Month: October 2023

President Emmanuel Macron of France announced on Wednesday that his country would dispatch a naval vessel to assist Gaza’s overwhelmed hospitals in the face of Israel’s ongoing bombardment and blockade.

Macron revealed that the ship would depart from Toulon within the next 48 hours, with the primary mission of providing vital support to Gaza’s healthcare facilities. He shared this decision during a joint press conference in Cairo, held alongside Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.

Moreover, France would also be sending a plane loaded with essential medical supplies to Egypt, which would then facilitate the transport of these crucial materials into the embattled Palestinian territory.

In an environment marked by escalating hostilities between Israel and Hamas, President al-Sisi, during the press conference, expressed the urgent need to prevent a ground invasion of the Gaza Strip. He emphasized that such an incursion would inevitably result in a high number of civilian casualties. President al-Sisi underscored that over 6,000 civilian fatalities had already been reported in connection with the Israeli strikes, and alarmingly, nearly half of those casualties were children.

Macron’s visit to Egypt followed his recent stop in Israel, where he expressed support for the Israeli military’s retaliatory actions against Hamas. On October 7, Hamas militants carried out the deadliest attack in Israel’s history, targeting southern areas of the country and resulting in the loss of more than 1,400 lives, the majority of whom were civilians, according to Israeli authorities.

In the weeks since this initial attack, a relentless campaign of Israeli airstrikes in Gaza, under the control of Hamas, has led to the tragic deaths of over 6,500 individuals, the majority of whom were civilians, as reported by the Hamas-controlled health ministry in the Palestinian territory. Additionally, during his tour, Macron visited the occupied West Bank for discussions with Mahmoud Abbas, President of the Palestinian Authority.

The sudden freefall of the Nigerian Naira versus the US dollar has caused widespread shock and alarm in the banking and investment industries.

Nigeria’s naira hit a record low of 1,200 per dollar on the black market, online platform aboki FX showed, a day after the currency hit a new low on the official market due to persistent dollar shortages.

The naira has been in freefall on the unofficial market, where it trades freely, which worsened after currency restrictions were lifted on the official market.

Last month, the currency slid past 1,000 naira per dollar on the black market and continued to weaken as excess dollar demand is funneled into the informal market from the official market.

Africa’s largest economy currency traded lower at N1,330 to a dollar recently for those that demanded wired transfer.

“The dollar is not available because now the BDC operators can only get FX from customers and at the moment customers are controlling the market so if you want to buy from a customer, he will not agree to the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) rate. says Bureau de change (BDC) operator, Ishaq Ammar Sulaiman.

Some say the naira depreciation is attributed to persistent dollar shortages in the financial system, and being driven by new demands as import bills rose on 43 unbanned items recently by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).

Aliyu Audu, an Economist said what is happening now is that Nigeria has a new administration and the team is trying to get a grasp of the economy and possibly missed some steps.

“Why is the country demanding dollars? We demand dollars to import and buy goods and services and that is why we have increased the value of the dollar and the Naira is depreciating,” he added.

According to Aliyu, Nigeria has no part in importation adding that the country should look back to the 80s and the policies operational then.

“Let’s strengthen local companies like Innoson motors, let every government official use Innosen vehicles, this will stop the demand for Toyota. And in the long run, stop demanding dollars, and substitute whatever we consume with local goods under import substitution industrialization.

Then we will notice that the dollar will crash because if you don’t demand dollars, it will be in high supply. This is what we need to do to the economy, the long-term measure is we need to increase production, we need to be self-reliant, that is what other countries are doing,” he said.

Experts say the continued loss in value of the Naira poses huge repercussions for the entire 15-member ECOWAS bloc, and not just Nigeria.

Tunisian Football Federation (FTF) president Wadie Jary has been arrested as part of an investigation into suspected corruption, the Ministry of Youth and Sports announced on Thursday.

He was arrested following a “judicial complaint lodged by the Ministry concerning the illegality of a contract concluded between the Federation and a technical director”, Ministry spokesman Chokri Hamda told local media.

According to him, the case is linked to “financial corruption within the Federation”.

Mr. Jary’s lawyer could not be reached for comment.

Mr. Jary was elected president of the FTF in 2012.

He is the subject of several investigations into match-fixing, money laundering, embezzlement, and corruption. He has always refuted these accusations with arguments.

Local media also reported deep disagreements between Mr. Jary, a former player and coach, and the Minister of Youth and Sports, Kamel Deguiche.

In the autumn of 2020, a heated dispute broke out between Mr. Jary and Taoufik Mkacher, president of the Croissant Sportif de Chebba (CS Chebba) club. The FTF suspended the east-central club, demanding payment of fines and the submission of administrative documents.

This decision, publicly denounced by Mr. Mkacher as an “injustice”, provoked a general strike and demonstrations for over 10 days in this town of 22,000 inhabitants.

Mr. Mkacher and the club’s general secretary had been banned from holding office for two years by the FTF following a Facebook post in which the president of CS Chebba denounced the FTF president’s “authoritarian” management and lack of transparency, and called for an audit of its finances.

The United States on Monday cut all its aid to Gabon in response to the coup d’état on 30 August in the central African country, although it said it was prepared to grant further aid if democratic progress is made.

Washington, which had already halted part of its foreign aid at the end of September, formally declared that a coup d’état had taken place in Gabon, which under US law implies the end of all non-humanitarian aid.

“We will resume our assistance at the same time as concrete actions are taken by the transition government to establish a democratic regime,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said in a statement.

“The United States supports the people of Gabon in their aspirations for democracy, prosperity and stability”, he added.

On 30 August, the Gabonese army overthrew President Ali Bongo Ondimba, who had been in power for 14 years, in a coup d’état denounced by the international community.

He had been declared the winner of a presidential election widely criticised for irregularities.

Gabon, an oil-rich country, received little US aid, unlike other countries such as Niger, which also experienced a coup d’état at the end of July.

Gabon’s new military-appointed prime minister, Raymond Ndong Sima, has called for a distinction to be drawn between coups d’état and coups d’état.

The intervention of the military in Gabon was a “lesser evil” to avoid a “conflagration” in the face of “yet another electoral hold-up”, he said at the UN in September.

Former US president Donald Trump on Monday compared himself to South Africa’s late leader and Nobel Peace laureate, Nelson Mandela, during a rally in New Hampshire.

He cast himself as the victim of federal and state prosecutors who he alleges are targeting him and his businesses for political reasons.

Returning to the state to register for its presidential primary, much of his speech focused on the criminal and civil cases against him.

And at one point he suggested he was not scared of going to prison like Mandela, who spent 27 years in jail for opposing South Africa’s apartheid system.

“I don’t mind being Nelson Mandela because I’m doing it for a reason. I’m doing it for a reason. We got to save our country from these fascists,” said Trump.

Trump claimed that prosecutors “only go after the people that challenge the results of the election. They don’t go after the people that cheated”.

“Those people are free. Those people have no problem. If you want to challenge the result of an election, they hound you,” he added.

Trump also read the lyrics of a dark song, “The Snake”, that he’s used since his first campaign as an allegory of what he says are the dangers of illegal immigration.

He claimed Biden would turn the country “into a hotbed for jihadists and make our cities into dumping grounds resembling the Gaza Strip”.

Trump, who is vying for the Republican nomination to stand for president in next year’s elections, is facing a total of 91 criminal counts, including four for alleged federal 2020 election subversion.

Nigeria’s Supreme Court on Monday began hearing an appeal by an opposition candidate to quash a court decision upholding President Bola Tinubu’s victory in the February elections.

After months of deliberation, a court in September rejected applications by Atiku Abubakar of the People’s Democratic Party and Peter Obi of the Labour Party to annul Tinubu’s victory over alleged fraud and irregularities.

The two men had come second and third respectively in the vote.

Abubakar then filed an appeal, saying the judiciary had committed a “serious error” in its judgement.

The seven Supreme Court judges are expected to rule in the coming weeks on this latest challenge. It has the final say in presidential election petitions.

Nearly 25 million Nigerians voted in the February polls in an election that was generally calm, but was marked by delays in counting and failures in the electronic transfer of results.

The final results were widely accepted by the international community, which saw Tinubu declared the winner with 37 per cent of the vote.

No legal challenge to the outcome of a presidential elections has ever succeeded in Nigeria which returned to democracy in 1999.