Mutharika a second and final term in office whiles Chakwera came second.

The Malawian electoral system allows persons contesting

for presidency and vice presidency to simultaneously contest for parliamentary seats. The incumbent vice president for instance lost his parliamentary bid.

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‘Mane deserves to win Ballon d’Or’ The Liverpool winger’s international manager thinks that winning the AFCON would help him claim the Golden Ball for a stellar 2019. Senegal head coach Aliou Cisse believes that Sadio Mane’s performances in 2018-19 warrant him being awarded the Ballon d’Or.

The Liverpool winger played a pivotal role in the Reds claiming Champions League glory while he also ended the season as the joint-highest goal scorer in the Premier League with 22 goals.

And Cisse thinks that he is well placed to be the next Ballon d’Or recipient after Luka Modric finally broke the 10-year dominance of Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi by claiming the award in 2018. It is an award he deserves for consistency in the last three seasons.

He is expected to round up his impressive season by helping his country, Senegal to win the AFCON cup in July 2019.

Guinea Bissau presidential election to be held on November 24 Guinea Bissau will hold presidential elections on November 24 this year, according to a decree announced by President Jose Mario Vaz recently.

In the upcoming elections, 49 political parties are legally registered in the country, according to the decree.

The November 24 election date is later than proposals put forward by the National Electoral Commission, which had recommended a November 3 first round, with a possible run-off vote on December 8.Guinea Bissau is in a very risky situation.

The West African country has been in political deadlock since

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August 2015 when Vaz sacked PAIGC party colleague Domingos Simoes Pereira from his post of Prime Minister after falling out with him.

Pereira has refused to go quietly and repeatedly led protests demanding his reinstatement to the post.

Vaz, also from PAIGC, the African Party for the Independence of Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde, will seek re-election after coming to power in 2014.

A March 10 parliamentary vote saw the PAIGC and its allies control 54 of parliament’s 102 seats but lawmakers proposed Pereira, the party leader, as prime minister, a move rejected

by Vaz. Last month, Pereira led over a thousand party supporters on a march in the capital Bissau.

Parliament cautions media over stereotype reports about Nigerians

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he Ghanaian Parliament has condemned media reports which singled out Nigerians as masterminds of Kidnapping in Ghana. In a press briefing, the Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of Parliament said the development is unfortunate as it has the potential to poison the coveted relationship that exists between Ghana and Nigeria.

“We want to appeal to the generality of this country, particularly the youth and the media, that we should all be measured in terms of our pronouncement,” chairman of the committee, Frank Annor Dompreh said.

He revealed that word has been “sent to the Nigerian High Commissioner to Ghana to meet me on the development.”

The invitation of the Nigeria High Commissioner, Olufemi Michael Abikoye, comes on the back of a recent public statement issued by his office, decrying media reports which describe “Nigerians as a bunch of criminals.”

According to the statement signed by the High Commissioner, the “reportage has caused untold pain, agony as well as apprehensions for Nigerians.”

He argued that contrary to media reports, Nigerians in Ghana are “law-abiding” people who comprise “astute businessmen, bankers, insurance brokers, teaming students as well as investors.”

The statement further warned of dire consequences if the development is not halted.

“This has become highly imperative in view of its large implications on Nigerians living in Ghana and Ghanaians living

Armed robbers steal 500 loaves of bread in Zimbabwe

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gang of armed robbers stole 500 loaves of bread during a delivery at a bakery in Zimbabwe earlier this week.

According to The Chronicle news portal, a crew from Lobel’s Bakery was making deliveries at Speciman Shopping Centre in Harare’s Glen Norah suburb on Tuesday.

An unmarked vehicle reportedly suddenly pulled up in front of their van. Armed with pistols, the gang accosted the crew, which, in turn, tried to put up a fight but was overpowered.

According to Buluwayo 24 News, Lobel’s Bakery spokesperson Heritage Mhende would not be drawn to comment, while Zimbabwe Republic Police national spokesperson Assistant Commissioner Paul Nyathi said investigations were in progress.

Bread is currently very scarce in that country and is reportedly fetching high prices on the informal market, IOL reported.

in Nigeria as well,” Abikoye wrote.

Speaking on the sidelines of Parliament’s press briefing, Ranking Member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, called for calm.

“We are saying that these tensions are not necessary at this time.

He should appear before us and let’s see how we can get to the bottom of matters to calm everybody down,” Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwah said.

Tafadzwa Musarara, the head of the Miller’s Association, reportedly said this week that $7m had been released by the central bank to import wheat stored in Beira.

He reportedly said this would be enough to last the country for just over two weeks.

‘The root of priestly sin’: Kenyan Catholics rebel against celibacy vow

‘No

one in the Vatican understands the African soul... that for the African man, priest or not, the worst sin is to leave this world without siring a child’ Priests in Kenya are doing away with the Catholic vow of celibacy and the “culture of secrecy” it creates.

He was a priest just out of seminary. She was a nurse.

They were both from the slopes of Mount Kenya, but their paths improbably crossed in Rome.

He became unshakable in his desire to marry her, even though he had taken the Catholic church’s mandatory vow of celibacy for priests.

When he returned to preach in Kenya, Peter Njogu was shocked when fellow priests told him that many of them had broken that vow, marrying and having children.

In hushed tones, they spoke of their “secret families”, kept hidden in distant homes.

The thought of doing so pained him.

As the Catholic church goes through a global crisis brought on in part by the revelation of widespread sexual misconduct by its clergy, self-proclaimed Bishop Njogu believes he has figured out how to save Christianity’s largest church

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from its own sins – let priests marry and raise families.

Njogu’s breakaway faction, the Renewed Universal Catholic Church, is Catholic in every way except in having optional celibacy for its priests.

Its growth in Kenya is rooted in opposition to the practice of keeping secret families but reflects a growing worry among some Catholics that the celibacy requirement – to many an non-negotiable tenet of the priesthood – creates a harmful culture of sexual secrecy.

The Vatican has shown no interest in re-examining the issue for all priests, and Pope Francis has called

celibacy a “gift to the church”.

But the pontiff has also signalled that he is open to ordaining married men in remote parts of the world with a severe shortage of priests.

More radical voices in the church have called for the church to rescind the requirement altogether.

“Most of our members are ex-Catholics,” says Njogu.

“They are tired of the hypocrisy. Some of our people call us the ‘church of the future’.”

Nearly 20 priests and more than 2,000 parishioners have joined Njogu since 2011, he claims, mostly in the towns and villages that dot the fertile slopes of Mount Kenya, the 5,200m high extinct volcano right in the centre of this country.

“Now that I’ve come out, these other priests tell me: ‘The problem with you is you went public,’” he said on a recent Sunday after celebrating mass.

“And I say: ‘I am not the problem, I am the solution. Join me’.”

To his flock, he said: “This is where you find your freedom from all that hypocrisy.”

The church in the hilltop village of Gachatha where Njogu preaches his reformation is a far cry from a cathedral.

The pews, pulpit and church itself are all made of wooden planks nailed together. The floor is sawdust on top of dirt. On a clear day, the ice-capped peak of Mount Kenya glimmers through a glassless window.

While Catholicism has declined in numbers in some former bastions in the west, such as Ireland, it is growing more rapidly in Africa than anywhere else.

Africans make up nearly a fifth of the world’s Catholics.

Njogu’s sermons hark back to Catholicism’s pre-celibacy era while appealing to the faith’s future in Africa, where he believes it will have to reconcile with local customs as it grows.

“No one in the Vatican understands the African soul.

They do not understand that for the African man, priest or not, the worst sin is to leave this world without siring a child,” says Njogu.

“Mandatory celibacy is thus the root of priestly sin, but they pretend all is well while their house is burning to the ground.”

The Catholic church ex-communicated Njogu after he

defected for alleged “unbecoming behaviour”, including purchasing land and speaking openly about his intention to marry Berith Kariri, who remains his wife.

“These priests are not sincere, they are pursuing personal interests,” says Father Daniel Kimutai Rono, general secretary for the Kenya Conference of Catholic Bishops.

“There is nothing about ‘African-ness’ or ‘Europeanness’.”

The vow of celibacy, he says, “is about the vocation, about

the call to serve God and the sacrifice which entails in serving God”.

Dozens of Njogu’s followers have said in interviews that they left the mainstream church because they doubted their former priests’ devotion to the vocation.

“As a parent, I had to fear that a priest would impregnate my daughter if I took them to my old churches,” says Margaret Kimondo, who was one of Njogu’s first converts.

“In front of the altar they may look one way, but at night, you don’t even want to hear those stories.”

Philip Muiga, 78, had been a Catholic priest for decades before joining the Renewed Universal church last year.

“One day I met a priest in the street who I have known for a long time, and he was drunk,” he says. “When I went home and looked at myself in the mirror, I just saw darkness. I could not justify continuing to call these men my colleagues.”

Continued on Page 20

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Continued from Page 19 Rono, who represents the Kenyan Catholic Church, denied any sort of systemic abuse or existence of “secret families” but acknowledged a global church-wide “trend of infidelity to the priestly vocation” and said priests should avoid any kind of “cover-up”.

The Vatican deferred to its Kenyan representatives for comment.

Celibacy has been expected of Catholic priests since its origins in the first century after Jesus Christ’s death, but the 12thcentury imposition of a celibacy vow was necessitated primarily by a priesthood that had begun using the church as a family business, says Chris Bellitto, a professor and church historian at Kean University in New Jersey.

“Priests were handing their parishes along to their illegitimate sons as if they were training them as cobblers, who inherited your shop and tools when you died.

“This complicated the integrity of the sacraments – what if the son didn’t have a vocation or disposition as a spiritual leader?

– and the independence of the church, since the bishop was

supposed to be naming parish priests,” says Bellitto.

But the vow always seemed at odds with certain parts of the Bible’s teachings, leading many within the church to question its purpose.

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Njogu’s faction is certainly not the first to try charting a new course without the celibacy vow, says Kim Haines-Eitzen, a historian of early Christianity at Cornell University.

“In Catholicism, there’s always been a pronounced preference for asceticism to prove devotion. But how do you square that with, say, ‘be fruitful and multiply’, from Genesis? Are priests expected to be separate from all other

humans?” she says.

That enforced detachment from the lives of their flock is what drives priests in Kenya to adopt “secret families”, says Father Matthew Theuri, 73, who was a catechist for nearly four decades before joining Njogu’s church as a priest.

But it also presents a quandary in being a good priest, he said.

“Our churchgoers come to us with questions about wayward children, trouble paying school fees, marital issues – how can we help them if we know nothing of that life?” he says, while sitting at home with his wife, Jane, and two of his grandchildren.

Speaking after Njogu’s mass on a recent Sunday in Gachatha, Joseph Macharia, a coffee farmer, says he thanks God every day for the new church.

“This is a more open way of being,” he says. “The others, the ones who keep secret families, they come to the pulpit to lie. Maybe they think we are stupid.”

Iran says it will respond ‘firmly’ to US aggression amid retaliatory cyber-attack, aborted military strike Iran cautioned that it will “firmly” respond to any aggression or threat by the U.S., a warning that comes after President Trump aborted a military attack while a U.S. cyber team carried out a retaliatory digital strike against the regime.

Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi reiterated the regime’s position that it will confront any threats by the U.S. over the shooting down of an unmanned U.S. Navy drone by the Islamic Republic.

“Regardless of any decision they (U.S. officials) make... we will not allow any of Iran’s borders to be violated. Iran will firmly confront any aggression or threat by America,” he said, according to the semi-official Tasnim news agency.

The comment comes in the wake of heightened tensions in the region that put Washington and Tehran on the brink of a war.

Trump said Friday that he halted the strike just 10 minutes prior because of the projected casualty loss, saying that it wasn’t a “proportionate” response to Iran previously shooting down an American military drone.

“10 minutes before the strike I stopped it, not … proportionate to shooting down an unmanned drone. I am in no hurry, our Military is rebuilt, new, and ready to go, by far the best in the world,” he wrote in a tweet, but added that the U.S. was “cocked & loaded to retaliate.”

Last month, Trump further explained his decision and rejected claims that he is a “dove” on foreign policy “Everybody was saying I’m a warmonger and now they say I’m a dove,” he told reporters outside the White House.

“And I think I’m neither, if you want to know the truth. I’m a man with common sense, and that’s what we need in this country is common sense.”

He also reached out with something of an olive branch: “If Iran wants to become a wealthy nation again, a prosperous nation again -- we’ll call it “Make Iran Great Again” -that’s OK with me.”

“But they’re never going to do it if they think in five or six years they’re going to have a nuclear weapon,” he warned.

Iran claimed the U.S. drone was over Iranian airspace when it was shot down but American officials stated unequivocally the incident occurred in international airspace.

State Department officials also decried “pure Iranian

propaganda” reports – based solely on the Iranians’ comments that claim Trump warned Tehran in a message through Oman that a U.S. attack on Iran was imminent, “Reports that a message was passed last night to the Iranians via an Omani back channel are completely false.

These reports are pure Iranian propaganda. #Iran needs to meet our diplomacy with diplomacy,” State Department spokesperson Morgan Ortagus wrote in a tweet.

But while the military air strike was called off, U.S. Cyber Command launched a digital strike against an Iranian spy group, Yahoo News reported.

The spy group is close to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, a terrorist-designated entity, and reportedly supported the limpet mine attacks on two oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz.

Additional details about the digital response weren’t available, though private American cyber groups have said that Iranian state-sponsored hackers are targeting U.S. organizations, adding Iran’s response against the U.S. will likely be executed in cyberspace.

The U.S.-Iran confrontation has been boiling since Trump backed out of the Obama-era nuclear deal in May 2018.

But the tensions reached a fever pitch in recent weeks after

two oil tankers were attacked, supposedly by the Iranian forces as the regime flexes its muscles over tough sanctions that caused its currency to drop by about 60 percent in 12 months while food and drug prices are up 40 and 60 percent, respectively.

Iran is currently also seeking to renegotiate the nuclear deal with European countries, arguing that the deal must be improved amid U.S. sanctions or the regime will begin enriching uranium up to 20 percent – just a step below weapons-grade level.

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Missions Accomplished! Congratulations NIDO Germany!

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IDO Germany, an arm of Nigerians in Diaspora Organisation Europe (NIDOE), my constituency held its annual AGM on Saturday, 22 June in the city of Dortmund and also elected its new Executive Committee. Congratulations on behalf of the Central Executive Council (CEC) and the Board of Trustees (BOT) of NIDO Europe to Dr RosaLyn Dressmann the newly elected President of NIDO Germany (NIDOG), the members of the Executive and the entire members of NIDO Germany. Firstly, I was able to table a motion to immortalize our late President and my very good friend late Kenneth Alaekwe through the annual (NIDOG- Kenneth Alaekwe Leadership Award) with an overwhelming majority. Secondly, we (constitution committee: Hon. Kenneth Gbandi Dr Rosalyn Dressman, Amb. Gin Godson and Chief Charles Onyeike) continue with our push for reforms with a successful review of NIDOG constitution to meet the needs of modern Diaspora and thirdly we (Election Committee: Engr.

Udeajah, Amb. G. Nwozu and Engr. Ademuyiwa) led election committee led the house to elect a power exco

than will no doubt be the envy of any NIDO Chapter.

Now I can sit back and see the new “German power machine� take NIDOG to all new high.

By Kenneth Gbandi (Chairman, NIDO Europe)

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Victory Outreach is a Pentecostal Church, Bible based believing people in the trinity of Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.

What would you like to know? Our vision?

Which activities we organize? Or would you like to hear testimonies about how we follow God? One thing is certain, we would like to get to know you and therefore you are more than welcome to visit one of our services. You can visit us every day of the week.

You may have been a believer for many years already. Or you might still be searching for the meaning of life and asking yourself whether or not there is God. Within Victory Outreach Almere we would like to help you find the answer. We will gladly teach you the exact meaning of “a living faith�. With us you will truly see and experience the supernatural power of the living God. You can always count on love and comfort when you need it. You will discover that we have a wonderful diversity of people

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with lots of different backgrounds, characters and personalities. But there is one thing we have in common. We all follow the same God, Jesus Christ.

In that diversity and love for God we are a family where you are more than welcome.

We personally hope to meet you during one of our services.

God bless you as you come in Jesus Christ name.

Amen

Pastor Roel & Ida van Rooij Senior Pastor Victory Outreach Almere.

Barbeelstraat 12, 1317 PZ Almere The Netherlands Telephone: 036-8417007; Telephone: 036-7505571 info@voalmere.nl www.voalmere.nl

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High Court blocked an attempt to overturn a law banning gay sex in Kenya Judges claimed repealing British colonial-era laws would open the door to same sex marriage in a country and continent that continues to discriminate against LGBT+ citizens.

Many in Kenya’s gay community had hoped the court would make history by scrapping the laws and inspiring other countries in Africa to do the same. Paul Muite, the main petitioner in the case, said he would appeal the decision.

Activists had argued the laws criminalising consensual same-sex relations between adults were in breach of the constitution because they deny basic rights. The state should not regulate intimacy between gay couples, they said.

One law punishes “carnal knowledge against the order of nature” and prescribes up to 14 years in prison for people convicted of homosexual acts. Another says “indecent practices between males” can bring up to five years in prison.

The laws create an environment of fear and harassment even if they are not always enforced, activists said. “The issue is violence, discrimination and oppression,” one activist, Tirop Salat, said.

But the judges, in a unanimous ruling, said those behind the appeal had failed to prove how the laws violated their right to health, dignity and privacy and said the laws do not single out gay people.

“Acknowledging cohabitation among people of the same sex, where they would ostensibly be able to have same-sex

President Uhuru Kenyatta maintains his stand on Gay practice in Kenya - NO, no, NO.

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intercourse, would indirectly open the door for (marriage) of people of the same sex,” said the judgment read in part by Justice Roselyn Aburili.

Activists were quick to condemn the ruling. “These old colonial laws lead to the LGBT community suffering violence, blackmail, harassment and torture. They devastate people’s lives and have no place in a democratic Kenyan www.thevoicenewsmagazine.com society,” the Nairobi-based National Gay & Lesbian Human

Rights Commission said after the decision was announced.

At least half of Kenya’s LGBT+ persons have suffered physical and verbal assault, the commission said. Most assaults are not reported because people don’t have confidence that police will protect them.

In a separate statement, the British LGBT+ organisation Stonewall called the decision “crushing news” and said some 70 countries around the world still criminalise samesex relationships.

Thirty-three of those are in Africa, according to Human Rights Watch, which called Friday’s ruling “a step backward in the progress Kenya has made toward equality in recent years”.

Some in Kenya, however, praised the decision as a strike against what they called “sexual perversion.” Gerald Walterfang with the Kenya Christian Professionals Forum said they were delighted with the ruling against what they termed a “destructive sexual lifestyle”.

Kenyan Bishop Alfred Rotich added: “LGBT is an orientation. You cannot legalise something as an orientation.

If somebody has an orientation to steal money, we cannot legalise it.”

Kenya’s courts had recently ruled in favour of LGBT+ rights.

Last year, an appeals court ruled unlawful the use of forced anal exams to test whether two men had gay sex. In 2015, High Court judges ordered a government agency to register a rights group representing gay people, saying Kenya’s constitution recognises and protects the rights of minorities.

Resistance to gay rights exists at the top of Kenya’s politics, however. President Uhuru Kenyatta said gay rights were “not of any major importance” and claimed the laws criminalising same-sex relations are supported by “99 per cent” of the Kenyan people.

Rwanda bans all skin bleaching products Rwanda has started enforcing its nationwide ban on skin bleaching products, according to reports, this has been on the pile line for some time now, the health authorities frown at the use of bleaching creams and products by the young population of the country.

Whitening creams and soaps are being removed from shelves across the African nation, just two months after the government announced that it was banning them from being sold.

It is believed that President Paul Kagame instigated the crackdown when he condemned the use of the products over a year ago, urging Rwanda’s ministry of health to take action.

“Quite unhealthy among other things. Includes use of prohibited chemicals,” the president told a Twitter user who voiced their concerns over the use of such creams.

“MoH and RNP need to reign this in very quickly.”

According to reports, Rwanda’s ban follows similar crackdowns in South Africa, Kenya and Ghana, where the importing of such products is prohibited.

Many skin-bleaching products contain chemicals like hydroquinone and mercury and have been linked to skin cancer as well as kidney and liver damage.

However, the move has raised fears that consumers will be

forced to buy unregulated products, which could put their health at risk. Some of the products sold on the black market are smuggled into Rwanda from neighbouring countries and abroad.

“A woman would always find a way to lighten her skin. The fact that Rwanda has banned skin bleaching products does not mean women would not do it,” one person tweeted.

“Banning is never an effective answer for products like this, forcing their use underground. Education gives the greatest power. Everyone wants to be a different colour,” another wrote.

Skin bleaching is a multibillion-dollar global industry. At least four out of every 10 women in Africa bleach their skin, according to the World Health Organisation. *

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How too much aid ended up hurting one of the world’s poorest countries

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wo violent civil wars in Liberia killed a quarter million people between 1989 and 2003 and destroyed the West African country’s economy. A massive influx of foreign aid followed that turmoil, ushering in a period of relative peace and stability. Yet Liberia remains among the world’s poorest countries.

In 2017, one democratically elected president stepped down and another took office for the first time in over 70 years. At the same time, Liberian foreign aid subsided.

According to the World Bank’s database, total aid fell from an all-time high in 2010 of US$359 per capita to about $130 in 2013, although aid flows did rebound briefly to $243 per capita during the country’s 2014-2015 Ebola crisis.

Having lost so much foreign support, Liberia’s economy is struggling. Reportedly accompanying these economic woes are an uptick in violence and political unrest that’s now hard to ignore. Thousands of demonstrators joined together to protest how the government is handling the economy in June 2019.

We belong to a team of researchers that includes one Liberian, several Americans and people from India, Nigeria and other countries. Our team has been working to reduce political violence in Liberian communities by partnering with local leaders, concerned citizens and police forces for more than five years.

Because we know economic and political tensions often rise as foreign aid agencies withdraw, we are deeply concerned about the long-term prospects for Liberia’s new-found stability. We also believe the situation in Liberia may serve as an example of how foreign aid that can seem to be healing a war-torn country’s wounds may do little to strengthen those nations in the long term.

Overseas development assistance, the most common kind of non-military foreign aid, is a mix of money, food and other supplies, plus services that goes to countries that are lowincome, enduring a crisis or both.

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In Liberia’s case, it has included everything from UN peacekeepers to nurses caring for pregnant women and newborns. This assistance was intended to end armed conflicts and human rights violations while reducing poverty rates and fighting illnesses like malaria and Ebola.

The civil wars slashed the size of Liberia’s economy by 90%, causing its gross domestic product, or GDP, to decline to only $54.50 per capita by 1995. In large part due to the foreign aid influx, its gross domestic product ballooned from $748 million in 2003 to $3.3 billion in 2017, with percapita GDP of about $600.

Relying heavily on foreign cash established a false sense of stability and growth in the Liberian economy.

Relying heavily on foreign cash established a false sense of stability and growth in the economy, as infusions of foreign cash were temporary.

The lasting impacts of Liberia’s aid flows are coming into focus now that much of the world has moved on. The United Nations Mission to Liberia has pulled out altogether. Other major organizations and countries have reduced their funding too, including Sweden, a leading donor to Africa. Aid from the U.S., whose leaders helped found Liberia in the 19th century as a destination for freed African Americans who either moved there by force or free will, fell sharply as well. It dropped from $228 million in 2011, when assistance began to dry up, to $86 million in 2018.

There were two apparent aftershocks: inflation surged and growth faltered.

After hovering around 8% in recent years, Liberian inflation reached an all-time high of 28.5% in 2018. Following years of growth rates ranging between 5% and 10% per year, the economy contracted in 2016 and growth remained low for the next two years.

The International Monetary Fund projects a meager 0.4% uptick in 2019 that will not keep up with population growth.

Many Liberian civil servants have told us that their pay is being cut or their paychecks delayed, prompting struggles to pay rent and school fees for their children.

Too much aid?

International economists have tried and failed to prove that getting more aid makes economies healthier, even when a boost in aid coincides with faster growth. In this case, rather than strengthen the economy in the long term and make Liberia more able to fend for itself, international assistance may have merely propped it up.

The $776 million in aid per year Liberia obtained between 2010 and 2017 accounted for anywhere from 40% to 25% of its GDP during that same period.

Given how the economy has shrunk since aid declined, international assistance would likely be better equipped to succeed in the long run if it emphasized building the skills of local people to make them better at running their own country and building their own economy how they deem best rather than depending on outsiders to get things done.

As the Chinese proverb says, “Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.”

Real gains Even so, it is hard to see a country in crisis and do nothing.

According to the United Nations’ Human Development Index, Liberia ranks No. 181, among the world’s lowest.

In 2007, for instance, foreign aid paid for more than three-quarters of the cost of Liberia’s health care. Without it, many more people, especially children, would have suffered malnutrition and died, according to an interagency international health report.

Spending also brought about many other significant benefits.

For example, the share of children dying before their fifth birthday fell by half, from 220 per 1,000 live births in 1986, to 110 in 2007. Liberian life expectancy gained a decade after the war ended in 2003, rising from about 53 to 63 years and is much closer to the global average than it used to be.

It’s easy to see how when foreign aid provides most of a country’s health care, withdrawing it can leave that health system in tatters.

And it is still too soon to tell what the future holds for Liberia – a return to war or just a long, rocky path toward economic and political stability. While we hope for the latter, the economic woes following a steep decline in foreign aid make us fear for the worst.

Jessica Eise, Ross Fellow in the Brian Lamb School of Communication Doctoral Program, Purdue University and Stacey L. Connaughton, Associate Professor, Director of the Purdue Peace Project, Purdue University

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New African Oil and Gas Exploration; Industry reforms lead at APPO CAPE VII

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hampioning the development of Africa’s oil and gas industry through intra-African cooperation, the African Petroleum Producers´ Organization (APPO) Cape VII Congress & Exhibition saw the signing of a key backfill agreement, three licensing round presentations and opening addresses from heads of state and ministers from across the continent.

A central theme of the event was the unification of African countries and the need to foster cooperation throughout the continent through participation in organizations such as APPO and the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).

“It is clear that Equatorial Guinea recognizes the value of working through organizations such as OPEC, which can empower African countries with a voice on the global stage. The country’s oil and gas sector is continuing to evolve and expand and help further energize this great country. This includes attracting new investment, plans to launch a new licensing round with new oil and gas companies and overseas operators interested in new blocks, as well as continuing work improving the regulatory environment,” said H.E. Mohammed Sanusi Barkindo, Secretary General of OPEC. Minister of Mines and Hydrocarbons of Equatorial Guinea H.E. Gabriel Mbaga Obiang Lima issued a call to action to National Oil Companies to take ownership over domestic natural resources, keeping in line with the theme of Africa contributing to its own nation-building. APPO also presented a framework for local content during the conference, with plans to create an official local content guide for APPO members.

“National Oil Companies need to wake up. National Oil Companies are in a coma. APPO needs to have teeth. It´s very important that African countries that have resources wake up. We are the only continent that is having discoveries after discoveries month after month. Senegal, Mozambique, Gabon, Nigeria, Equatorial Guinea. The biggest resource in the world is in Africa,” said Lima.

Definitive Agreements were executed by the Ministry of Mines and Hydrocarbons of Equatorial Guinea with major oil and gas companies to monetize gas from the Alen Unit operated

by Noble Energy. Signed on April 1, the Agreements saw an increase in Sonagas’ stake in the EGLNG production facility from 25 to 30 percent, and commitment to tolling Alen Unit gas through Alba Plant’s liquified petroleum gas (LPG) processing plant.

“This is the kick off of our gas mega hub, and we will do 30

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more deals on other gas assets in the country that must be developed. Development of the gas mega hub will ensure a thriving Equatorial Guinea gas industry into the future. It is my firm belief that it will create opportunities for development of our citizens in the upstream and downstream segments of the country’s oil and natural gas industry,” said Lima.

The EG Ronda 2019 oil and gas mining licensing round was officially launched by President of Equatorial Guinea H.E. Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo. The round puts on offer 26 onshore and offshore blocks, including Ophir Energy´s former Block R which encompasses the currently stalled Fortuna floating liquified natural gas project that is now on offer as EG27.

Free exploratory blocks and renderings of the coastal basin were also at the center of the call for tenders by the Ministry of Hydrocarbons of the Democratic Republic of Congo. The country promoted its available acreage located within three sedimentary basins that holds significant oil potential, targeting promotion of the blocks toward national companies and APPO member countries.

“What we can say now is that the Congo is a country with a future, and we can now invite our African brothers to come in numbers to invest because there is huge potential. There are many opportunities in this country, and we invite you all to come and invest in Congo,¨ said Minister of Hydrocarbons John KwetMwen Kwet at APPO. APPO also featured a roadshow of the Gabon 12th Licensing Round, and presentations on exploration opportunities in Nigeria by Enorense Amadasu, Head Upstream Monitoring & Regulation Division, Department of Petroleum Resources, Nigeria and a preview of the blocks available from the Republic of the Congo.

In addition to licensing rounds, ministers also promoted exploration throughout the continent. H.E. Ezekiel Lol Gatkuoth, Minister of Petroleum, promoted the vast exploration potential in South Sudan – with 70 percent of the country still to be explored. Gatkuoth, along with others, also pushed for greater gas monetization to drive economic growth and the elimination of gas flaring on the continent.

“We need to do more exploration, and with the current oil price, I think we can do business in South Sudan,” he told the audience at APPO. “We have a lot of blocks that are empty, and we want all investors to come and invest in South Sudan. For us, we want to have long term investment with our partners. We need to start focusing on how we can now lead Africa.”

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The Ethiopian migrants braving Yemen’s war to find a better life in Saudi Arabia

By Arwa Damon and Brent Swails thiopia is broken,” one of the young men says of his homeland. He is traveling in a group of four from Jimma, in southwest Ethiopia, each carrying nothing but a bottle of water.

In the distance, the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, which separates the Horn of Africa from the Arabian Peninsula, glimmers in shades of dark blue, turquoise, and green.

“Yemen,” the man says, citing his next destination. “From Yemen I can go to Saudi Arabia for work and send money to my mother.”

About 20,000 migrants, mostly from Ethiopia, attempt the journey along this ancient and increasingly deadly route through Yemen’s war zone each month, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

They all risk deportation if they come to the attention of the police. Many are unaware of the war in Yemen, the bombs, bullets, mortars, and mines. They are unaware of the dangers of the crossing, and the bodies that wash up on Djibouti and Yemen’s shores.

Obock is a small fishing village on the northern shores of the Gulf of Tadjoura.

It is also the center of a confluence of despair.

On the same sliver of shoreline where Ethiopian migrants depart for Yemen and what they hope will be a better life in Saudi Arabia, Yemeni refugees -- some fleeing Saudiled attacks -- are arriving, haunted by memories of the nightmare they have just escaped.

For many Yemenis, the hot, dusty and windswept Markazi Refugee Camp is their first stop.

The Markazi Refugee Camp in Djibouti.

“E

Several rows of generator-powered white containers today have all but replaced the less sturdy United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees tents at this camp, which

1,300 or so Yemenis currently call home.

The containers were a gift from the Saudi government -- an irony not lost on the refugees here.

It was airstrikes from the Saudi-led coalition that forced Naghuib, his wife, and two children -- 6-year-old Rasha and 8-year-old Mohammed -- to flee.

In Yemen, Naghuib’s family lived near Khokha, a small village on the shores of the Red Sea. Over the past four years, Naghuib says 25 people from his rebelheld village have been killed, including neighbors and relatives. Intense fighting between the Saudi-led coalition and Iranian-backed Houthi fighters has gripped the country since war broke out in early 2015.

Naghuib says homes, schools, and mosques in his village have been destroyed. As the situation worsened, sometimes his family could not find food, he adds. When there was a lull in the fighting, he and his family decided to make a run for it.

Naghuib, and others interviewed for this story, only wanted their first names used because of the sensitivity of their situations.

A Yemeni man takes a picture of a destroyed petrol station that was hit by an airstrike in Yemen’s capital Sanaa on May 27, 2018.

“We came in a small fishing boat,” he says. “We were lucky the water was smooth. It took us three hours.”

Nearly 40,000 Yemenis have fled to Djibouti since 2015, according to UNHCR. While the Djiboutian government has been praised for recent reforms, including granting refugees permission to work inside the country, the vast majority of Yemenis that arrived here have moved on to other countries.

Many Yemeni refugees have relatives in the United States, and according to UNHCR nearly 15,000 have moved from Djibouti to the US since the conflict began.

“We came for their future,” Naghuib adds, pointing to his children. “We’ll go anywhere they take us.”

N a g h u i b remembers encountering migrants from Ethiopia who were walking through Yemen.

Their only thought is to get to Saudi. We try to tell them there are mines on the road Abdulrahman, a Yemeni refugee “We would say, ‘Where are you going? There is a war.’ Most of them didn’t speak Arabic. We say, ‘Don’t go.’ They say, ‘God is with us,’” he adds.

Another Yemeni refugee, Abdulrahman, who has just arrived at the camp, says he had similar encounters with migrants back home. “Their only thought is to get to Saudi,” he says.

“We try to tell them there are mines on the road. They don’t know what it’s like.”

Abdulrahman knows the dangers only too well. He says he lost his wife and daughter to a mortar bomb around eight

months ago. The day after he arrived in Djibouti, he found out that his eldest son, who was fighting with the Houthis, had been killed.

“He just got married. That’s my last memory of him,” says Abdulrahman, as his voice starts to shake. He wipes his eyes and turns away.

A short drive from the Markazi Refugee Camp, dozens of male Ethiopian migrants are sheltering from the intense midday sun and the near-constant wind, under trees sparsely scattered across the barren landscape.

Under the largest tree, one group of men says they have been waiting here for their smuggler for four days, eating only rice.

Ethiopian migrants in Djibouti waiting to make the ocean crossing to Yemen, from where they will transit to Saudi Arabia. They say they are unaware there is a war in Yemen.

The migrant route from Ethiopia to Saudi Arabia is a welltrodden one. An Ethiopian migrant called Ali says that his relatives made this same journey years ago, before the war. Many of the men have similar stories of relatives who “made it” years ago.

But when asked about the war in Yemen, the men shrug. They had been unaware of the dangers ahead.

Since 2017, the UNHCR has been running a public awareness campaign about the Yemen war, through music videos and billboards in five languages. But staffers admit that it has yet to make it here to Obock.

A group of men wait for smugglers to arrive to take them across the Bab al-Mandeb Strait to Yemen. In Ethiopia, many have access to the internet on their mobile phones -- but in their desperation they chose hope over fear of what lies ahead.

“We don’t have a choice,” says one migrant preparing to cross. “We have to be patient, we have to leave it up to God.” Finally, at dusk the Djiboutian smugglers arrive. Using long sticks, they herd the men under the trees into a single file like cattle.

One of the smugglers, his cheek full of khat -- a leaf chewed in the Horn of Africa for its stimulant effect -- says they are moving the group to another location, a crevasse where they will join hundreds of other migrants waiting to make the same journey.

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Five days later, the IOM reported that two boats carrying migrants capsized off Djibouti’s shores. There were 16 survivors, and 30 bodies recovered but a total of 128 were estimated dead.

Each migrant making this crossing pays a few hundred dollars.

That’s a fraction of what it can cost to leave Africa via the Mediterranean route -- one reason why Ethiopian migrants by the hundreds still attempt this route each night.

The distance is another factor: the majority can walk the thousand or so kilometers from their homes in Ethiopia to Obock, the launching point across the strait and toward the Gulf.

They take those first steps, they say, because of an overwhelming feeling of hopelessness at home.

Many Ethiopians here say they come from the Oromia region, which is home to an ethnic group historically at odds with the central government, and where more than a million people have been displaced because of political violence.

A series of devastating floods and severe droughts -- the worst in decades -- has also pushed the total number of displaced inside Ethiopia up to almost three million people.

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Lucky escape?

For the 500 mostly Ethiopians at the IOM transit center in Obock, repatriation is the grim fate awaiting them.

“My parents are poor ... (They have) no money. I am the eldest,” says Ali. He is just 13. He and the other unaccompanied minors huddle in the same room, opting to sit on the cool floor rather than the foam mattresses lined along the walls. The older men congregate in the courtyard.

Ali says he didn’t know about the war in Yemen and the five other boys with him say the same.

The road to Obock, Djibouti Most Ethiopians who attempt this journey are young men but the IOM transit center does have a women’s section, currently home to about a dozen people.

Safia, a mother in her 20s, left Ethiopia with a group of her friends. Exhausted and dehydrated when she arrived after walking for days, Safia still has an IV needle in her hand.

“I wanted to go to Saudi but when I got here and saw how dangerous it was, I changed my mind. But some of them kept going,” she says.

Safia doesn’t know if her friends made it or not. She has a two-year-old son back home, who she cries for every day.

Failed coup sees Ethiopia Army Chief shot dead by bodyguard

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failed coup attempt in Ethiopia’s northern Amhara regional state government led to four people being killed, including Ethiopia’s Army Chief of Staff and the head of an important region, the office of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s has confirmed but we seem not to have the full truth of the matter yet.

The incident began on a Saturday evening in Bahir Dar, the capital of Amhara, where the region’s President Ambachew Mekonnen and Amhara Regional Government Office Advisor Ezez Wassie were killed from gunshots.

Regional Attorney General Migbaru Kebede sustained heavy injuries and is undergoing medical treatment, the Prime Minister’s office said.

Meanwhile in the country’s capital Addis Ababa, the Army Chief of Staff General Seare Mekonnen and retired Major General Gezai Abera were killed at Seare’s home by his bodyguard.

“The attack was committed by General Seare’s bodyguard who has also been arrested,” the statement added.

Ahmed blamed the attempted coup on a Brigadier General named Asaminew Tsige and others. Tsige has been serving as the regional government’s Peace and Security Bureau head after being given amnesty and released from prison last year.

The situation in the Amhara -located in north-western part of Ethiopia and is one of nine regional states in the country is now under full control of the Federal Government, the statement added.

The Prime Minister “conveys his deepest sympathies and condolences to the family and friends of the deceased,” it said.

On Saturday, the US Embassy in Addis Ababa issued a security alert saying it was aware of shots being fired in the capital, as well as violence in and around Bahir Dar. Rise in tensions Prime Minister Abiy came to power in 2018, following

the resignation of Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn, after years of anti-government protests over economic and political exclusion, and led by the Oromo, Ethiopia’s largest ethnic group.

He has led a remarkable p o l i t i c a l transformation in the country.

Abiy’s government freed thousands of political prisoners, u n b l o c k e d hundreds of censored websites, ended the 20-year state of war with long time enemy Eritrea, lifted a state of emergency, and plans to open key economic sectors to private investors, including the state-owned Ethiopian Airlines.

Ethiopia’s parliament even appointed the country’s first Female President, Sahle-Work Zewde, and the nation’s first Supreme Court chief, Meaza Ashenafi, was sworn into office.

But his rule has also been marked by a rise in tensions between the diverse country’s ethnic groups. According to Agence France-Presse news agency, more than a million people have been displaced by ethnic clashes.

By Bethlehem Feleke contributed to this report.

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Three men found guilty of 2015 attack on Kenya University

hree men have been found guilty of terrorism charges over the 2015 militant attack on a Kenyan university that left nearly 150 people dead. A Nairobi court last month found Rashid Mberesero, Hassan Edin Hassan and Muhamed Abdi Abikar guilty of committing a terrorist act, conspiring to commit a terrorist act and belonging to a terrorist group.

They will be sentenced on July 3. A fourth man, Sahar Diriye, was acquitted of all charges.

The court did not explain why it had taken so many years to make a ruling. In April 2015, gunmen stormed into Garissa College University on Kenya’s border with Somalia, first killing two security officers before firing indiscriminately at students.

Witnesses reported that the gunmen also separated the Christians and Muslims, sparing the latter. In some cases, the militants forced students to call relatives to listen in during the killings.

By the time security forces arrived hours later, dead students lay in rows all over the premises.

Al Shabab later claimed responsibility for the attack.

Two senior Al-Shabaab operatives, including the alleged mastermind, were killed in Somali counter-terror operations in 2016.

The effects of Kenya’s largest terrorist attack since 1998 are still being felt today by survivors, their families, and first responders.

Fedhi Channan, a student volunteer who was one of the first

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responders to receive the bodies as they arrived in Nairobi, said, “When you see trucks of bodies coming, it desensitizes you in a very unnatural way. Being a student at university, and also being a volunteer in a situation where students had suffered, it was very difficult for people like me to focus.

“Any student who was going to school at the time of these attacks suffered because everyone was wondering which university is going to get hit next,” Channan said. “We are all students. We’re all trying to get to school, if it happened in Garissa, what’s to say it wouldn’t happen here.”

Long road to recovery For the survivors and the families of the victims, the road to recovery is a long one.

Micheal Gathaburu, a branch coordinator for the Red Cross, offers psychosocial support in an attempt to help them move past the attacks.

“Most of the students can still hear the gunshots,” he said. “The attack may be over but the experience kept coming back to their minds, some of them could not even sleep, because they could remember the smell of the blood, some of the could not even eat meat anymore.

“Speaking to them, you could see they are having a reaction, it was as if it was happening to them again. Their minds have not moved on from that situation, so they are still stuck there.”

Risper Nyang’au was attending early morning prayers when the attackers threw a grenade into the room and sprayed the room with bullets. For months after the Garissa attacks, she struggled to walk.

Two years ago, she testified in the attackers’ trial. “Those of us who lived, we still have not healed,” she told the press at the time.

Combating Al Shabab Al Shabab, which claimed the Garissa attack, is based in neighboring Somalia. The militants have vowed to continue their attacks across the border until Kenya withdraws troops from Somalia, where it is helping fight the Islamist terror group.

Most recently, the group claimed responsibility in January for an attack on an upscale Nairobi hotel. In a statement, it claimed the attack was a response to US President Donald Trump’s 2017 decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

Sudan must end repression and let monitors in, says U.N. rights boss Sudanese authorities must let in human rights monitors, end repression of protesters and restore the internet connection,

U.N. human rights boss Michelle Bachelet said on Monday.

Her office had received reports that more than 100 protesters were killed and many more injured when security forces raided a peaceful sit-in outside the defense ministry in

Khartoum on June 3, she said.

Sudan’s uprising “has been met with a brutal crackdown by the security forces this month,” Bachelet said in a speech to the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva.

“We have received allegations of rape and sexual abuse of both women and men during the crackdown, as well as information alleging that hundreds of protesters may be missing,” she said.

There was no immediate reaction from Sudan’s military rulers who overthrew president Omar al-Bashir in April after weeks of street protests against his rule.

Protest and opposition groups then pressed the ruling military to hand over power to civilians, and kept up their demonstrations, including the sit-in, to press their case.

The military denied raiding the sit-in this month and said a crackdown on criminals nearby had spilled over to the protest camp. It said some officers has been detained for presumed responsibility and it still planned to hand over power after elections.

Human Rights Watch called for the council to investigate violations committed since the protests against Bashir started in December, with a special focus on the June 3 raid.

“There has been horrific footage coming out, with tents being set ablaze with people inside, tear gas, bullets and of course that resulted in over 100 deaths and many hundreds injured, people being prevented from receiving treatment, medical staff being attacked, and a full range of violations,” Laila Matar of Human Rights Watch said.

Bashir, who is in detention, has been charged with incitement and involvement in the killings of protesters. He was also charged a week ago with corruption-related offences

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Trump imposes new U.S. sanctions on Iran, including supreme leader

U.S.

President Donald Trump targeted Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other senior Iranian officials with new U.S. sanctions on Monday, looking for a fresh blow to Iran’s economy after Tehran’s downing of an unmanned American drone.

With tensions running high between the two countries, Trump signed an executive order imposing the sanctions, which U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said would lock billions of dollars more in Iranian assets.

Trump said the new sanctions were in part a response to last week’s downing of a U.S. drone, but would have happened anyway.

He said the supreme leader was ultimately responsible for what Trump called “the hostile conduct of the regime.”

“Sanctions imposed through the executive order ... will deny the Supreme Leader and the Supreme Leader’s office, and those closely affiliated with him and the office, access to key financial resources and support,” Trump said.

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The Trump administration wants to force Tehran to open talks on its nuclear and missile programs and its activities in the region. Tensions between the United States and Iran have grown since May when Washington ordered all countries to halt imports of Iranian oil.

There was no immediate reaction in Iranian official media but at the weekend, state-run news agency IRIB quoted Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi as saying any new sanctions would be “just propaganda” and “there are no more sanctions left.”

Mnuchin said Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif would be targeted with U.S. sanctions later this week.

Sanctions were also imposed on eight senior commanders of Navy, Aerospace, and Ground Forces of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), the U.S. Treasury Department said.

“These commanders sit atop a bureaucracy that supervises the IRGC’s malicious regional activities, including its provocative ballistic missile program, harassment and sabotage of commercial vessels in international waters, and its destabilizing presence in Syria,” the department said in a statement.

Trump said the sanctions are a “strong and proportionate response to Iran’s increasingly provocative actions.”

“We will continue to increase pressure on Tehran until the regime abandons its dangerous activities and its aspirations,” he said.

Iran said on Monday U.S. cyber-attacks on its military had failed, as Washington sought to rally support in the Middle East and Europe for a hardline stance that has brought it to the verge of conflict with its longtime foe.

MARITIME SECURITY Washington has blamed Tehran for attacks on tankers in the Gulf in recent weeks, which Iran denies. On Monday, the United States said it was building a coalition with allies to protect Gulf shipping lanes.

A coalition of nations would provide both material and financial contributions to the program, a senior U.S. State Department official said, without identifying the countries.

“It’s about proactive deterrence, because the Iranians just want to go out and do what they want to do and say hey we didn’t do it. We know what they’ve done,” the official told reporters, adding that the deterrents would include cameras, binoculars and ships.

The United States accuses Iran of encouraging allies in Yemen to attack Saudi targets.

In a joint statement on Monday, the United States, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Britain expressed concern over Middle East tensions and the dangers posed by Iranian “destabilizing activity” to peace and security in Yemen and the region.

The confrontation between Iran and the United States heated up last Thursday when Iran shot down an American drone, saying it had flown over its air space.

Washington, which said the drone was in international skies, then appeared to come close to attacking Iranian military targets, with Trump saying that he aborted a retaliatory air

strike 10 minutes before it was to go ahead.

Trump said he decided the strike, to punish Iran for shooting down the drone, would have killed too many people.

U.S. media have reported that Washington launched cyberattacks last week even as Trump called off his air strike.

The Washington Post said on Saturday that the cyber strikes, which had been planned previously, had disabled Iranian rocket launch systems. U.S. officials have declined to comment.

FEARS OF WAR Iran dismissed the cyber-attacks as a failure. “They try hard,

but have not carried out a successful attack,” Mohammad Javad Azari Jahromi, Iran’s minister for information and communications technology, said on Twitter.

Allies of the United States have been calling for steps to defuse the crisis, saying they fear a small mistake by either side could trigger war.

“We are very concerned. We don’t think either side wants a war, but we are very concerned that we could get into an accidental war and we are doing everything we can to ratchet things down,” British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt said.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo jetted to the Middle East to discuss Iran with the leaders of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, two Gulf Arab allies that favor a hard line. Pompeo met King Salman as well as the king’s son, de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

The U.S. special representative for Iran, Brian Hook, visited Oman and was headed to Europe to explain U.S. policy to allies. He told European reporters on a phone call ahead of his arrival that Trump was willing to sit down with Iran, but that Iran must do a deal before sanctions could be lifted.

CONCESSIONS U.S.-Iran relations have deteriorated over the past year since the United States abandoned a 2015 agreement between Iran and world powers designed to curb Iran’s nuclear program in return for the lifting of sanctions.

U.S. allies in Europe and Asia view Trump’s decision to abandon the nuclear deal as a mistake that strengthens hardliners in Iran and weakens the pragmatic faction of President Hassan Rouhani.

France, Britain and Germany have sent an official diplomatic warning to Iran if Tehran reduces its compliance with the accord, two European diplomats said on Monday.

It was not immediately clear what consequences Iran might face for noncompliance.

Washington argues that the agreement known as the JCPOA, negotiated under Trump’s predecessor, President Barack Obama, did not go far enough, and new sanctions are needed to force Iran back to the table to make more concessions.

Both sides have suggested they are willing to hold talks while demanding the other side move first. In the latest comment from Tehran, an adviser to Rouhani repeated a longstanding demand that Washington lift sanctions before any talks.

But the adviser, Hesameddin Ashena, also tweeted a rare suggestion that Iran could be willing to discuss new concessions, if Washington were willing to put new incentives on the table that go beyond those in the deal.

“If they want something beyond the JCPOA, they should offer something beyond the JCPOA; with international guarantees.” www.thevoicenewsmagazine.com

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Poor state of medical practice in Nigeria Is it a crime to be a doctor in Nigeria?

By Dr. Adewumi Alayaki Former Secretary General of Nigeria Medical Association and founder of Hope Hospital in Abeokuta, Nigeria as a private practitioner The matter about the detention, prosecution and indictment of innocent doctors for allowing themselves the dignity of being the physicians they are by showing professionalism and humanitarianism is an unparalleled absurdity. Our Nigerians who go to India pay in advance of arriving India. No Nigerian who goes abroad for treatment owes the hospitals there and returns home including our leaders who all prefer to be treated outside Nigeria.

By their wrong examples, our leadership neglected our health sector, converting medical services into a theatre of struggles and lamentations and abject lack for the doctors and frustration for the essentially out of pocket, healthcare paying Nigerians.

They make laws to guide services they feel too big and too sophisticated to access and services they do not understand how they are provided in terms of logistics and cost. They go abroad and patronize hospitals located in out of the ordinary structures and harboring cutting edge facilities but never contemplate the processes that brought them into being. They do not realize that it took visionary political will, appropriate legislation, people based leadership, transparency and selfless pursuit of patriotic concepts and principles to build the excellent systems they temporarily connect to and return to the “mud� in self-deceit. Back home in unmeasured ignorance, they pretend to love the people’s health so much as to be determined to exterminate them by destroying the very fabric of their healthcare system, with the poor doctor in the middle of the storm.

The law has a way around matters like this. It declares that something cannot stand on nothing. It also states that those who come to equity must come with clean hands.

Furthermore, the law, which by the essence of being the mirror of society and the measure of norms took the extra step of declaring that justice must not just be done, it must be seen to have been done.

Now how can a castle stand in mid-air and what manner of justice do we contemplate in the circumstance where doctors wallow through the lone and dangerous haze of the deserts of life, unsupported and abandoned to their fate from medical school through the career path of the practice 52

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only to come under faceless mandatory fiats of legislative coercion.

These are the signs of how debased our society is and in particular, how endangered the doctor, the medical profession, especially, the private doctor is.

Nothing can be more obnoxious than perpetuating injustice and putting equity on its head through the draconian law on treatment of emergency which now includes gunshot victims. In the case of the gunshot victims, the doctor is not just expected to treat, with or without money and with or without police extract, the doctor is mandated to ensure that the patient does not die. Nothing can be more criminalizing than this.

Our law makers seem to suffer from the fatigue of selective amnesia that allows them remember only the things they choose to. In America, it is the law that emergencies are mandatorily treated irrespective of financial standing. In the first instance, there is a viable health insurance in place there that covers almost everybody making it difficult for any patient on emergency to constitute him or herself into a liability to the hospital.

The state has social welfare mechanisms that reimburse the expenditures on the few who are not covered. Certainly, the doctor does not lose his money or have need whatsoever to worry about it out there.

In no other society is it part of the duty of the doctor to guarantee the life of his patient. The doctor is known to care but Healing is domiciled with God alone.

The letters of our legislative instruments as seen here question the intellectual, social and moral standing of our law makers and their total sense of judgment. It also queries how integrated they are with current trends and the world order of events.

More than anything else, it suggests a total abdication of the system of its obligations to society and a desire to transfer its social responsibilities in health to the struggling doctor.

The laws sited above are punitive, reckless and they are untenable.

Today, doctors whose guardians paid their school fees, not government scholarship, and doctors who struggled on their own exclusively to set up their facilities and doctors who, by the setting of the system, look forward to no support, come under marching orders to mandatorily treat Nigerians whom the system has not covered by a health insurance and no provision is made for the hospital to be paid. This scenario agitates the sane mind.

Nigerian doctors have lost trillions in naira over the years to this arbitrariness and many have gone under for the same reason.

The poor independent doctor responds to the professional, moral and ethical demands on him to accept and treat an emergency without any financial commitment from his patient and patient’s t relations. Patient’s relations who pretend to be raising money to pay the kind hearted doctor now show up with the police to arrest the doctor and charge him for illegal detention. A lawyer, a conscious extract of this environment prosecutes the hapless doctor and a judge, another product of the same system pronounces the doctor guilty and sends him to jail. There is weeping in heaven.

Nigerian leaders go abroad and find beautiful laws that shape society and import them but leave behind the medium in which the law operates that give them meaning. They forget the individuality and peculiarities of societies.

Today, the Basic Healthcare Development Fund has come to the rescue but still a dream thing and until it becomes truly operational and functionally beneficial, it remains a political gimmick. It took our sleeping government this long to consider this policy which carries with it the potential of not only paying for the emergency treatment of patients in public and private hospitals but the capacity to radically transform the health insurance program of Nigeria as well as improve the nation’s primary healthcare services. All these remain mere speculations

until they come to fruition.

The judicial assault on the medical profession appears calculated to extinguish the last flicker of light in the doctor’s dark tunnel of a stunted career.

The case of our Ekiti brother calls for more than a sober reflection. This patriotic Nigerian doctor who chose not to abscond to seek greener pastures abroad and rather prefers to stay back and serve the father land is now made a criminal by the law of his own country that will not protect him or find him worthy of being protected or of having rights and privileges as anyone else.

This doctor received a moribund case from a maternity and took the daring decision to section her to extract her dead baby to attempt to save the woman’s life even when those who brought her had no money to pay. Today, the woman is alive and set free by the law and is in the comfort of her family, happy with herself but the doctor has been declared a criminal, his bill remains unpaid and he rather has a jail sentence of 6 months hanging on him or N500, 000 compensation to pay. I dare ask, 1. Is this a human society?

2 Is it a crime to be a doctor in Nigeria?

3. What is our offense to deserve to be ostracized in our own country?

4. Is this the way to grow our health system?

5. Is this the good example we need to protect Nigerian doctors and Nigerians themselves?

6. Is there no possibility of this being another case of the hand of Esau and the voice of Jacob?

7. Should we sit and watch this obvious injustice and callousness?

8. How did we get this far?

The Anambra experience stands. With these pockets of indictments, the threat of extermination gets stronger except something is done to mute their war song. Today, it is our colleagues, tomorrow, whose turn will it be?

In the spirit of INJURY TO ONE, INJURY TO ALL, we are consulting extensively amongst the elders, members, the NMA and all other stakeholders to find a lasting solution to the menace.

Certainly, we are under pressure and what is happening may be difficult for any man but nothing tests the strength in the group than this. The greatest welfare package a member can look forward to is to find himself at moments such as this, safe and protected and defended.

As an association, we will give this matter all the attention that we can summon. Our unity is our strength. We are greater together. www.thevoicenewsmagazine.com

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President Museveni has twisted Uganda’s constitution to cling to power

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or a period of time between 1986 and the early 2000s Uganda was considered to be a country committed to democratic reform. But in recent years the democratic space has shrunk dramatically.

In a recently published journal article, two factors have been crucial. The first is the gradual breakdown of the political consensus that was forged under a ‘broadbased’ government. This consensus resulted in a relatively progressive constitution which was adopted in 1995.

The second is the security imperative which has been accentuated by the fight against terrorism. As a result, the legitimate opposition has become a target of trumped up terror charges.

These two factors have been compounded by incumbent President Yoweri Museveni’s determination to be in power indefinitely. He’s dug in. He wants to rule for life. To stay put in State House, Museveni has had to run roughshod over important constitutional and institutional safe guards, checks and balances that were enshrined in what was a relatively progressive and liberal constitution. His actions have eroded the minimum political consensus embodied in Uganda’s 1995 constitution.

The result has been an erosion of basic democratic institutions, the securitization of politics, criminalization of political competition, and an upsurge in contentious politics. The outcome is that the country is facing a deep governance crisis.

How it’s meant to work To work effectively a democratic government, of whatever stripe and tenor, must be anchored in a set of institutions.

It must follow the ‘rules of the game’ that structure and condition actor-behaviour. In many countries the constitution is the primary source of the rules that

translate into functional institutions, governmental bodies and state agencies.

But how do the rules of the game come about? They can be imposed through colonial conquest and forceful occupation, or through autocratic leadership. But taking this route is inevitably a recipe for contestation, protestation and even violent confrontation.

The second, and more sustainable, way of establishing the rules of the game is through negotiation, compromise and, in some respects, co-option of key political actors and their constituents. The essence is to arrive at some minimum political consensus that embodies the aspirations and wishes of key political actors and the wider public.

This minimum consensus turns on the basic norms and beliefs about what is acceptable and what is considered outside the bounds of political activity and engagement. Without this it’s not possible to sustain democratic governance.

In the early years of Uganda’s National Resistance Movement there was an attempt to build minimum consensus around some basic rules. This culminated in a constitution being adopted in 1995 that provided for several crucial checks and balances. This included granting parliament autonomy and the judiciary independence. There were also assurances of public accountability through a slew of institutions. These ranged from parliament’s public accounts committee to the Inspectorate of Government and the Auditor General.

But, in my view, the minimum consensus embodied in the 1995 constitution has been ripped apart.

What’s been broken In 2003, Museveni began his assault on the constitution with a view to deleting presidential term limits. This came after two decades of single-party rule, which was a system of governance that was cleverly packaged as ‘noparty’ politics.

As part of Museveni’s assault on the supreme law there was a turnaround to embracing multiparty politics. In 2005, Ugandans went into a referendum and voted to return to a multiparty system of governance. But the referendum was no more than a tactical move; it was used as a bargaining chip to remove term limits. As a result, Uganda has been on a downward spiral since 2006.

By undermining the 1995 constitutional order in pursuit of regime survival, Museveni and the National Resistance Movement have simultaneously eroded minimum consensus and triggered political polarisation. And there has been little regard for policy alternatives and how best to move the country forward in successive election cycles.

This state of affairs has produced toxic politics and a highly adversarial relationship between the political opposition and security agencies, especially the police. The sum of it is that state security and police agencies have placed squarely at the centre of political contestations.

The desire to cling to power has also lead to institutions being undermined. In the judiciary, for example, the appointment of ‘cadre judges’ became pronounced after 2005.

In addition, state patronage, gerrymandering, and outright rigging have been used to manufacture a super majority in the house. Consequentially, Parliament has been grossly watered down and twisted to be at the service of regime

survival.

The war on terror The breakdown of minimum elite consensus has been compounded by the fight against terrorism. Museveni

has astutely used this to continue positioning himself as a security president: needed by the west and trusted at home.

For most of the 1990s and early 2000s, insurgencies in the north, northeast and parts of the west of Uganda were the primary source of Museveni’s justification for holding onto power, ostensibly to deal with the insecurity. This security appeal had waned by the 2000s. But it was revived when Al-Shabaab attacked Kampala in July 2010.

The upshot is that the imperatives of security are used to criminalize otherwise legitimate political activities, which has resulted in tension and uncertainty during election time. In addition, opposition leaders are arrested too often.

Since 2005 a review of media reports shows that Kizza Besigye – Museveni’s main challenger in the opposition – has been arrested more than 1,000 times.

It has also become routine that whenever Besigye’s allies plan rallies or other political events, their homes are cordoned off by the security forces to stop them from leaving.

All these developments underline the fact that the country is in crisis. It’s only by reaching a new national consensus and enacting rules of engagement that Uganda will detour off its current slippery slope.

By Moses Khisa, Assistant Professor of Political Science, North Carolina State University

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Ethiopia PM picks Adem Mohammed as new Army Chief the Amhara region and Addis Ababa following the attempted coup, said the prime minister’s spokeswoman.

“The Brigadier General who orchestrated the attack, Asamnew Tsige, was killed while he was trying to flee,” press secretary Billene Seyoum said, adding the attacks were designed to gain a shortcut to power. “They were focused on undermining the reforms of the current administration,” she said.

Since the assassinations, Ethiopian security forces have arrested several members and leaders of the National Amhara Movement, a party official told The Associated Press.

Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has appointed the country’s spy chief as the new Army Chief of Staff.

The premier minister made the announcement late last month that Gen. Adem Mohammed would take up the post replacing Seare Mekonnen who was killed last month.

In the new appointments, Lieutenant General Mola Hailemariam was named chief of ground forces while Demelash Gebremichael becomes the new director of national intelligence and security service.

Following the last month attacks, there has been high security in the capital and the Amhara region amid a wave of arrests. The internet was shut down and only partially reopened over a week ago.

A total of 255 people have been detained both in “This is unacceptable and against democratic principles. This has to stop,” said Melkamu Shumye, a party leader.

Government officials are describing last week’s killings as the works of a rogue security official and his associates. Some Ethiopians worry that the subsequent mass arrests indicate that the incident is being used by the government to silence dissent, mainly in the Amhara region.

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Inside Sierra Leone’s plans to connect capital to airport: 7km, $2bn

the Lungi bridge could cost anywhere between $1.3 billion and $2 billion.

James Turner, an official from Sierra Leone’s transportation ministry, told the press that the project would take between four and five years to Sierra Leone is set to invest up to $2 billion to complete, and would likely be financed through a link its capital city Freetown to the country’s only public-private partnership scheme, such as a toll gate fee. international airport, through a 7km bridge.

Freetown International Airport at Lungi is currently accessible only by boat or helicopter, separated from the capital by the nearly five km (three mile) wide mouth of the Rokel river.

“I will closely superintend the entire process and ensure that every tender is compliant and every tender is in the best long-term interest of Sierra Leone,” President Julius Maada Bio said while opening the tender process last month.

Sierra Leone officials have previously estimated

President Bio first proposed the bridge project to the state-funded Chinese firm Power China International during a visit to Beijing last September.

A month later, he axed a plan of his predecessor’s to build a new $400 million airport closer to the capital with Chinese labor and loans. This decision is not popular among many of the population who would rather have a second airport.

Morsi ‘killed’ by Egyptian government, son says

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on of late former president named several incumbent Egyptian officials as being responsible for his father’s death. A son of the late former Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi has accused incumbent President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and a number of other officials of “killing” his father.

Morsi, Egypt’s first democratically elected president who was arrested after being overthrown in a military coup led by el-Sisi in 2013, died last month after collapsing inside his soundproof glass cage while on trial in a Cairo courtroom on espionage charges.

In a Twitter post, Morsi’s son, Abdullah, named a number of officials whom he called “partners” of el-Sisi “in killing the martyr president”.

He particularly accused incumbent and former interior ministers Mahmoud Tawfiq and Magdy Abdel Ghaffar, respectively.

He also named judges Shirin Fahmy, Shaaban al-Shami and Ahmed Sabry, as well as Attorney General Nabil Sadek and Abbas Kamel, the head of the intelligence service.

Egyptian authorities have yet to comment on the claims by Morsi’s son.

At the time of his death, Morsi - a leading member of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood who won the country’s presidential

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election in 2012 - faced a host of legal charges, which he, along with various human rights groups and independent observers, said were politically motivated.

‘He was murdered’ Morsi’s death was mourned by many people around the world, including in Turkey, where mosques held special prayers for him, while leaders in Malaysia and Qatar were among those offering tributes. However, the reaction has been largely muted in many capitals.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a key ally of Morsi, said that the Egyptian government should be tried in international courts for the death of the former president.

“Mohamed Morsi flailed on the courtroom floor for 20 minutes and the authorities did not help him. This is why I say Morsi did not die, he was murdered,” Erdogan told supporters at an election rally in Istanbul.

“We, as Turkey, will follow this issue and do everything possible for Egypt to be tried in international courts for Morsi’s death,” he said, calling on the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation to take action towards this end.

Since Morsi’s removal, relations between Ankara and Cairo have plummeted with acrimonious exchanges.

Call for probe into ex-Egypt leader’s death

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gypt’s first democratically elected President Mohamed Morsi was buried in a closed funeral last month, a day after his death inside a Cairo courtroom triggered calls for a probe into whether he had received adequate medical care in prison or he died of natural courses.

He was interred in a cemetery in Cairo’s eastern enclave of Nasr City, after the Egyptian authorities refused to allow his family to bury him in his family’s graveyard in the Nile Delta province of Sharqiya, his son Ahmad Morsi said in a Facebook post.

The family attended funeral prayers in the mosque of the capital’s Tora prison, where they washed and shrouded his corpse and performed other traditional rites, the son said.

Morsi, 67, was buried in a ceremony attended by only family members, under heavy security.

Egyptian security agents prevented journalists from attending the funeral and travelling to Morsi’s village.

Morsi, a senior leader of Islamist movement Muslim Brotherhood, was elected president in 2012, a year after Egypt’s Arab Spring uprising toppled long-time autocrat Hosni Mubarak. That vote is still considered the country’s only fairly contested presidential election.

For many Egyptians, Morsi’s victory represented hope that democracy

would take root after decades of military-led rule. But within a year, he had lost much of his political goodwill. Critics accused him of seeking to usurp power, mismanaging the economy and Islamising the government and nation.

In July 2013, the military ousted him after massive demonstrations erupted against his government, arresting him and other top Islamist leaders.

His supporters and human rights groups have demanded an impartial and transparent investigation by an international body into the circumstances surrounding his death.

They allege that he was denied vital medical care by the Egyptian authorities in prison, causing his health to deteriorate. The Egyptian authorities and local media reports suggest he died of a possible heart attack or stroke.

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Zimbabwe Leader Wants New Currency, IMF Loan in Revival Bid

By Matthew Hill and Prinesha Naidoo

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imbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa and his finance chief want a new currency, the minister is seeking financing from the International Monetary Fund and may even consider a Eurobond offering as the

struggling economy emerges from almost two decades of isolation.

The introduction of a new currency is crucial to his efforts to revive the economy, said Mnangagwa, who secured a fiveyear term in July 2018 elections after the military deposed Robert Mugabe in 2017.

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an interview in Maputo, Mozambique’s capital, where he was attending a conference. “I have faith that we’ll achieve that even before the end of the year or by the first quarter of next year.”

The state abolished Zimbabwe’s currency in 2009, after an episode of hyperinflation rendered it worthless. Since then, the southern African nation has used a basket of currencies, including neighboring South Africa’s rand and the U.S. dollar.

The country has quasi-currencies known as RTGS, which only exist electronically, and so-called bond notes, though a persistent dollar shortage has led to a precipitous decline in their value.

President Mnangagwa said his finance minister, Mthuli Ncube, has prepared the ground for a new currency starting with the first budget surplus he can recall in decades.

“I’ve been in government for 38 years as minister and I can’t remember when you ever had a budget surplus,” Mnangagwa, 76, said. “Now, this young man has been able to achieve a budget surplus in less than eight months. So it tells me that what he tells me is possibly true on these issues.”

The government last month agreed on measures to re-engage with the IMF for the first time in more than a decade. Under the arrangement, known as a staff-monitored program, the fund will assess government’s economic progress by the end of January, Ncube, 56, said in the interview.

After that, the government plans to access bridge financing to clear about $1.2 billion of arrears to the World Bank, African Development Bank and the European Investment Bank, he said. Next, is a plan to restructure debt owed to bilateral creditors.

“The first order of business is to clear the arrears and then move onto phase two, which is the bilateral discussions with the Paris Club,” Ncube said. “If it works well in the first phase, it’s the same Paris partners who control those two big institutions that I was talking about, the same people. So if they accept supporting us on the same program with the European Investment Bank, surely they will support us on the bilateral phase as well.”

IMF Funding Asked if Zimbabwe would seek financing from the IMF next year, Ncube said. “Why not? We can only ask, they can only say no. But if we can get funding from the IMF that would be fantastic. Just additional support on our balanceof-payments position.”

And on the possibility of selling dollar debt thereafter: “It’s possible, I would say late next year. At the moment you cannot go into the Eurobond market, which is commercial debt, while you still owe concessional debt. It doesn’t work like that.”

“So that’s the sequence. Once we have cleared this, at least the preferred creditors in February -- the IMF, World Bank and the European Investment Bank -- then after that point we can go into the market.”

Zimbabwe’s economy grew by an estimated 3.4% last year, according to the IMF, which projects a 2.1% contraction in 2019. Growth will probably be flat this year as a power shortage curbs output, according to Ncube.

Growth Forecasts President Mnangagwa met with Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi last month and requested additional electricity supplies from his neighbor’s Cahora Bassa hydropower dam to help ease the

deficit, he said.

“We are weak on the financial side, but it is possible for us to strike a relationship where we can access the amount of power we need from Cahora Bassa,” he said. “I think that is going to be consummated very soon.”

Besides power shortages, there are also self-inflicted risks to Mnangagwa’s hopes of economic revival. The IMF warned last month that the violent repression of protests in August

and January set back Zimbabwe’s efforts to re-engage with its external partners.

Since coming to power in November 2017, Mnangagwa has embarked on a drive to lure more foreign investment, touting attractions including the world’s third-biggest reserves of platinum-group metals, the second-biggest biggest reserves of chrome, along with deposits of gold and diamonds.

Investment Bonanza Officials have announced more than $27 billion of planned

investment, including a deal with Russian investors to build a $4 billion platinum mine. A stake that the Zimbabwean military held in that project posed a potential hurdle for its financing, according to people familiar with the discussions. The army is no longer a shareholder, Mnangagwa said. That could make it easier to raise the financing required.

“They have moved out,” Mnangagwa said. “We have removed the Zimbabwe Defence Forces. It’s now owned by a private company. We moved out the army which had initially been part of the shareholding.”

“50% is owned by the Russian company and then 50% by a local Zimbabwean company, which bought out the army,” he said. “We consummated this a few weeks ago, very recently.”

On Zimbabwe’s growing gold production, Mnangagwa said Two years ago, the country produced about 18 metric tons of gold. Last year it increased to about 33 tons, and output will probably grow to 40 tons this year. In four years’ time, the plan is to reach 100 tons of gold output yearly.

By Antony Sguazzin

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US places entry visa ban on ICC prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, ICC, Gambian Fatou Bensouda has been hit with a visa ban by the United States government over her office’s decision to probe alleged war crimes by Americans.

She has been investigating US forces and their allies in Afghanistan, a move that United States Secretary of State Mike Pompeo cautioned last month and said could lead to sanctions on ICC officials.

Pompeo said in mid-March: “I am announcing a policy on those individuals directly responsible for any ICC investigations of US personnel. This includes persons who take or have taken action to request or further such an investigation.”

Investigations usually target nationals of countries that are signatories to the Rome Statute that set up the court which tries international crimes. The US is not a signatory to the statute.

Bensouda who has been prosecutor since 2012, becomes the first official to be targeted by the sanction. Her office, however, insists that as an independent impartial body, their work will proceed.

The statement attributed to her office read as follows: “We can confirm that the US authorities have revoked the Prosecutor’s visa for entry into the US. It is our understanding that should not have an impact on the Prosecutor’s travel to the US to meet her obligations to the UN, including regular briefings before the UN Security Council.

“The Office of the Prosecutor has an impartial mandate independent and under the Rome Statute of the ICC. The Prosecutor and her Office will continue to undertake that statutory duty with utmost commitment and professionalism, without fear or favour.”

Her office has routinely been accused of targeting Africans, a claim it has repeatedly rejected. Recent cases of acquittals have also cast a bad light on their work.

Under her reign, Burundi became the first country in history to successfully exit the ICC. The Gambia and South Africa had previously applied same but have since withdrawn their applications.

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FIFA U-20 World Cup Ukraine triumph as records fall

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fter 4,950 minutes of play, 52 matches and 153 goals, it’s all over! The FIFA U-20 World Cup Poland 2019 drew to a close in Lodz after four weeks of action, with Ukraine conquering their first FIFA competition.

With excitement right to the final whistle, the Eastern Europeans’ 3-1 win over Korea Republic in the final was a fitting conclusion, with many memorable moments, records, and strong individual and team performances. Let us look back at the 22nd edition of the tournament.

The champions Ukraine could scarcely imagine lifting the trophy before the tournament began. They exited last year’s UEFA European U-19 Championship in the semi-finals and set themselves the target of reaching the knockout phase in Poland. Yet Oleksandr Petrakov’s side made a strong start to the competition, reaching the Round of 16 after just two outings in which they beat USA 2-1 and Qatar 1-0. Although their final group game was a 1-1 draw against Nigeria, it enabled them to rest several key players.

Ukraine were uncompromising in defence during the knockout phase, defeating Panama 4-1, Colombia 1-0 and Italy 1-0 on their way to the decider. Even the temporary absence of firstchoice goalkeeper Andriy Lunin, who was called up to the senior squad, hardly fazed them.

By contrast, Ukraine made a terrible start to the final, falling behind after just five minutes. However, a Vladyslav Supriaha double put them on course for a place in football’s history books. The result meant the Ukrainians were the only team to remain unbeaten during the tournament.

The runners-up Having arrived in Poland as AFC U-19 Championship runnersup, Korea Republic were brought down to earth with a bang in their very first game. While the Taeguk Warriors lost 1-0 to

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European champions Portugal, it proved to be their only defeat until the final. The South Koreans dispatched South Africa 1-0, record champions Argentina 2-1, Japan 1-0 and South American

kings Ecuador 1-0. The only drama came in their quarter-final against Senegal, when Lee Jisol levelled the scores at 2-2 in the eighth minute of added time – the latest goal at this tournament – before Korea Republic triumphed on penalties.

Although the title was almost within their reach in the final, they ultimately had to settle for silver.

The hosts Poland impressed in the group stage in front of their passionate fans in Lodz. All three of the hosts’ matches at the Lodz Stadium – a 2-0 defeat by Colombia, a 5-0 win over Tahiti and a 0-0 draw with Senegal – were sold out. Poland ultimately reached the Round of 16 for the first time in 12 years and only the second time since 1983, before coming up short against European rivals Italy after Andrea Pinamonti scored a Panenka penalty.

Other teams in the spotlight Four teams celebrated their best-ever finish in this competition: • Ukraine: Winners (previous best: Round of 16) • Korea Republic: runners-up (4th) • Ecuador: Third (Round of 16) • Panama: Round of 16 (group stage) Tops and flops: Only one team navigated the group stage without conceding a goal: Senegal, who scored five goals while keeping three successive clean sheets – while both Uruguay and France won all three of their group matches before being eliminated in the last 16. The African side eventually exited the competition in one of the most spectacular duels of this World Cup against Korea Republic.

By contrast, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Tahiti, Honduras and Qatar all went home without a point to their name, with the latter three all failing to score.

Facts and figures Host venues (6): Lublin, Lodz, Gdynia, Bielsko Biala, Bydgoszcz, Tychy Goals scored: 153 (2.94 goals per game) Unsung heroes of the World Cup: Around 1,000 volunteers were on hand during the four-week tournament. While most were from Poland, others travelled from Angola, Nigeria, England and Azerbaijan to help at this unique event.

4 – There were no winners after 90 minutes in four of the 16 knockout games: • Round of 16: Colombia 1-1 New Zealand (Colombia won 5-4 on penalties) • Round of 16: Argentina 2-2 Mali a.e.t. (Mali won 5-4 on penalties) • Quarter-finals: Korea Republic 3-3 Senegal a.e.t.

(Korea Republic won 3-2 on penalties) • Play-off for third place: Italy 0-1 Ecuador a.e.t.

9.6 – Record-breaking goal: Senegal’s Amadou Sagna scored the fastest goal in #U20WC history against Tahiti in the opening match after merely 9.6 seconds. The previous record-holder was Nigeria’s Monday Odiaka in 1985. Sagna also scored the competition’s first hat-trick in four years.

155 – A total of 155 scouts from all over the world were accredited for the FIFA U-20 World Cup Poland 2019. Most came from Germany (23), England (20), Italy (18), France (13) and Spain (12).

Memorable moments Historic day for Panama: The Central Americans’ 2-1 win over Saudi Arabia on the third match day in Group E was their first-ever victory at the FIFA U-20 World Cup. Their previous

17 games in the competition resulted in four draws and 13 defeats, with Panama scoring ten goals while conceding 34.

Reaching the knockout stages was the icing on the cake for the underdogs.

Norway’s record-breaking night: The Scandinavians’ 12-0 victory over Honduras was the highest-scoring win in the history of the competition, while Erling Haland’s nine goals were the largest tally for a single player in one match at any FIFA men’s or women’s tournament. The record was previously held by Adailton, who found the target six times for Brazil in a 10-3 win over Korea Republic in 1997.

Record wins, part two: New Zealand recorded the biggest win in their tournament history when they defeated Honduras 5-0. The Kiwis’ previous best result came just four years earlier in 2015, when they beat Myanmar 5-1. Three days later, New Zealand notched their first-ever win against European opposition with a 2-0 victory over Norway.

Final standings 1 - Ukraine 2 - Korea Republic 3 - Ecuador 4 - Italy Individual awards Adidas Golden Ball: Kangin Lee (Korea Republic) Adidas Golden Boot: Erling Haland (Norway) Adidas Golden Glove: Andriy Lunin (Ukraine) FIFA Fair Play Award: Japan

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UEFA resists FIFA’s decision

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IFA’s decision to take a prominent role in the affairs of football in Africa have been resisted by the European football federation (UEFA).

Aleksander Ceferin, the head of European football, was among the FIFA vice presidents asked by Infantino to approve plans to appoint FIFA Secretary General Fatma Samoura as FIFA General Delegate for Africa.

Ceferin said Infantino’s proposal was received and a response was sought. “I cannot be expected to have your proposal examined by UEFA’s legal team or consult the

European members of the FIFA Council on a subject of such great importance in such a short time,” Ceferin wrote to Infantino in a letter seen by The Associated Press.

“Never in the history of our institutions has the FIFA Secretary General, who under the FIFA Statutes leads the

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organization, been placed on secondment to take control of a confederation, even with the latter’s consent.”

Ceferin is a member of the FIFA Council, which features the regional confederation leaders who serve as vice presidents of the global governing body.

Ceferin said Samoura becoming FIFA General Delegate for Africa while retaining the title of secretary general “raises a large number of questions and in particular the likelihood of ‘conflicts of interest’ as well as doubts over whether it complies with the statutes of FIFA and the CAF.” “Without our legal analysis of the situation and consultation of the European members of the FIFA Council, I am not at liberty to approve the proposal you put forward.”

Samoura, a Senegalese former United Nations official, became FIFA’s first female secretary general in 2016 after Infantino’s election.

Ceferin has asked Infantino for an “accurate description of the role and powers of the FIFA General Delegate for Africa, an accurate description of the way FIFA would function in her absence.”

“At this stage, I am not in possession of enough information or assurances on this subject to be able to approve the proposal,” Ceferin wrote to Infantino.

“For these various reasons, I am sure you will fully understand that, in the current state of affairs and without additional information from you, I cannot approve the proposal set out in your letter sent to the FIFA Bureau of the Council members to appoint a FIFA General Delegate for Africa.”

Sepp Blatter condemns FIFA decision

we unanimously agreed that, in principle, we do agree to the cooperation between FIFA and CAF would lead

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ormer FIFA President Sepp Blatter has joined critics of the decision to take over management of African football, questioning the role that the compliance committee is playing at the global body. ‘‘Quo vadis FIFA? African Football under control, new colonialism? Well done courageous Leodegar Tenga! Is the compliance committee sleeping?’‘ Blatter tweeted last month .

Blatter was president of FIFA for 17 years until he was kicked out of the position by the Ethics Committee on charges of corruption and financial mismanagement. He has since been banned from taking part in any FIFA activities until 2022.

Did CAF approve FIFA takeover?

Blatter was referring to the Tanzania football boss, Tanga who has cast doubt on whether the CAF Executive Committee approved FIFA’s plans as claimed in the joint statement issued on last month.

In leaked messages that Tanga reportedly sent to a CAF Whatsapp group, the Tanzanian football official argues that while the members agreed to the FIFA takeover in principle, there was no agreement on the details of how the cooperation would be implemented.

“There is no doubt that at our Exco Meeting last month,

to promoting integrity, ethical practice and FairPlay and eradicating corruption,” Tanga wrote.

“But we also agreed that Exco members would be given time to go through the proposed text and come up with the details of the cooperation.’‘ Tanga further argues that English-speaking members of the committee had asked for translated versions of the briefing documents that were written in French.

According to Tanga, a final decision on the matter was to be reached at an Exco meeting next month.

FIFA takes over management of African football Global football governing body FIFA have appointed General Fatma Samoura as “FIFA General Delegate for Africa” for a 6-month period from 1 August 2019 to 31 January 2020, renewable with the agreement of both organisations.

The agreement, announced in a joint statement, effectively sees FIFA take over the management of football on the African continent. ‘‘FIFA and CAF will work closely together in order to best serve all African Member Associations to bring stability, serenity, professionalism and effective football development on the African continent,’‘ read part of the statement.

Under the new arrangement, Samoura, who still retains her position as Secretary General of FIFA, will work with CAF President Ahmad and a team of experts to oversee the following; To oversee operational management of CAF, including governance and administrative procedures, To ensure the efficient and professional organization of all CAF competitions; To support the growth and development of football in all countries and regions of CAF ‘‘As part of this process, it was also agreed that FIFA and CAF will undertake as soon as possible a full forensic audit of CAF.’‘ Ahmad, was recently detained by authorities in France, and is also being investigated by FIFA over allegations that he unduly influenced a CAF decision to buy sportswear through a French company rather than directly from manufacturers and at inflated prices. www.thevoicenewsmagazine.com

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Andy Ruiz: I know Joshua’s flaws, He’s not a Good Boxer

Andy Ruiz is not buying any of the excuses being circulated for the shocking defeat of Anthony Joshua. Back on June 1, at Madison Square Garden in New York City, Ruiz stunned the entire industry when he stopped Joshua in seven rounds to capture the WBO, IBO, IBF, WBA world titles.

Joshua went down three times in the contest before the referee waved off the bout after the fourth knock down.

In the aftermath, there were all sorts of rumors that were being pushed in the press - including tales of Joshua being knocked out in sparring, Joshua suffering a panic attack prior to the fight, Joshua suffering a pre-fight injury.

Ruiz is shaking his head at all of that as he begins to enjoy the glory of his success.

“You know what, I think Eddie Hearn or his people are trying to get something [out there about] why he lost like that you know. But he fought a hungry guy. I was hungry, I was mentally focused for that fight and I did not want to lose in front of my family or get beat up in front of my family,” Ruiz told the press.

“For the rematch it’s going to be the same, man, and I’m going to be even more prepared, more ready. I know his flaws, I can do a lot better. I think the only thing he can do is just run around you know, like he’s not good at boxing, he’s not a good boxer. But it’s going to be a hell of a fight for Ruiz-Joshua II.” I will stand and fight him and he does not like that at all.

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And Ruiz’s head trainer, Manny Robles, is on the same page with his fighter.

“There’s talks about [Joshua] getting beat up, getting hurt in sparring, about him getting stage fright or something like that, a panic attack – I don’t believe that.

He’s been doing this for such a long time, I don’t believe it one bit. Andy came in prepared, we did our job to come in in the best shape possible, we came in ready, believing in ourselves and really that’s all that matters. That’s all that matters to us,” Robles said.

A rematch is already being put together, and should take place before the year is over.

Nigeria stage sit-in at WWC over unpaid bonuses Nigeria players staged a sit-in protest, refusing to leave their hotel in France until all of their outstanding bonuses are paid, following the team’s elimination from the Women’s World Cup after defeat to Germany.

Players claimed that they are owed bonuses from two games, against The Gambia and Senegal, from as far back as two years ago, amounting to 2 million Nigerian naira (about $5,600 U.S.), but they have been paid only half of that. They also say they are owed five days of daily allowance while at the World Cup. “They paid us 1 million [naira] and said that is all. We want them to pay the balance,” one player told ESPN. “Part of that money is from two years ago, the other is from three years ago. And they are also owing us five days’ daily allowance here in France.

“Before the World Cup, we asked them for a meeting so that we could discuss our World Cup bonuses, like they did with the men’s team last year. They ignored the letter and nobody said anything about it until now.”

The players are also demanding their share of the World Cup participation fee from FIFA, even though the tournament’s organisers are not scheduled to pay those until September.

Nigeria Football Federation president Amaju Pinnick told the press that all the outstanding allowances have been paid.

“We have paid them everything they are being owed,” he said. “The only thing outstanding is the participation fee from FIFA, which is not expected to come until after the tournament. But they insist that they want to get paid, as

they have spoken to players from Cameroon and France, who told them they have already been paid.”

It is not the first time Nigeria’s women team has staged a protest over bonuses. After winning the 2016 African title in Cameroon, the squad returned home and staged a public

demonstration on the streets of the capital, Abuja, to demand payment of their outstanding allowances.

In 2004, the team also sat in for three days at their hotel in South Africa after winning the African title until the allowances were settled.

Nigeria reached the knockout stage of the Women’s World Cup in France before losing 3-0 to Germany in the round of 16 on Saturday in Grenoble. As at press time, the girls have finally dropped their demands and left for Nigeria for the issue to be resolved by the football federation.

N.B. At press time, the financial issues had been resolved and the players had flew back to Nigeria to continue their rest end of season and prepare for their new league season around the world. We also learnt that few of the players impressed scouts from Europe and America so they may be switching teams at the start of the new season.

TV Management.

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