A multinational force comprising troops from Cameroon, Chad, Niger, and Nigeria, have handed over to Nigeria’s Borno state 94 persons who were rescued from Boko Haram captivity in the fringes of Lake Chad, a state official said Thursday.

In a statement released by the state governor’s spokesman Isa Gusau, the victims, 37 adult males, 17 adult females, and 40 children were rescued by the troops of the Multinational Joint Task Force (MNJTF) during a major offensive against the insurgents around Lake Chad.

Gusau said the MNJTF commander Ibrahim Yusuf handed over the victims to the Borno government at a brief ceremony in the northeastern city of Maiduguri.

Yusuf was quoted in the statement as saying that some of the captives voluntarily went to the Headquarters Sector 1 of the MNJTF in north Cameroon.

Kakashehu Lawan, the state commissioner for justice, who received the victims, said in the statement the state will profile, debrief, de-radicalize, and reintegrate the rescued persons to live a normal life with their families.

Boko Haram has been trying to establish an Islamist state in northeastern Nigeria since 2009, extending its attacks to countries in the Lake Chad Basin, posing enormous security, humanitarian, and governance challenges to countries including Nigeria, Chad, Cameroon, Benin, and Niger.

Source: Xinhuanet

A leader of the mutiny said both Malian President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita and Prime Minister Boubou Cisse had been detained by soldiers, sparking fears that a coup was in progress as witnesses said soldiers had surrounded Keita’s private residence.

A leader of the mutiny said both Malian President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita and Prime Minister Boubou Cisse had been detained by soldiers.

“We can tell you that the president and the prime minister are under our control,” the leader, who requested anonymity, told AFP.

Two security sources confirmed to Reuters that Keita had been detained.

Soldiers in Mali took up arms in the garrison town of Kati on Tuesday and detained senior military officers in an apparent mutiny, raising fears of a coup after several months of anti-government demonstrations calling for the president’s resignation.

FRANCE 24 Africa specialist Nicolas Germain said a highly placed source had confirmed the detention of the president and prime minister.

Earlier in the day an officer at Mali’s ministry of internal security, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to speak to the press, described the chaotic scenes. “Officials are being arrested – it’s total confusion.”

In the nearby capital of Bamako, government workers fled their offices as armed men began detaining officials, including the country’s Finance Minister Abdoulaye Daffe.

President Keita, who was democratically elected, has broad support from former colonial power France and other Western allies.

About 100 of the protesters who have called for Keita’s ouster gathered midday in Bamako in a show of support for the mutinous soldiers.

The African Union said it “forcefully” condemned Keita’s arrest.

French President Emmanuel Macron has been in touch with regional leaders and has called for mediation, the Élysée presidential palace said in a statement.

The United States said it was opposed to any change of government in Mali, where French troops and UN peacekeepers have been working to stabilise the country amid an Islamic insurgency that took hold after a 2012 coup.

“The US is opposed to all unconstitutional changes of government whether in the streets or by security forces,” tweeted J. Peter Pham, the State Department’s special envoy for the Sahel region.

The West African regional bloc ECOWAS, which has been mediating Mali’s current political crisis, urged the soldiers to return immediately to their barracks in Kati, which is only 15 kilometres (less than 10 miles) from the presidential palace in the capital.

Prime Minister Boubou Cisse had earlier called for dialogue with the soldiers. “The government is calling for calm and makes itself available … to engage in fraternal dialogue in order to remove all misunderstandings,” he said in a statement. The prime minister also admitted that the soldiers may have “legitimate frustrations”.

Echoes of the 2012 coup

The unrest erupted Tuesday at the very same military barracks where the country’s 2012 coup originated. The overthrow unleashed years of chaos in Mali when the ensuing power vacuum allowed Islamic extremists to seize control of northern towns. Ultimately a French-led military operation ousted the jihadists but they merely regrouped and then expanded their reach during Keita’s presidency.

The president has faced growing criticism of how his government has handled the relentless Islamic insurgency engulfing the country once praised as a model of democracy in the region. The military faced a wave of particularly deadly attacks in the north last year, prompting the government to close its most vulnerable outposts as part of a reorganisation aimed at stemming the losses.

The fact Mali’s finance minister was among those targeted Tuesday bolsters the theory the mutiny was motivated by salary disputes, said Alexandre Raymakers, senior Africa analyst at Verisk Maplecroft.

“This remains a fast-moving situation, but initial indications point to the mutiny being within the national guard, with significant elements of the army still loyal to [Keita],” he said. “The mutiny is likely driven by a range of factors closely tied to the deteriorating military situation in central and northern Mali, rather than the ongoing political crisis. ”

(FRANCE 24 with AP and AFP)

Malians took to the streets in the capital Bamako on Tuesday, despite rainfall and pleas from mediators to stay home, to demand the resignation of President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita.

Protesters numbering in the low thousands assembled in a central square, an AFP journalist saw, blowing plastic vuvuzela horns and carrying placards bearing anti-government slogans.

“We want real change in Mali, IBK get out,” read one placard, using the acronym by which Keita is known.

Other people carried umbrellas against the rain, and toted signs asking the prime minister to resign too.

After the crowd sung the national anthem, prominent opposition leader Choguel Maiga told them: “We will continue our fight until the end of IBK and of his regime.”

The gathering marks the first time the June 5 Movement has staged a protest since July 21, when the opposition group declared a temporary truce in a months-long push to topple Keita. 

It staged the demonstration despite a call to stay home from Nigeria’s ex-president, Goodluck Jonathan, a mediator for the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) in Mali’s crisis.

“Demonstrations do not solve problems per se,” Jonathan told a news conference on Monday evening, adding that opposition figures needed to enter dialogue.

His appeal came after the June 5 Movement repeatedly spurned compromise proposals put forward by ECOWAS, as it has continued to insist on Keita’s resignation.

Mali’s political impasse has struck fear into the poor Sahel state’s neighbours and allies, who are keen to avoid it sliding into chaos.

Mediation flop

The June 5 Movement — so called after the date of its first protest — has been channelling deep anger over a dire economy, perceived government corruption and Mali’s eight-year jihadist conflict.

But tensions snowballed in crisis last month, when 11 people died over three days of unrest following an anti-Keita protest, in the worst political strife the country has seen in years.

The 15-nation ECOWAS bloc stepped in to mediate. On July 27, the bloc’s heads of government suggested the formation of a new unity government, among other measures, while sticking by Keita.

The June 5 Movement has rejected the proposals, however.

Nigeria’s ex-president Jonathan, who had already led a mediation mission to Mali in mid-July, made a surprise return to Bamako on Monday, where he met the president and opposition figures.

Still, there is little indication of breaking the impasse as anti-Keita protests have gone ahead despite his admonitions.

Constitutional Court

Keita, who first came to power in 2013, has meanwhile attempted to follow the ECOWAS recommendations.

He swore in nine new judges to the Constitutional Court on Monday, which formed part of an ECOWAS plant to resolve an election dispute that has contributed to the crisis.

Much of Mali’s current tension was sparked in April, when the Constitutional Court tossed out 30 results from long-delayed parliamentary elections — a move that benefited Keita’s party, but triggered protests.

ECOWAS had recommended appointing new judges to the court, and holding new elections in the 30 disputed parliamentary seats.

The MPs occupying those seats, however, have refused to step down. They are drawn from both Keita’s party and opposition parties.

Source: AFP

More than 100 Boko Haram and their captives, almost all Nigerians, have fled the group in the past two weeks, according to the Multinational Joint Task Force fighting the Islamist militants.

Thirty-four-year-old Nigerian Kharim Kalga is among 109 people who have surrendered to the task force since late July. 

Kalga said he has not seen his two wives and five children in the two years since he joined the Islamist militant group because they kept him captive.

He said he was living in poverty when Boko Haram fighters promised to give him a motorcycle to earn money for his family, so he joined the group. He said he was forced to steal cattle and millet from villages surrounding the militant group’s camp in Nigeria. Kalga said he surrendered to the military because Boko Haram did not fulfill its promise to give him a motorcycle.

The task force is holding the former Boko Haram fighters and captives at their base in Cameroon’s northern town of Mora, near the border with Nigeria.

Among them are 45 Nigerian and three Cameroonian former fighters, 45 Nigerian children and 16 women who were being used as sex slaves.

Commander of the Multinational Joint Task Force Major General Ibrahim Manu Yusuf said the Nigerians are all from Borno state, a Boko Haram stronghold.

A campaign calling for Boko Haram members to surrender and be pardoned has helped in the fight, Yusuf said.

“As professional armies, we always open this window for those who wish to come up and surrender,” he said. “You know the narrative in the Boko Haram enclave is that if you come out, soldiers will kill you, and based on the way they are being treated, the way they are being managed, they kept calling on their other colleagues to turn over themselves.”

The governments of Cameroon and Nigeria will decide whether the former Boko Haram members will remain in Cameroon or go back to Nigeria.

Rehabilitation center

Meanwhile, the former militants were handed over to the Cameroon Center for Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration.

The Mora-based center was created in 2019 to rehabilitate 100 ex-militants at a time, but currently hosts more than 250. Center director Oumar Bichair said he needs more resources to rehabilitate the increasing numbers fleeing Boko Haram.

The government of Cameroon should provide more housing and workers, especially psychosocial caregivers, Bichair said, adding that the center also needs more workers who can train ex-fighters with skills such as farming, carpentry, and raising fish and livestock.

The Multinational Joint Task Force fighting the Islamist militants is made up of troops from Benin, Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Nigeria.

The U.N. says the decade-long conflict with Boko Haram has left 30,000 people dead and displaced more than 3 million throughout the region.

Source: VOA 

Ivory Coast’s prime minister Amadou Gon Coulibaly was buried in a private ceremony on Friday at the end of week-long national mourning triggered by a death that stunned the West African country.

Gon Coulibaly’s sudden death of a heart attack on July 8 has deprived 78-year-old President Alassane Ouattara of an anointed successor less than four months before key elections.

He was buried in the family tomb in his home town of Korhogo, the main city in the country’s north, a source close to his family said.

Funeral prayers were said earlier in the city’s main mosque, with several hundred mourners, including Ouattara, in attendance.

Gon Coulibaly, 61, died shortly after returning from France, where he had undergone long treatment for cardiac problems.

Nicknamed the “Lion of Korhogo,” he was highly popular in the city of his birth, where he was also an MP and mayor for a long time.

Gon Coulibaly “was a model,” said teacher El Hadj Bambadji Bamba.

“This is the funeral of a chief. We turned out in large numbers today. We had to be here, after everything that this man did for his country.”

Local people said infrastructure funds had flowed into Korhogo during his time in office.

“He tarmacked the main roads and the neighbourhoods, installed electricity throughout the city and the villages outside, gave us piped water and built schools and health centres,” said the local mayor, Lazani Coulibaly, who shares the same family name.

“He changed the face of the city — he achieved more in 10 years than people did in the previous 40.”

The ruling RHDP party is now expected to step up deliberations on how to fill the gap left by Gon Coulibaly for the presidential vote, due on October 31.

One of the world’s major coffee and cocoa producers, the country still carries the scars of a brief civil war that erupted nearly a decade ago.

In 2011, Ouattara ousted then-president Laurent Gbagbo, who refused to step down after losing elections. The months-long standoff claimed 3,000 lives.

In March, Ouattara announced to much surprise that he would not seek a third term in office, and then named Gon Coulibaly as his desired successor.

No clear successor to Gon Coulibaly has so far emerged within RHDP ranks, stoking speculation that Ouattara may change his mind.

Source:AFP

South Africa’s ambassador to Denmark has died in Johannesburg at the age of 59, a family source has confirmed to the public broadcaster SABC.

Ambassador Zindzi Mandela was the daughter of South Africa’s anti-apartheid icons Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela and Nomzamo Winnie Madikizela.

She was the youngest daughter of the couple and is reputed to have spent many years involved in South Africa’s freedom struggle.

She was deeply involved in the arts, philanthropy and business. She is a co-founder of the Mandela Legacy Foundation and is also Managing Trustee of the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund.

South Africa’s social media space has been buzzing with tonnes of tribute to Zindzi who was a staunch activist against maladminstration.

Zindzi dies on the same day in 1969 when Mandela’s eldest son Madiba Thembikile (Thembi) also died in a car accident, the Nelson Mandela Foundation posted in its daily updates on the life of the globally celebrated statesman.

Source: Africa News

The Ivorian government has confirmed the death of Prime Minister Amadou Gon Coulibaly. He died at the age of 61 in the capital Abidjan. Multiple news sites including Jeune Afrique reported the death late Wednesday citing multiple official sources.

The deceased returned home last week (July 2) after a two-month absence during which period he was receiving medical treatment in France. Coulibaly is a close ally of Ouattara and has held the Prime Minister portfolio since 2017.

He was the presidential candidate of the ruling Rally of Republicans party in upcoming polls meant to choose a new president as incumbent Alassane Ouattara leaves office after two terms. The party elected him as flag bearer in March 2020 for the October polls.

“I am back home to take my place at the President’s side, to continue the work of development and construction of our country, Côte d’Ivoire,” Coulibaly said upon his return.

He had been part of a cabinet meeting this morning according to reports. His official Twitter handle posted messages lauding the efforts and leadership of Ouattara.

Source: Africa News

Ghana’s president has gone into self-isolation for two weeks as a precautionary measure despite testing negative for coronavirus, the government said, after one of his contacts was confirmed to have the illness.

President Nana Akufo-Addo began his quarantine on Saturday and will be working from the presidential villa in Accra, capital of the West African country, the information minister said in a statement.

“The president has elected to do so after at least one person within his close circle tested positive for COVID-19,” the minister said.

“(The president) has, as (of) today, tested negative, but has elected to take this measure out of the abundance of caution.”

Ghana has reported more than 19,300 cases of the new respiratory disease and 117 deaths, and has lifted its strict lockdown although social-distancing measures remain in place.

The announcement came a day after the presidency said a junior minister had resigned for failing to self-isolate after testing positive.

There was no official indication the events were linked.

Since the pandemic erupted, a number of senior political figures worldwide have caught the disease, including British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who was hospitalised and has now recovered.

Senegal’s President Macky Sall also went into a preventative quarantine last month, despite testing negative, after coming into contact with a coronavirus case.

Source:  AFP