Leading the mourners from the African continent, Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari said that Deby’s death will create a big vacuum in the war against Boko Haram as the late Chadian president was at the forefront among those who gave the terrorist group serious bashing in recent times.

President Muhammadu Buhari, in a statement issued yesterday by his media aide Garba Shehu, expressed sadness over “the sudden and tragic death of President Idriss Deby of Chad at the front lines fighting against rebel soldiers.”

President Buhari said: “I’m deeply shocked and devastated by the sudden death of Idriss Deby on the battlefront to defend the sovereignty of his country.”

According to the President, “the late Deby had played a very active role in our regional joint collaboration in the military campaign against the Boko Haram terrorists.”

President Buhari described the late Chadian leader “as a friend of Nigeria who had enthusiastically lent his hand in our efforts to defeat the murderous Boko Haram terrorists that have posed grave security challenges not only for Nigeria, but also our African neighbours, particularly Chad, Cameroon and Niger Republic.”

He added that “the death of Deby will surely create a big vacuum in the efforts to jointly confront the Boko Haram terrorists and the Islamic State West Africa Province.”

While condoling with the people of Chad and their new leader, President Buhari called for greater collaboration to defeat the terrorists.

Cameroonian President Paul Biya in his tribute described Deby’s death as “an immense loss for Chad, central Africa and the continent” which he had served “tirelessly”. He also sent his condolences to Mr Déby’s widow, First Lady Hinda Déby.

Chad, Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso and Mauritania are part of a combat force known as the G5 Sahel which – alongside French forces – has been fighting Islamist militants in the expansive desert Sahel region.

A senior Sudanese military official Mohamed Hamdan Dagolo sent his condolences to Chadians, and praised President Déby for the “great role” he played in strengthening relations between Sudan and Chad.

Dagolo, known by his nickname Hemeti, said people will remember Déby for his contribution to serving the African continent.

The head of the African Union Moussa Faki Mahamat, a former Chadian prime minister, said he was saddened by Deby’s death, sending his condolences to his family.

“It is with great dismay and deep emotion that I learned of the death today of President Idriss Deby Itno,” said Faki, who was Chad’s prime minister from 2003 to 2005.

He called Deby a “great statesman and recognised military leader. I extend my sincere condolences to the Chadian people and his family”.

French President Emmanuel Macron, in his tribute to Chad’s late president, called him a “brave friend” and “a great soldier,” according to Reuters which quoted the president’s office.

Mr Macron also said Chad needs stability and peaceful transition, news agency AFP reports.

France’s defence minister also mourned the loss of President Derby, calling him a “key ally” in the fight against militants in the Sahel, AFP news agency reports.

After a new transitional military council led by one of Deby’s sons pledged to hold elections in 18 months, French Foreign Minister Le Drian warned that the delay should be “limited”.

The US offered its “sincere condolences” to the people of Chad on the death of Deby.

“We condemn recent violence and loss of life in Chad,” a White House spokesperson said in a statement.

“We support a peaceful transition of power in accordance with the Chadian constitution.”

The European Union’s foreign affairs chief, Josep Borrell, expressed his condolences to the family, and to the Chadian authorities and people.

“The EU calls on all relevant actors to act responsibly, the immediate priority being the stability of the country and the region,” Borrell said.

Meanwhile, European Council President Charles Michel said that “the stability, the security and the [territorial] integrity of the country have to be preserved.”

Volkan Bozkir, president of the UN general assembly, tweeted his “most sincere condolences”.

In neighbouring Mali, also in the throes of a transitional military rule, interim President Bah Ndaw voiced “deep sadness” over the news of Deby’s “brutal death”.

He called it “a heavy loss, not only for Chad for which he made the greatest sacrifice, but for the Sahel region and for Africa,” where the two countries have been allies against threats posed by armed groups.

With his “engagement and vision he contributed to a stronger and united Africa”.

In an official statement, President Mohamed Bazoum and the government in neighbouring Niger hailed Deby’s “personal engagement in the fight against terrorism and for stabilising the Sahel-Sahara region”.

The statement also reassured the Chadian people of Niger’s “commitment to work together with them for the peace and stability of the G5 Sahel States and the States bordering Lake Chad”.

Senegal’s President Macky Sall honoured Deby’s “memory and contribution to stability in the Sahel”.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu conveyed his condolences on Twitter, praising Deby’s “bold leadership and his historic decision to renew Chad’s relationship with Israel”.

Source: Leadership

Chad’s former first lady Hinda Deby Itno is no longer standing by her man and has fled the war-torn country with her children to Yaoundé.

The wife of President Idris Deby assassinated following a coup in N’djamena crossed the Chad-Cameroun border incognito and has accepted guarantees of protection and financial security from the 88 year-old President Biya.

Cameroon Intelligence Report gathered that Yaoundé gave her the opportunity to leave N’djamena with the help of French secret service officers operating in Chad.

Our Yaoundé city reporter also hinted that the Biya decision was made in the best interest of the late President Idris Deby children.

Chadian rebels that launched the offensive against the Idris Deby regime have rejected the transition government led by one of Deby’s sons, four Star General Mahamat Idriss Déby Itno and have vowed to pursue the offensive. A state funeral for Deby will be held on Friday, the presidency said.

As Chad’s president, Idriss Deby, exits the political scene in uncertain circumstances, many in the world have begun thinking that Chad might be talking to Cameroon.

The Chadian president had won a landslide victory in a predetermined presidential election like his Cameroonian counterpart, Paul Biya.

The beleaguered Chadian leader was dealing with an insurgency just like his Cameroonian counterpart and had vowed to crush it.

But can the Chadian situation be a lesson to Cameroonian authorities?

By Isong Asu with files

The rebels that launched the offensive against the Idris Deby regime have rejected the transition government led by one of Deby’s sons, four Star General Mahamat Idriss Déby Itno and have vowed to pursue the offensive.

“We categorically reject the transition,” said Kingabe Ogouzeimi de Tapol, spokesman for the Front for Change and Concord in Chad (FACT) on Tuesday. “We intend to pursue the offensive.”

A state funeral for Deby will be held on Friday, the presidency said.

The stunning announcement about the president’s death came just hours after electoral officials had declared Deby, 68, the winner of the April 11 presidential election, paving the way for him to stay in power for six more years.

Deby “has just breathed his last defending the sovereign nation on the battlefield” over the weekend, army spokesman General Azem Bermandoa Agouna said in a statement read out on state television.

The army said a military council led by the late president’s 37-year-old son Mahamat Idriss Deby Itno, a four-star general, would replace him.

Deby’s campaign said on Monday that he was headed to the frontlines to join troops battling “terrorists”.

Four Star General Mahamat Idriss Déby Itno, 37, son of the slain Chadian President Idriss Déby, will replace his father as head of a military council, the army announced on April 20, 2021.

 The circumstances of Deby’s death could not immediately be independently confirmed due to the remote location. It was not known why the president would have visited the area or participated in ongoing clashes with the rebels who opposed his rule.

Rebels based across the northern frontier in Libya attacked a border post on election day and then advanced hundreds of kilometres south across the desert.

‘A courageous friend’, says France

France on Tuesday paid tribute to Deby as a “courageous friend” and “great soldier”, while urging stability and a peaceful transition in the African country after his shock death.

“Chad is losing a great soldier and a president who has worked tirelessly for the security of the country and the stability of the region for three decades,” the office of President Emmanuel Macron said in statement, hailing Deby as a “courageous friend” of France.

The statement also emphasised France’s insistence on the “stability and territorial integrity” of Chad as it faces a push by rebel forces towards its capital, N’Djamena.

Defence Minister Florence Parly praised Deby as an “essential ally in the fight against terrorism in the Sahel” while emphasising that the fight against jihadist insurgents “will not stop”.

One of Africa’s longest-serving leaders

Deby came to power in a rebellion in 1990 and is one of Africa’s longest-serving leaders.

Although ruling Chad with an iron fist, he was a key ally in the West’s anti-jihadist campaign in the troubled Sahel region.

On Monday, the army had claimed a “great victory” in its battle against the rebels from neighbouring Libya, saying it had killed 300 fighters, with the loss of five soldiers in its own ranks during eight days of combat.

Deby was a herder’s son from the Zaghawa ethnic group who took the classic path to power through the army, and relished the military culture.

His latest election victory – with almost 80 percent of the vote – had never been in doubt, with a divided opposition, boycott calls, and a campaign in which demonstrations were banned or dispersed.

Deby had campaigned on a promise of bringing peace and security to the region, but his pledges were undermined by the rebel incursion.

The government had sought Monday to assure concerned residents that the offensive was over.

There had been panic in some areas of N’Djamena on Monday after tanks were deployed along the city’s main roads, an AFP journalist reported.

The tanks were later withdrawn apart from a perimeter around the president’s office, which is under heavy security during normal times.

“The establishment of a security deployment in certain areas of the capital seems to have been misunderstood,” government spokesman Cherif Mahamat Zene had said on Twitter on Monday.

“There is no particular threat to fear.”

However, the US embassy in N’Djamena had on Saturday ordered non-essential personnel to leave the country, warning of possible violence in the capital. Britain also urged its nationals to leave.

France’s embassy said in an advisory to its nationals in Chad that the deployment was a precaution and there was no specific threat to the capital.

‘After Deby, the flood’

‘Expect things to get messy’

Douglas Yates, a professor in African Studies at the American Graduate School in Paris, told FRANCE 24 that Deby’s death had come as a total surprise.

“Two days ago news had come out from the US embassy that they were evacuating personnel because there were rebels marching on the capital, and frankly the thought was ‘(Deby) will defeat them’, because he has systematically defeated every attempted coup before now.”

Yates said that although Deby was hardly known to be a great democrat, “he was a real soldier and in some ways, this was a worthy death for him. To die involved in the battle was better for him I think than to die in his bed from Covid.”

The professor said much of Chad’s unrest stems from Deby’s own people in the east with discontent rising over Deby not distributing enough oil wealth to them.

“Frankly, there’s probably not enough oil wealth to go around to everyone, but basically there were people who were unhappy, who felt like they were not getting their share and that’s been a repeated pattern in attempted coups.”

On the issue of Deby’s replacement, Yates said: “Expect things to get messy during the transition.”

“He had been in power so long, and eliminating any rivals and imprisoning his democratic opposition. What you have [now] is a large number of people who would like to be the president of Chad rather than one unified opposition leader.” 

“Like Napoleon had said: ‘After me, the flood.’ And certainly after Idriss Deby, the flood.”

“One thing is certain, France has just lost one of its key allies in the region.”

(FRANCE 24 with AP, AFP and REUTERS)

Chad’s newly re-elected President Idriss Deby has died of injuries suffered on the frontline while fighting rebels in the north of the Sahel country, an army spokesman said on Tuesday. But there are conflicting reports on what actually led to his demise with some political commentators saying it was an inside job.

Deby, 68, “has just breathed his last defending the sovereign nation on the battlefield” over the weekend, army spokesman General Azem Bermandoa Agouna said in a statement read out on state television.

The news came a day after Deby won a sixth term, as per provisional election results released on Monday. Deby, who came to power in a rebellion in 1990, took 79.3 percent of the vote in the April 11 presidential election, the results showed.

This item is still developing

The Police Command in Adamawa has confirmed the recovery of Cameroonian national flag and nine Military camouflage uniforms at Lamunde Hill in Gumti National Park in Toungo Local Government Area of state. The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that Lamunde hill is part of Gashaka-Gumti National Park located along the Nigeria-Cameroon border.

 Mr Aliyu Adamu, the Commissioner of police in the state, confirmed the development in a statement issued on Monday in Yola. Adamu said: “On the 19/3/2021, the Command disconnected criminal networks terrorizing communities along Nigeria-Cameroon border and Southern part of Adamawa state in general.

 “The operation was carried out by Toungo Police Division and the Special Hunters of Pulaaku Association at Lamunde Hill situated at Gumti National Park in Toungo Local Government Area. “During the operation, a total of nine military Camouflage uniforms of Cameroon rebels, Cameroon national flag and one motorcycle, among other items were recovered.” He explained that the joined operation chased the suspected criminals into their hideout in a gun fire exchange.

The police commissioner said that the suspected criminals escaped with gunshot wounds into Cameroon after exchange of gunfire. “We are advancing to make sure that the suspects are apprehended,” Adamu assured. The police commissioner noted that the successes followed a credible information from good citizens after rampant cases of kidnapping, armed robbery and banditry in the areas. He commended the Toungo Divisional Police Officer and his gallant officers for a well-done job. He assured the good people of Toungo and Adamawa as a whole of the command’s commitment to keeping the state safe.

Source:  Vanguard News Nigeria

Republic of Congo opposition candidate Guy-Brice Parfait Kolelas died of COVID-19 as he was being transferred to France for treatment on Monday.

Kolelas was seen as the main rival to veteran leader Denis Sassou Nguesso, who was expected to win Sunday’s vote.

The election was boycotted by the main opposition and under an internet blackout, with critics voicing concerns over the transparency of the polls seen as tilted towards Sassou Nguesso.

Kolelas “died in the medical aircraft which came to get him from Brazzaville on Sunday afternoon,” his campaign director Christian Cyr Rodrigue Mayanda told AFP.

The sixty-year-old tested positive for COVID-19 on Friday afternoon, and was unable to host his last campaign meeting in Brazzaville.

On Saturday, he posted a video from his sickbed, declaring he was “battling against death.”

“Rise up as one person… I’m fighting on my deathbed, you too fight for your change,” he urged his supporters, saying the election was “about the future of your children.”

Sassou Nguesso, 77, a former paratrooper, first rose to power in 1979 and has since accumulated 36 years in office, making him one of the world’s longest-serving leaders.

Speaking after he cast his ballot, Sassou Nguesso said that the “atmosphere of peace” during the election campaign — marked by police crackdowns on the opposition — was “a good sign for our democracy.”

After first coming to power in 1979, Sassou Nguesso was forced to introduce multi-party elections in 1991 and was defeated at the ballot box a year later.

But he returned to power in 1997 following a prolonged civil war.

He has won every election since, which the opposition has mostly slammed as fraudulent.

A constitutional amendment in 2015, which ended a ban on presidential candidates aged over 70 and scrapped a two-term limit, allowed him to run again in 2016.

(Source: AFP)

Tanzania’s President Samia Suluhu Hassan on Saturday led mourners in paying their last respects to her predecessor John Magufuli, who died suddenly this week after an illness shrouded in mystery.

Mourners lined the streets of Dar es Salaam to bid farewell to the late president, some of them weeping and throwing flower petals as the casket, towed on a gun carriage by a military vehicle, was transferred from a church to Uhuru Stadium to lie in state.

“Before I saw the coffin, I didn’t believe our president was really dead,” said flower-seller Pauline Attony after watching the motorcade pass.

Hassan, who was sworn in Friday to become the country’s first female president, led a government procession filing past the coffin, which was draped in the Tanzanian flag, offering her condolences to Magufuli’s wife.

Many wore black, or the green and yellow colours of the ruling party, but few inside the stadium or among the packed crowds outside wore face masks in the Covid-sceptic country – a scepticism Magufuli himself had embodied.

“It is too soon for you to go, father. You touched our lives and we still needed you,” said one mourner, Beatrice Edward.

“We lost our defender,” said another, Suleiman Mbonde, a tradesman.

Coronavirus sceptic

The government announced Wednesday that Magufuli, 61, had died from a heart condition at a hospital in Dar es Salaam after three weeks missing from public view.

His unexplained absence had fuelled speculation that the famously Covid-sceptic leader was being treated for coronavirus abroad.

Tundu Lissu, Tanzania’s main opposition leader, insists his sources said Magufuli had died a week earlier from the disease that he had long downplayed.

Lissu has lived in exile in Belgium since last November, after losing the presidential election against Magufuli, which he says was rigged.

Magufuli had declared that prayer had rid the country of Covid-19, refused face masks or lockdown measures, stopped the publication of case statistics and championed alternative medicine, decrying vaccines as “dangerous”.

But by February, cases had soared. After the deaths of a number of senior figures – officially from pneumonia – the president popularly known as the “Bulldozer” had to concede that the virus was still circulating.

While Hassan says she will take over where Magufuli left off, hopes are high she will usher in a change in leadership style from her predecessor, under whose rules there had been repeated attacks on the opposition.

All eyes will be on her handling of the pandemic.

A softly spoken veteran politician, Hassan will convene a special meeting of the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi party Saturday, where the appointment of a new deputy is expected to be discussed.

Under the constitution, the 61-year-old will serve the remainder of Magufuli’s second five-year term, which does not expire until 2025.

She has announced a 21-day mourning period. The late president will lie in state in several locations across Tanzania before his burial next Friday in his home town of Chato.

(AFP)

At least 31 soldiers were killed in an attack in northern Mali this week, an army officer said Wednesday, in one of the deadliest assaults on the military this year.

Dozens of assailants on motorbikes and pickup trucks on Monday stormed a military post southwest of the town of Ansongo, near the borders with Burkina Faso and Niger, the army said on social media.

An initial statement said two soldiers had been killed and eight wounded, but late on Tuesday the army gave the higher casualty figures, specifying 11 dead and 14 injured with 11 still missing.

But on Wednesday, a Malian army officer, who declined to be named, said the death toll had further risen to 31.

He added that the bodies of 13 assailants were found after the clash.

It remains unclear how many soldiers are still missing.  

Mali was plunged into conflict in 2012 when local Tuareg radicals supported by jihadists revolted in the north.

France intervened to crush the rebellion, but the jihadists scattered and regrouped, taking their campaign into central Mali in 2015 and then into neighbouring Niger and Burkina Faso.

In Mali alone, thousands of civilians and troops have died and hundreds of thousands of people have fled their homes.

The so-called three-border zone was the scene of a military offensive from early last year by the French Barkhane force and its regional allies, especially against the jihadist Islamic State in the Greater Sahara group (EIGS).

Militants frequently target Mali’s army — which is largely poorly equipped and underfunded — in attacks.

Source: AFP

Cameroon has hired consultancy Drake & Bart to design an institutional framework that would help wean the country off World Bank help in managing its mining cadastre.

Sky falls in for tycoon Mohamadou Dabo’s business airline

The Cameroonian authorities have brought the curtain down on the operations of the business travel specialist Global-S-Aviation. And its founder, the vastly wealthy businessman Mohamadou Dabo, is facing prosecution over the contract to upgrade Garoua airport.

Nigeria’s new military top brass after Buhari purge

President Buhari has put an entirely new team at the helm of the Nigerian military. Both public opinion and the military itself have welcomed the overhaul, while national security adviser Babagana Monguno has kept his job and could even consolidate his influence.

Candidate Sassou deploys his lobbyists and PR people in Washington and Paris

Hoping to be re-elected for a fourth term on 21 March, the Congolese leader Denis Sassou Nguesso recently retained the services of two PR firms in the French and American capitals to shore up his rather tattered international image.

Source: Africa Intelligence

Amadou Gon Coulibaly who was Ivory Coast’s prime minister and the governing party’s candidate for the October 2020 presidential election, died just days after returning from a two-month medical treatment in France.

Cameroon Intelligence Report understands the 61-year-old, who had heart surgery in 2012, became unwell during a weekly cabinet meeting and was taken to a hospital where he passed away.

Coulibaly’s death created a huge uncertainty over the election in Ivory Coast, the world’s top cocoa grower. Ouattara had designated Coulibaly as the RHDP candidate in March after announcing that he himself would not seek a third term.

Hamed Bakayoko, a close ally of Ouattara, was appointed as prime minister in July 2020 following the sudden death of his predecessor Amadou Gon Coulibaly, who had been handpicked by Ouattara to succeed him. He also held the defence ministry portfolio.

Prime Minister Bakayoko was flown to France on Feb. 18 for medical checks. The government said in a statement on Friday that Ouattara had met Bakayoko during a visit in France recently, and given the state of the prime minister’s health, it was recommended that he should stay longer in hospital.

Ivory Coast’s President Alassane Ouattara on Monday named his chief of staff Patrick Achi as interim prime minister in place of Hamed Bakayoko, who was absent due to health reasons.

Bakayoko died from covid at a hospital in Germany on Wednesday. The 56-year-old had seen his health deteriorate sharply in recent days.

He had terminal cancer and had been hospitalised at the American Hospital in Paris since the beginning of March and was transferred to a hospital in Freiburg, Germany on Saturday, to undergo an experimental treatment.

By some strange happenstance, interim Prime Minister Patrick Achi is also presently dying in a hospital in Abidjan. The close confidant of President Ouattara has not even received his first salary as Prime Minister.

CIR is keeping a watchful eye on the situation in the Ivory Coast and we will keep our readers posted as we get it!

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai