Author: Jideofor Elumogo

At least 176 villagers were killed in flooding and landslides brought on by torrential overnight rains in eastern Congo’s South Kivu province, a local official said Friday.

Thomas Bakenge, a regional government official, gave the estimate after overseeing recovery efforts. He described the scale of destruction as “enormous, beyond words … whole houses were carried away.”

He said bodies were still being collected from the shores of the nearby Lake Kivu and called for immediate assistance.

“There is absolutely nothing left here. We urgently need help.”

Two rivers broke their banks after the heavy rains which began on Thursday evening and there have been multiple landslides with scores of homes destroyed, according to Delphin Birimbi, a community leader in the region.

As bodies were pulled from the mud, some residents estimated that more three quarters of homes in the village of Nyamukubi were carried away by the floods, along with school buildings and a health centre.

Rescuers worked to find and save anyone who may be trapped under the debris from their destroyed homes.

In a statement published Friday, the provincial government of South Kivu offered its sympathies to the families affected and said it was sending a group of officials to the area.

Heavy rains have brought misery to thousands in East Africa, with parts of Uganda and Kenya also seeing heavy rainfall.

Flooding and landslides in Rwanda, which borders Congo, left 129 people dead earlier this week.

UN officials returning from a border town in Central African Republic say around 9,700 people have crossed over from Sudan so far and that they expect more to come.

About a third of them were Central Africans returning home.

Some have been taken in by local families whilst other have had to form makeshift camps around the town of Am Dafok.

“We are currently discussing with the minister who will decide on behalf of the government where this population will be settled,” said Mohamed Ag Ayoya, the UN’s top humanitarian official in the country.

Conditions in Am Dafok town are far from ideal as the rainy season started this month and the region is prone to flooding.

Outbreaks of disease, in particular malaria are worrying the World Health Organisation (WHO). And malnutrition is a concern too, if people get weak from it they will be all the more prone to getting sick.

“We are already starting to take care of the sick, at least in relation to this. We are trying to see if we can provide mosquito nets so that people can at least protect themselves against malaria,” Gervais Tengomo, an emergencies officer with the WHO said.

“We are also intensifying surveillance to be able to quickly detect a possible epidemic and to be able to control it as quickly as possible,” he added.

Central African Republic has many troubles of its own. The UN say more than half the population is “in need of assistance and protection.”

It’s been enduring its own civil war for several years which has kept it amongst the ten poorest countries in the world.

The UN says around 120,000 people also need food assistance there.

Napoli finally ended their long wait to win Serie A on Thursday, joining late club icon Diego Maradona in the history books by being crowned Italian champions with a record-equalling five matches to play.

A 1-1 draw at Udinese gave Napoli the point they needed to end 33 years of waiting and spark wild celebrations among the thousands of fans in Udine, at the Stadio Maradona in Naples and all around southern Italy’s biggest city.

Supporters streamed onto the pitch at the Dacia Arena to celebrate after a season dominated by Luciano Spalletti’s side, creating moments of tension with home fans not happy at such open partying on their ground.

Victor Osimhen scored the decisive goal in the second half as Napoli’s current stars came back from trailing to Sandi Lovric’s opener at half-time and emulated the teams led by Maradona which won the league in 1987 and 1990.

“To be compared to him, to be the captain after Maradona to lift the Scudetto, I just have no words,” said skipper Giovanni Di Lorenzo.

“This isn’t my title, it belongs to every player and the people who worked to make our dream come true.”

Spalletti and his squad will receive an emotional welcome when they return to Naples, where the city-wide partying is set to continue to until at least their next home fixture against Fiorentina on Sunday evening.

“Seeing Neapolitans happy is enough to give you a sense of that joy they are feeling,” Spalletti told DAZN on the verge of tears.

“These people will look to this moment when life gets hard, they have every right to celebrate like this. You feel a bit more relaxed knowing that you’ve given them this moment of happiness.”

It was appropriate that Osimhen was the man to take Napoli over the line as the Nigeria striker has had the best season of his career and been key to Napoli’s historic charge to glory.

Osimhen’s title-deciding strike was his 22nd goal in 28 league appearances and rightly caused bedlam among the massed ranks of away fans who took over Udine.

Napoli’s 16-point lead over second-placed Lazio leaves them with a month-long parade between now and the end of the season which will allow their long-suffering supporters to fully unload more than a generation of frustration.

Osimhen seals deal

Napoli were straight on the front foot but looked worryingly bereft of ideas in the final third, and the away side were stunned in the 13th minute following the first spell of play in Udinese’s favour.

Lovric was given the freedom of the penalty area after being fed by Destiny Udogie, and the Slovenia midfielder took advantage by placing a lovely shot in the top corner.

Lovric stung the fingers of former Udine youth product Alex Meret in the Napoli goal just after the half-hour mark, by which point Napoli hadn’t created a single goalscoring opportunity.

Seconds later Osimhen, who looked like Napoli’s only hope of scoring in the opening period, headed a deep cross just the wrong side of the post.

However, in the 52nd minute the 24-year-old stepped up as so often he has this season to unleash a wave of relief and blue smoke from the stands with his 27th goal in all competitions.

Osimhen was on hand to ram home the leveller when, after a corner, Khvicha Kvaratskhelia’s low shot was blocked and fell to the clinical striker.

He had the ball in the net again in the 67th minute but was denied by referee Rosario Abisso who rightly whistled for a foul by Eljif Elmas.

But by that point the fans grew ever more sure that Thursday night would be the night, chanting victory songs in Udine while flares billowed and fireworks were set off at the other end of the country.

While fans had to be cleared from the pitch in Udine to avoid clashes with home supporters the Stadio Maradona was lit up by phones held by teary-eyed Neapolitans singing along to songs by late local singer-songwriter Pino Daniele

ls of this nature allow the different actors in this profession to meet. Scriptwriters need to present their scripts, they need to find producers but also distributors and all these professions are found here. So it is essential to come here. It is a great opportunity that the Dakar Series presents to us” admitted scriptwriter Samba Diop.

The programme includes workshops, master classes, pitches and series competitions. Twenty-seven films are in the running in this first edition, including “Donne-moi Ta Vie” and “Les Intruses” in French by Moroccan director Chaouki El Ofir.

“What we haven’t managed to do yet is to export our series. Apart from some good experiences, we are not yet at the stage of exporting our series. First of all, we have to watch African series among ourselves. The African market is very interesting, and at the same time the interactions between each other”, said the Moroccan director.

It is also to break down barriers that Séraphine Angoula had the idea of bringing together the actors of African series for this festival.

“I expect there to be more synergy, I want people to meet, for synchronization to take place, for there to be Burkinabe, Nigerian, Moroccan and South African projects. That is the ambition. The ambition is that we work together, that we look for the best elsewhere and that we manage to create a structured industry in the long term”, said festival director Séraphine Angoula.

“Beyond the competitions, this Dakar series festival is also an opportunity for the actors of the sector to take stock of the situation. Exchanges have thus essentially revolved around development issues: financing, quality, opening up to the international market, etc. But one thing seems to be unanimously agreed upon here, and that is that the future of African cinema lies in series”.

A senior Nigerian politician has been sentenced to nine years and eight months in a UK prison for masterminding a scheme to extract a kidney for his ailing daughter from a young man he had trafficked to London.

The politician was deemed to be the “motivating factor” behind the plot.

Ike Ekweremadu, 60, a former deputy president of the Nigerian senate, his wife, Beatrice, 56, and Dr Obinna Obeta, 51, were found guilty by an Old Bailey jury in March in the first organ trafficking conviction under the Modern Slavery Act.

They were found to have conspired to bring a 21-year-old Lagos street trader to a private renal unit at London’s Royal Free Hospital as a potential kidney donor for Ekweremadu’s daughter Sonia.

Judgment statement

On Friday, during his sentencing statement, Mr. Justice Jeremy Johnson stated that the three co-conspirators were all involved in a reprehensible business. He declared, “The act of extracting human organs is a type of servitude. It reduces human beings and their physical forms to commodities that can be traded.”

Addressing Ekweremadu the judge said: “You played a leading role in the offending. You did so in order to secure the material advantage, namely a human kidney for your daughter. I am sure that you were the driving force throughout.” The guardian uk quoted in a report.

The senator was also involved in bribing a medical secretary at the Royal Free, the judge said: “You were involved in the corruption of a member of hospital staff.” The judge said Ekweremadu must serve two-thirds of his sentence in prison and the remainder released under licence.

There are reports that Nigeria’s senate and the Economic Community of West African States had urged the judge to show clemency to Ekweremadu, a political ally of the former president Goodluck Jonathan.

Other parties

Beatrice Ekweremadu was sentenced to four years and six months, with half spent in custody. Obeta, who helped organise the organ harvesting plot after himself receiving a kidney transplant at the Royal Free in July 2021 from another man allegedly trafficked from Nigeria, was sentenced to 10 years, two-thirds of which must be served in prison.

Background

In March 2022, a hospital rejected the kidney transplant attempted by the Ekweremadus.

Later, it was discovered that the family had been attempting to traffic individuals for organ transplants, and in May, the victim (referred to as C) went to the police in fear of his life, believing that he was being lined up for another transplant in Nigeria.

C remained fearful of reprisals against himself and his family and was worried that his father had been approached to drop the case. The prosecutor Hugh Davies KC stated, “Kidney donation for reward is a substantial, internationally prohibited commercial industry that exploits economically vulnerable individuals.”

Ike Ekweremadu played a significant role in the 2014 legislation that prohibited the activity he engaged in.

The victim was being supported by Justice and Care, a charity that campaigns for the victims of modern slavery