Author: Jideofor Elumogo

The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (NCDC) has reported fresh cases of Lassa fever, along with 20 deaths spanning 16 states over the course of one week, from February 26 to March 3.

During the ninth week of 2024, the NCDC observed a rise in confirmed cases, with 96 cases recorded in the previous week.

Lassa fever is a severe viral disease transmitted to humans via contact with contaminated food or objects, usually from infected rodents or individuals. Symptoms range from fever, headache, and sore throat to more severe manifestations like bleeding from different body parts.

Despite extensive efforts, Nigeria continues to grapple with new cases and deaths, indicating the ongoing threat posed by Lassa fever. The country recorded a total of 109 cases within one week.

From weeks one to nine, Nigeria documented 682 confirmed cases and 128 deaths, with a case fatality rate of 18.8%, exceeding the rate recorded for the same period in 2023.

The outbreak has affected multiple states, including Ondo, Bauchi, Edo, Benue, Ebonyi, Kogi, Kaduna, Taraba, Enugu, Delta, Jigawa, Adamawa, Anambra, Rivers, Ogun, and Oyo.

The report highlighted that 62% of confirmed cases originated from Ondo, Edo, and Bauchi, with the remaining 38% spread across 24 states.

Most affected individuals fall within the age group of 31 to 40 years, with a slightly higher incidence among males compared to females.

In response to the outbreak, the National Lassa Fever multi-partner, multi-sectoral incident management system has been activated to coordinate a comprehensive response at all levels through the Emergency Operations Centre (EOC).

Senegal will head to the polls Sunday to vote in a tightly contested presidential race that has fired up political tensions and tested one of West Africa’s most stable democracies.

The presidential election will take place after much uncertainty following President Macky Sall’s unsuccessful effort to delay the Feb. 25 vote until the end of the year, sparking violent protests.

In the latest turn of events leading up to Sunday’s vote, top opposition leader Ousmane Sonko was released from prison last week, triggering jubilant celebrations on the streets of Dakar and renewed excitement about the contest.

Sunday’s election is set to be Senegal’s fourth democratic transfer of power since it gained independence from France in 1960. The country is viewed as a pillar of stability in a region that has seen dozens of coups and attempted coups in recent years.

Alioune Tine, founder of Afrikajom, a Senegalese think tank, told the Associated Press that Sunday’s election had set a grim record in the country’s democratic history, with rights groups accusing Sall’s government of repressing the media, civil society and the opposition.

“It was the longest and most violent presidential election process, with the most deaths, injuries and political detainees,” said Tine.

Human Rights Watch said nearly 1,000 opposition members and activists have been arrested across the country in the last three years. But in a recent interview with the press, Sall denied that he’s trying to hold on to power.

There are 19 candidates in the race, the highest number in Senegal’s history. These include a former prime minister, a close ally of Sonko — who was barred from running — and a former mayor of Dakar. A runoff between leading candidates is widely expected.

Despite the violent upheavals in recent months, analysts say unemployment is the chief concern for a majority of young Senegalese. Around half of Senegal’s population of 17 million are under 18, according to Afrobarometer, an independent survey research group.

“The big question right now for the Senegalese election is how are we going to break out of poverty,” said Marième Wone Ly, a former Senegalese political party leader. “We can’t see the end of the tunnel. People don’t see it.”

About a third of Senegalese live in poverty, World Bank data shows. Thousands have fled towards the West in search of economic opportunity, undertaking risky and often deadly journeys.

Analysts say Amadou Ba, a former prime minister, and Bassirou Diomaye Faye, who is backed by Sonko, are likely to emerge among the front-runners. Faye was also freed from prison last week, in time to spend the final days of the run-up to Sunday’s vote on the campaign trail.

Sonko was disqualified from the ballot in January because of a prior conviction for defamation, Senegal’s highest election authority said at the time. His supporters maintain his legal troubles are part of a government effort to derail his candidacy.

The popular opposition leader has faced a slew of legal troubles that started when he was accused of rape in 2021. He was acquitted of the charge but was convicted of corrupting youth and sentenced to two years in prison last summer, which ignited deadly protests across Senegal.

Senegal was gripped by deadly unrest last summer when protesters took to the streets over concerns that Sall would seek a third term in office. Constitutional reforms prohibit a president from serving more than two consecutive terms as decided by a 2016 referendum.

Sall eventually ruled out a third term.

Other contenders for top spots in the race are Idrissa Seck, who has run in previous races and served as prime minister some 20 years ago before being sacked and briefly jailed over corruption allegations, and Khalifa Sall, a former mayor of Dakar and longtime opposition figure. Sall and the president are not related.

Anta Babacar Ngom, the first woman to run for president in years, is the only female presidential candidate in the race, but few expect her to gain a significant share of the vote.

Sall’s surprise move to release Sonko and Faye has helped to defuse tensions that had escalated in recent months. Election observers say Sunday’s vote is more likely to be peaceful.

“Loosening the knot has tempered things a little, and has brought a bit of calm to the public arena,” said Rokhiatou Gassama, a civil society election observer. “According to my analysis, we’re going to have a peaceful election.”

Nigeria’s president Bola Tinubu will from April 1st place a three-month ban on ministers and other government officials from publicly funded overseas travel. This is aimed at curbing government spending on foreign trips.

This decision comes as a response to President Tinubu’s concerns regarding the escalating costs associated with such trips by public officials. His chief of staff highlighted the necessity of this move against the backdrop of mounting travel expenses incurred by the government.

Criticism has been directed at President Tinubu and his administration for their frequent international visits. Particularly contentious was the sponsorship of over 400 individuals to attend the COP28 climate conference in Dubai last November, drawing ire, particularly on social media platforms.

Since assuming office in May 2023, President Tinubu has embarked on more than 15 foreign trips. Reports indicate that his expenditure on both domestic and foreign travel surpassed budgeted amounts, with figures reaching 3.4 billion naira ($2.2 million; £1.8 million) in the first half of his presidency.

Faced with Nigeria’s pressing economic challenges and the imperative of prudent fiscal management, President Tinubu’s administration sees the travel ban as a necessary step. The country is grappling with severe cost-of-living crises, exacerbating widespread hardship and public discontent.

This temporary prohibition on official travel underscores President Tinubu’s commitment to addressing public concerns. Earlier initiatives included a significant reduction in the size of official travel delegations, including his entourage, announced in January.

Under the upcoming ban, government officials will only be permitted to travel abroad if it is deemed essential, subject to President Tinubu’s approval at least two weeks in advance. The objective is to ensure officials prioritize their core responsibilities for effective service delivery.

However, while tightening regulations on official travel, President Tinubu has not indicated whether he will scale back his trips. His administration has previously defended his international engagements as crucial for addressing economic challenges and advancing national interests.

Non-Black former soccer players in England were 50% more likely than their Black counterparts to progress into management, said a report published on Tuesday.

In a latest study into coaching diversity, U.K.-based advocacy group Black Footballers Partnership (BFP) highlighted the ongoing disparity in the sport and concluded Black managers or assistants were also 41% more likely to be fired.

“Football should be a game for everyone on and off the pitch. If you are good enough on the pitch your dreams and hopes can and should be realized,” wrote a group of Black former players including Sol Campbell and Les Ferdinand in the report’s foreword. “The significant drop off in off-field opportunities lets down Black players and an industry that relies on their talent.”

The group, which also includes Chris Ramsey, Paul Davis and Ricky Hill, described the lack of opportunities for Black coaches as a “systemic issue.”

Burnley’s Vincent Kompany began the season as the Premier League’s only Black manager. Then Nuno Espirito Santo, who was born on the African island of São Tomé, was hired by Nottingham Forest in December.

In its 2022 report, the BFP found 43% of Premier League players were Black, but only 4.4% of managerial positions for former players were taken up by Black applicants.

In the latest report, academics Sam Hoey from the University of Liverpool, Thomas Peeters from Erasmus University, Rotterdam, and Stefan Szymanski from the University of Michigan studied a sample of about 3,500 players from England’s top two divisions from 1990 to 2010 and who stopped playing in 2013 or earlier.

The report said Black managerial staff were also less likely to be promoted.

“In sum, Black former players get fewer chances at management, get promoted more slowly (if at all), their progress stalls sooner, and they get fired quicker than their non-Black counterparts — and none of that is related to their performance,” the BFP said.

“A career in football management often looks like a game of snakes and ladders; but for Black former players it’s pretty much all snakes and no ladders, and we have the data to prove it,” BFL executive director Delroy Corinaldi said.

South Africa’s ruling African National Congress (ANC) is suing the independent electoral body and a rival political party led by a former president, highlighting divisions ahead of what could be the most crucial election of the last 30 years in the country.

The ANC says the new uMkhonto weSizwe ( Spear of the Nation ) party did not meet registration criteria in September. The case opened on Tuesday before the electoral court in Bloemfontein, in the centre of the country.

The new party, also known as MK and led by ex-South African president and former ANC leader Jacob Zuma, could be deregistered and unable to contest the May 29 national elections. MK officials said they would not accept being disqualified, with one even threatening “civil war”.

MK sowed trouble within the ANC by using the name of its now-disbanded military wing, which had been founded by Nelson Mandela. The ANC is challenging the use of the name uMkhonto weSizwe and a logo that bears a striking resemblance to that of its former military branch in separate legal proceedings over copyright infringement.

Zuma’s decision to pledge support for MK has added a new element to the bitter rivalry. The two parties have exchanged insults in recent months. ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula called Zuma “the most destructive person” to South Africa’s democratic progress and referred to the new party’s officials as his “chihuahuas”.

Zuma was forced out of South Africa’s leadership in 2018 following corruption allegations and is currently on trial for corruption, although that case has faced long delays. He has been extremely critical of the ANC of his successor, current South African President Cyril Ramaphosa.

Mr Zuma was suspended from the ANC after publicly supporting Mr MK. He attended Tuesday’s hearing at the Electoral Court, as did Mbalula.

The ANC has governed South Africa for 30 years since the end of apartheid’s system of racial segregation in 1994, but it is expected to face its toughest test in the vote of this year. Several polls predict that the ANC will lose its majority for the first time and will be forced to form a coalition to stay in power.

According to the latest poll conducted in February and March, MK could become South Africa’s third party after its first national election, with significant support in Zuma’s home province of KwaZulu-Natal, where it is expected to gain ground. voice in the ANC.

The ANC has denied the legal action is a reaction to the political threat posed by MK and Zuma.

MK’s response to the legal action has also troubled South Africans, particularly comments from Visvin Reddy, a party official in KwaZulu-Natal. “Listen to me very carefully,” Mr. Reddy said in a speech earlier this month. “This country will descend into civil war the day MK is not allowed to campaign and be on the ballot. No one will vote. No one in this country will vote. We will make sure of it.”

Mr. Reddy later apologized, but the threat of violence over Mr. Zuma’s allegations of injustice has been taken seriously since more than 350 people died during a week of rioting in 2021 when the former president was sentenced to prison for contempt of court.

Looting, burning and killings were the worst unrest South Africa has seen since the final days of apartheid. A report linked the violence to anger over poverty and unemployment, but some close to Zuma were accused of instigating it.

An attempt to repeal a 2015 ban on female genital cutting in Gambia was sent for further committee discussions by lawmakers on Monday. Gambian activists fear the passage of the bill would overturn years of work to better protect girls and women.

The legislation was referred to a national committee for further debate and could return to a vote in the weeks and months ahead.

Activists in the largely Muslim country had warned that lifting the ban would hurt years of work against a procedure often performed on girls under age five in the mistaken belief that it would control their sexuality.

The procedure, which also has been called female genital mutilation, includes the partial or full removal of external genitalia, often by traditional community practitioners with tools such as razor blades or at times by health workers.

It can cause serious bleeding, death and childbirth complications but remains a widespread practice in parts of Africa.

Jaha Dukureh, the founder of Safe Hands for Girls, a local group that aims to end the practice, told The Associated Press she worried that other laws safeguarding women’s rights could be repealed next.

Dukureh underwent the procedure and watched her sister bleed to death.

“If they succeed with this repeal, we know that they might come after the child marriage law and even the domestic violence law. This is not about religion but the cycle of controlling women and their bodies,” she said.

The United Nations has estimated that more than half of women and girls ages 15 to 49 in Gambia have undergone the procedure.

The bill is backed by religious conservatives in the nation of less than 3 million people.

Its text says that “it seeks to uphold religious purity and safeguard cultural norms and values.”

The country’s top Islamic body has called the practice “one of the virtues of Islam.”

Kenya’s President William Ruto has signed into law a controversial bill, paving the way for the government to continue collecting a housing levy of 1.5% of a worker’s monthly pay.

The levy aims to fund the construction of affordable housing for low-income citizens, though its implementation has sparked widespread criticism.

Opposition voices and a significant portion of the public have expressed dismay over the levy, viewing it as an additional burden amidst a slew of new taxes.

Legal hurdles previously delayed the bill’s enactment, with a judge halting deductions due to a lack of a proper legal framework. Despite objections from opposition lawmakers, the bill was amended and ratified by Members of Parliament last week.

Originally outlined in President Ruto’s 2022 election manifesto, the levy forms part of a broader finance law passed last June, which also saw a doubling of the sales tax on fuel. Additionally, a heightened health insurance levy is set to be introduced soon.

The government contends that bolstering tax revenues is essential to narrowing the budget deficit and funding essential public services.

The authorities had begun deducting the 1.5% housing levy from salaries since last July. However, amid public anger, one activist took the government to court arguing successfully that it unfairly singled out Kenyans in the formal sector who get a regular monthly salary.

In order to address the issues raised by the court, the new law now extends the levy to other workers and now requires non-salaried Kenyans in the informal sector to pay the levy.

The new law also establishes the Affordable Housing Fund, which is intended to manage the money the government will get from the levy.

The authorities say the deduction will not be backdated to include the money that would have been paid had the scheme not been suspended.

President Ruto is aiming to construct 200,000 affordable housing units every year and hopes to create more than 600,000 jobs.

Illegal profits from forced labor worldwide have risen to the “obscene” amount of $236 billion per year, the U.N. labor agency reported Tuesday, with sexual exploitation to blame for three-fourths of the take from a business that deprives migrants of money they can send home, swipes jobs from legal workers, and allows the criminals behind it to dodge taxes.

The International Labor Organization said the tally for 2021, the most recent year covered in the painstaking international study, marked an increase of 37%, or $64 billion, compared with its last estimate published a decade ago. That’s a result of both more people being exploited and more cash generated from each victim, ILO said.

“$236 billion. This is the obscene level of annual profit generated from forced labor in the world today,” the first line of the report’s introduction said. That figure represents earnings “effectively stolen from the pockets of workers” by those who coerce them to work, as well as money taken from remittances of migrants and lost tax revenue for governments.

Forced labor can encourage corruption, strengthen criminal networks and incentivize further exploitation, ILO said.

Its director-general, Gilbert Houngbo, wants international cooperation to fight the racket.

“People in forced labor are subject to multiple forms of coercion, the deliberate and systematic withholding of wages being amongst the most common,” he said. “Forced labor perpetuates cycles of poverty and exploitation and strikes at the heart of human dignity.”

“We now know that the situation has only got worse,” Houngbo added.

ILO defines forced labor as work that’s imposed against the will of the employee and exacted under penalty — or the threat of one. It can happen at any phase of employment: during recruitment, in living conditions associated with work or by forcing people to stay in a job when they want to leave it.

On any given day in 2021, an estimated 27.6 million people were in forced labor — a 10% rise from five years earlier, ILO said. The Asia-Pacific region was home to more than half of those, while Africa, the Americas, and Europe-Central Asia each represented about 13% to 14%.

Some 85% of the people affected were working in “privately imposed forced labor,” which can include slavery, serfdom, bonded labor, and activities like forms of begging where cash taken in goes to the benefit of someone else, ILO said. The rest were in forced labor imposed by government authorities — a practice not covered in the study.

While just over one-fourth of the victims worldwide were subject to sexual exploitation, it accounted for nearly $173 billion in profits, or nearly three-quarters of the global total — a sign of the higher margins generated from selling sex.

Some 6.3 million people faced situations of forced commercial sexual exploitation on any given day three years ago — and nearly four in five of those victims were girls or women, ILO said. Children accounted for more than a quarter of the total cases.

Forced labor in industry trailed in a distant second, at $35 billion, followed by services at nearly $21 billion, agriculture at $5 billion and domestic work at $2.6 billion, the Geneva-based labor agency said.