Month: September 2023

The Pope said on Wednesday that the Mediterranean Sea must not become a “place of conflict”.

Speaking at his weekly address to the faithful in St. Peter’s Square, Vatican City, he said “It is not tolerable that it becomes a tomb, neither should it be a place of conflict.”

“The Mediterranean is the complete opposite of the clash between civilisations, war, human trafficking. The Mediterranean is a means of communication between Africa, Asia and Europe; between the north and the south, the east and the west, persons and cultures, peoples and tongues, philosophies and religions.”

Western society in crisis

Francis’ address came following his visit to the French port city of Marseille last weekend for a meeting to discuss the Mediterranean, where he decried what he called a “fanaticism of indifference” towards migrants.

He said, on Wednesday, the tens of thousands of migrants crossing the sea to reach Europe must be welcomed and integrated because they can help Western societies.

“Our societies, sickened by consumerism and by empty escapism need to open themselves, their souls and spirits need to be oxygenised,” he said, adding, “Then they will be able to read the [migrant] crisis as an opportunity and deal with it positively. “

Anti-migrant sentiment in Europe

Migrant crossings in the Mediterranean have almost doubled since 2022, according to figures released in September by EU coast and border guard agency Frontex.

Between January and August 2023, the number of migrants arriving in Italy via the Mediterranean from North Africa came to almost 114,300.

The rise in crossings comes amidst an increase in anti-migrant sentiment in several European countries.

During his address on Wednesday, Pope Francis gave a short message to visiting Polish pilgrims urging them to continue to help Ukrainian refugees.

Poland will hold national elections on October 15, with political parties on the right increasingly taking anti-migrant positions and showing less support for Ukraine.

Napoli striker Victor Osimhen is reserving “the right to take legal action” against his own club after his team posted a bizarre video to TikTok seemingly mocking the player.

The odd video comes after Osimhen helped the Italian team secure a first league title, the club’s first in three decades.

Despite Osimhen singlehandedly bolstering Napoli with 31 goals across all competitions, he became the target of a strange, now-deleted video, shared to the Serie A club’s official TikTok account.

Osimhen’s agent Roberto Calenda issued a statement on Tuesday night about the incident.

He wrote on Twitter: “What happened today on Napoli’s official profile on the TikTok platform is not acceptable. A video mocking Victor was first made public and then, but now belatedly, deleted.

“A serious fact that causes very serious damage to the player and adds to the treatment that the boy is suffering in the last period between media trials and fake news.”

Calenda added: “We reserve the right to take legal action and any useful initiative to protect Victor”.

The video featured a clip of the striker’s penalty miss from their match against Bologna on Sunday, with an odd, sped-up voice dubbed over the top.

The strange social media clip comes after there appeared to be tension between Osimhen and Napoli manager Rudi Garcia during the game.

The 24-year-old Nigerian striker was seen berating Garcia as he was substituted off with four minutes remaining of the goalless draw.

The bizarre social media scrap comes after Osimhen, who captured the interest of Manchester United this summer, did not sign a new contract with the Italian team.

Osimhen’s current deal runs through to the summer of 2025.

The Chinese community in Lagos, Nigeria celebrated both their National Day and the Mid-Autumn Festival with dance and songs on Saturday.

National Day marks the anniversary of the 1 October, 1949, founding of the People’s Republic of China by then-leader Mao Zedong.

The festival, also known as the Moon Festival, is the second most important feast day in China after the Chinese New Year.

It is typically celebrated on the 15th day of the 8th lunar month, which falls in September or October in the Gregorian calendar.

To the Chinese, the festival is a time for reunions and harmony.

Saturday’s celebration was a chance to bring together the Chinese community and local Nigerians and reinforce relations.

Among those joining in the festival was Nigeria’s Minister of State for Steel Development, Alhaji Uba Ahmadu.

Reading out a message on behalf of Vice President Kashim Shettima, he said “China’s enduring support has significantly contributed to Nigeria’s advancement across various facets of national development.”

Chinese Consul-General Yan Yuging assured the guests that “Nigeria is a very important strategic partner of China.”

The ruling junta in Mali announced on Monday the postponement of presidential elections scheduled for February 2023.

In a statement, government spokesperson Abdoulaye Maïga told journalists in Bamako that the dates initially scheduled for the two rounds of voting, February 4 and 18, 2024, would be “slightly postponed for technical reasons”.

Among these technical reasons, the authorities cited factors linked to the adoption of new constitution earlier this year and the revision of electoral rolls. They also cited a dispute with French company, Idemia, which they say is involved in the census process.

The government has said that the the new dates for the election will be announced at a later stage.

Mali held a referendum in June, 2023, on a new constitution which strengthens the president’s powers and gives pride of place to the country’s military. Despite criticism of the draft constitution, the “yes” vote won, with 96.91 percent of the votes counted backing the plans.

Egypt’s presidential election will take place in December, rather than in the spring of 2024 as the Constitution allows, a deadline shortened by economic considerations in the country caught between inflation and devaluation, according to observers.

“Egyptian voters will cast their ballots throughout the country on December 10, 11 and 12,” announced the head of the Electoral Commission, Judge Walid Hassan Hamza, on Monday. And “the final results with the name of the elected president will be published in the official gazette on December 18”, he added.

He also gave a detailed timetable for the vote: candidacies must be submitted in October, the election campaign will run from November 9 to 29, and Egyptian expatriates will vote from December 1 to 3.

The election was initially scheduled for the spring, the maximum period stipulated by the Constitution, but many observers have been saying for weeks that it will take place in December, due to economic considerations in a country regularly forced to devalue its currency, which risks exacerbating social anger.

This presidential election, the third in which current president Abdel Fattah al-Sissi could compete, is already shaping up to be a tense affair for the head of state, who came to power by deposing the Islamist Mohamed Morsi in 2013 before being elected very comfortably in 2014 and then re-elected in 2018 against a single candidate who claimed to be his supporter.

Mr. Sissi has not yet officially announced his candidacy, but is expected to do so soon, experts assure us.

He will be running at a time when purchasing power is steadily eroding in this country of 105 million inhabitants: inflation is running at 40%, the 50% devaluation in recent months has pushed up the price of goods – virtually all of which are imported into Egypt – and the recent bonuses and increases announced by the President for civil servants and pensioners have had little effect.

The economic question will be the main issue at stake in the December elections, for which, so far, only one candidate has entered the campaign: Ahmed al-Tantawi.

For months now, this former member of parliament known for his outbursts in parliament has been denouncing “crimes” committed by the “security forces” against his teams and supporters.

At least 35 of them have been detained, and Mr. Tantawi revealed that his phone had been tapped since September 2021, after the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab established the presence of spyware on it.

Another opponent, Hicham Kassem, head of the Free Current, a coalition of liberal parties, was recently sentenced to six months’ imprisonment, a sentence that effectively deprives him of any participation in the campaign and the election.

The recent coups in Africa are attempts by militaries to save their countries from presidents’ “broken promises,” the head of Guinea´s junta said Thursday as he rebuffed the West for boxing in the continent of more than 1 billion people.

Col. Mamadi Doumbouya, who was sworn in as Guinea’s interim president following the coup in 2021, told the U.N. General Assembly that beyond condemning the coups, global leaders must also “look to and address the deep-rooted causes.”

“The putschist is not only the person who takes up arms to overthrow a regime,“ he told the gathering of world leaders in New York. “I want us all to be well aware of the fact that the real putschists, the most numerous, are those who avoid any condemnation – they are those … who cheat to manipulate the text of the constitution in order to stay in power eternally.”

Guinea is one of several nations in West and Central Africa that have experienced eight coups since 2020, including two – Niger and Gabon – in recent months. The military takeovers, sometimes celebrated by citizens in those countries and condemned by international organizations and foreign countries, have raised concern about the stability of the continent, whose young population of at least 1.3 billion is set to double by 2050 and make up a quarter of the planet´s people.

Doumbouya accused some leaders in Africa of clinging to power by any means – often including amending the constitution – to the detriment of their people.

In Guinea, he said he led soldiers to depose then-President Alpha Conde in the September 2021 coup to prevent the country from “slipping into complete chaos.” He said the situation was similar in other countries hit by coups and was a result of “broken promises, the lethargy of the people and leaders tampering with constitutions with the sole concern of remaining in power to the detriment of collective well-being.”

Doumbouya also rebuffed attempts by the West and other developed countries to intervene in Africa´s political challenges, saying that Africans are “exhausted by the categorizations with which everyone wants to box us in.”

“We Africans are insulted by the boxes, the categories which sometimes place us under the influence of the Americans, sometimes under that of the British, the French, the Chinese and the Turks,” the Guinean leader said. “Today, the African people are more awake than ever and more than ever determined to take their destiny into their own hands.”

While the Guinean leader defended the coups in his country and elsewhere, concerns remain about the effectiveness of such military takeovers in addressing the challenges they said made them “intervene.”

In Mali, where soldiers have been in power since 2020, the Islamic State group almost doubled the territory it controls in less than a year, according to U.N. experts. And in Burkina Faso, which recorded two coups in 2020, economic growth slowed to 2.5% in 2022 after a robust 6.9% the year before.

“Military coups are wrong, as is any tilted civilian political arrangement that perpetuates injustice,” said Nigerian President Bola Tinubu. As the leader of West Africa´s regional bloc of ECOWAS, he is leading efforts of neighbors to reverse the coup in the region.

“The wave crossing parts of Africa does not demonstrate favor towards coups,” He said. “It is a demand for solutions to perennial problems.”

Hundreds of Nigerians rallied in Lagos Thursday to demand an investigation into last week’s death of an upcoming singer, whose sudden demise has fired up the country’s Afrobeats world.

MohBad, whose real name was Ilerioluwa Oladimeji Aloba, a singer and rapper who wrote hits such as “Feel Good”, died mysteriously last Tuesday aged 27.

The cause of his death has been the subject of widespread speculation.

“I’m mentally drained. I feel so sad that how could someone be bullied to this moment and they see that they take his life,” said Mama J., a Fashion designer.

Nigeria’s social media has been flooded with indignation over Mohbad’s passing, with some alleging that he had been harassed by powerful members of the country’s hugely influential music industry.

National police in Lagos State, Nigeria’s economic and cultural capital, announced Monday that they had formed a special team to conduct a “fair and transparent investigation.”

“Nobody deserves to die at 27 now, nobody deserves to die an untimely death, nobody deserves to die without knowing what killed them, nobody deserves to die that way, it’s wrong, it should be something that everybody should be concerned with, every other artist out there, every creative out there should be concerned about the death,” said Eltee Skahillz, an Afrobeat star.

MohBad’s career took off in 2019, after being signed by the powerful record label of famous rapper Naira Marley, one of the country’s leading performers. The two parted ways in 2022 after disagreements.

In recent days, some fans online accused the rapper’s team of having a link in MohBad’s death, with an online petition which has gathered more than 250,000 signatories.

Mozambican President Filipe Jacinto Nyusi was welcomed Friday (Sep. 22) by the U.S. Secretary of Defence to discuss the nations’ bilateral defence relationship and security cooperation.

Since 2017, Mozambique’s northernmost province of Cabo Delgado, has been the scene of a conflict between authorities and radicalized fighters.

Austin expressed a commitment to work together with Mozambique “to eliminate the causes of conflict and to expand security in the region.”

“Terrorism remains a significant threat to regional security. And both of our countries have suffered from terrorism. And we are in this together. So we’re deeply grateful for your partnership to counter violent extremist groups in northern Mozambique and your cooperation with the Southern Africa Development Community, The European Union and others shows the power of partnership in combating violent extremism.”

“I wish to thank you most sincerely and President Biden and the government of the United States of America for the support we have been enjoying in different areas ranging from the economy, health, and security.”

President Filipe Nyusi and Lloyd J. Austin III, who met at the Pentagon, also exchanegd views on domain awareness and strengthening maritime security.