Category: BREAKING NEWS

Ten bodies were fished out of the Niger River in Nigeria’s northern Kebbi state on Wednesday after an overloaded boat with about 100 passengers broke in two, a local official said.

The dilapidated vessel was crossing the river and broke in two as it approached the village of Samanaji in Koko-Besse district.

It had taken on passengers “way beyond its capacity,” said Yahaya Bello Koko, a district official.

“We found 10 passengers with the help of local divers, and we are still looking for 10 more,” he said.

They “are presumed drowned, considering the number of hours they spent in the river,” Koko said.

More than 80 passengers were rescued, he said.

Federal or state authorities were not immediately available.

Accidents involving boats are common in Nigeria. They are often linked to overloaded vessels, excessive speed, poor maintenance and disregard for navigation rules.

In October, at least 80 people drowned in two shipwrecks.

Spanish authorities announced that they dismantled an organization that had sent more than 5,000 tons of hazardous electronic waste from the Canary Islands to several African countries.

Senegal, Nigeria, Mauritania and Ghana are among the said states.

According to the Spanish Customs and Civil Guard, the “criminal organization that, during the last two years, had managed to send from the island of Gran Canaria to Africa more than 5,000 tons of hazardous waste of electronic devices, would have earned more than one and a half million euros” of profit.

The waste was sent by boat, “mainly” to Mauritania, Nigeria, Ghana and Senegal.

43 people were arrested “for alleged environmental offences, forgery and membership to a criminal organization”.

The latter was “removing waste from the legal channel” with the help of a “supposed management company that falsified documents on the origin and management”.

This waste was then presented as second-hand items to be sent to these African countries.

Whereas, the scraps, which contain mercury, lead, cadmium, arsenic and phosphorus, must be handed over to authorized companies for decontamination.

A Senegalese journalist and prominent anti-government critic is “extremely strained” after a two-week hunger strike he launched in protest of his detention, his lawyer said on Monday.

Pape Ale Niang, head of the Dakar Matin online news site, was arrested on November 6 and charged with “divulging information likely to harm national defense.”

Niang, widely followed in Senegal for his regular columns on current affairs, was released on December 14 but sent back to prison a week later. He has been on a hunger strike since his latest imprisonment on December 20.

“I pray that the irreparable does not happen,” Me Moussa Sarr told journalists.

The journalist has been at Dakar’s main hospital since December 24, with doctors concerned about his condition for the past five days, according to a local press body.

The case against Niang arose after he wrote about rape charges faced by the country’s main opposition leader, Ousmane Sonko.

He is accused of describing confidential messages about security arrangements for Sonko’s interview with investigators, according to trade unions.

His detention sparked a wave of criticism from the press, civil society groups and Senegal’s opposition, many of whom called for his release.

Senegal has a strong reputation for openness and press freedom in troubled West Africa, but this status is in decline, according to Reporters Without Borders (RSF).

Its 2022 Press Freedom Index ranked Senegal 73rd out of 180 countries — a fall of 24 places compared with the 2021 assessment.

Tanzania’s President Samia Suluhu Hassan lifted Tuesday (Jan. 05) a ban on opposition rallies imposed in 2016 by her strongman predecessor, in an overture to political rivals seeking the restoration of democratic traditions.

Hassan has been under pressure to break with the hard-line policies of John Magufuli, who died in 2021 after a six-year-rule in a country once seen as a democratic beacon in East Africa.

Magufuli had come to power in 2015 as a no-nonsense man of the people but presided over a sustained crackdown on dissent and political freedoms, earning the nickname “Bulldozer” for his authoritarian leadership style.

Early in his tenure, Magufuli banned political rallies, saying it was time for work, not politics.

But critics said the ban applied only to opposition groups, with the ruling party free to assemble while rival gatherings were violently broken up by police.

In revoking the ban, Hassan, a ruling party stalwart who became the country’s first female president when Magufuli died, said political gatherings were a right for all.

“I am here to declare that the ban on political rallies is now lifted,” Hassan told a gathering of political leaders who were invited to the State House in Dar es Salaam.

“The government will be responsible for ensuring security during rallies, but I urge all politicians to also practise civilised politics.”

‘Free to criticise’

Zitto Kabwe, a Tanzanian opposition leader, said the decision was a first step toward greater political reforms.

“I am exhilarated! This is the right that was snatched by the state through an illegal presidential decree. President Samia has cleaned up the mess. It is a normal thing but Huge,” he told Africanewsguru.com in a WhatsApp message.

The opposition hoped Hassan would turn the page on Magufuli’s uncompromising rule, and there was early optimism when the new leader reached out to rivals and allowed the reopening of banned media outlets.

She also dropped some of Magufuli’s most controversial policies, including a ban on pregnant girls and teenaged mothers attending school, and introduced a vaccination campaign for Covid-19 that her predecessor mocked.

But her presidency fell under a shadow when Freeman Mbowe, a prominent opposition leader, was arrested in July 2021 just hours before his political party was to hold a public forum.

He was later released and the charges against him dropped, with Hassan promising to heal the rift.

But critics branded her a “dictator” and doubts remained about her commitment to political and media freedoms.

Speaking to leaders on Tuesday, Hassan promised “more legal reforms are coming soon” to make Tanzania’s political environment more inclusive.

“You are all free to criticise the government wherever you see challenges, so that we address them for the benefit of our people,” she said.

Hassan has battled division within her Chama Cha Mapinduzi party since taking office, shuffling her cabinet three times in 2022 as internal fissures broke into the open.

She has accused rivals inside the government of trying to damage her leadership, and last year suspended a party-owned newspaper for publishing a story saying she would not run in elections set for 2025.