Business and Politics in the Muslim World West African News Monitoring Weekly Report 110 07, March -13, March 2010 by Mustapha Shafi Presentation on 17, March 2010

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Business and Politics in the Muslim World West African News Monitoring Weekly Report 110 07, March -13, March 2010 By Mustapha Shafi Presentation on 17, March 2010

Table of Contents

Headlines 2

Detail of the news 6

China-African Relations 6

Pan-African issues 6

Ghana News 32

Nigeria News 59

Other W/African State News 112

Headlines

1 China-African Relations: • President of DR Congo meets Chinese army official 2 Pan-African issues: • 200m Africans need $620bn for food • Africa needs to rebuild economic defenses –IMF • Obasanjo: Africans, Their Own Worst Enemies • African nation condemns homosexuals • Nigeria, Tanzania call for close ties among African parliaments • African Union Desires Former Niger President's Freedom • French President Calls for Stronger Forest Preservation Effort • New HIV/AIDS Research Agenda to Better Respond to Women and Children • London Meeting Looks at Road Ahead for HIV/AIDS Prevention • Nearly 5 Million Lives Saved Through AIDS, Malaria, TB Treatment. • Smoking has Immediate, Adverse Effects on the Body • West Africa: Fewer meningitis cases but more deadly • IMF Boss Impressed by Continent's Recovery • Civil Society Must Hold Gov’t Accountable, Says IMF Chief • Africa: Continent's New Oil Hotspots

Ghana: 1. Political News: • Gov’t Can Appoint an Independent Prosecutor Now • Volta Chiefs Put Mills On the Carpet • Mo Ibrahim calls on President Mills • Parliament unanimously approves Ayariga's nomination • Government asked to show commitment to women's participation in politics • Veep in New Delhi, India to attend investment conclave 2. Economy: • Ghana has huge investment opportunities` 3. Energy: • Unitization - an Indispensable Practice in the Oil and Gas Industry • AOS-Orwell invest $ 5million equipment in Ghana's oil industry 4. Environment:

5. Immigration/Refugee/Idps: 6. Health: • Behavioural change significant in quest for better health status • WHO team in Ghana to study CSM outbreak • Know sickle cell status of your marriage partner - Mettle-Nunoo • Nutrition awareness project advocates strategic health planning 7. Human rights/Gender/Social Issues: • Africa Legal Aid setting up Gender Network Forum 8. Geo-Strategic issues: • Ivory Coast 'Battles' Ghana over Oil • The Ivoirians’ Claim: A Classic Case Of Intelligence Failure. • Third phase of rehabilitation works of Bolga Hospital underway

Nigeria: 1. Political News: • Buhari: Yar’Adua’s Impeachment Only Viable Option • Senate Set to Approve 5 Special Advisers for Jonathan • Poll Wants NJC to Appoint INEC Chair • NLC holds protest to oust Iwu • Jonathan should prioritize electoral reform—Buhari • Jos: Reps demand truth commission • Shagari, Shonekan sue for peace • Don’t tag all Muslims as terrorists –Sultan • Jonathan Fires NSA Over Jos Mayhem • Gen Gusau bounces back as NSA • Jonathan Meets Mark, Onovo, Security Chiefs • Jos Crisis - When a Mining City Becomes an Eternal Killing Field • Don't Cancel Nitel Sale, CNPP Tells NCP • Lingering Nigerian Leadership Crisis Causes Continued Unease • Protesters Demand to See Yar'Adua • In the Shadows of Men - Women's Political Marginalization • Jonathan Orders Probe of Nitel Sale • Secrecy on Yar'Adua Can Happen Only in Nigeria - Obasanjo

2. Economy: • Deregulation: FG Ready to Meet Labour’s Conditions • US firm invests $3m in Nigeria

• Cocoa Producing States Decry FG’s Attitude • NNPC: FG May Push for Higher OPEC Quota • NNPC groans under N387.5bn liabilities, losses – Minister 3. Energy: • Deregulation only answer to fuel scarcity 4. Environment: 5. Immigration/Refugee/Idps: • Demolition displaces 10,000 in Lagos 6. Health: • Gowon Tasks Govts on Malaria • Nigeria: Violence delays polio vaccinations

7. Human rights/Gender/social issues: • Jang Indicts Army over Jos Massacre • Gunshots heard in violence-wracked Nigerian town • 200 killed in Jos villages’ raid • Stampede in Jos again, one feared dead • Muslim group warns against reprisal killing • Christians flee after Nigeria's massacre • Survivors wail as children, women buried in Nigeria • Nigeria Clash Isn't About Religion, Clarifies Prelate • UN Rights Chief Calls for New Approach to End Cycle of Violence in Country • Retaliation fears stalk Nigeria city after clashes • Nigerian Women Protest Sectarian Massacre 8. Geo-Strategic issues: • EU Donates N196m IT Equipment to Govt • Bakassi - Nation May Return to UN

Other West African States

Benin: Burkina Faso: Cameroon: • Are Women the Magic Bullet for 'Electoral Apathy'?...... H1 • Worrying International Scaling Position……………………...H1

• German Investor Interested in Cameroon's Energy Sector…….H3 • Seven Chinese nationals kidnapped off Cameroon…………….H7

Cape Verde: Chad: • Security Council Extends UN Force for Two Months, as Talks with Country Continue…………………………..H1 • PM resigns from office……………………..H1 Cote d’Ivoire: Gambia: • Gambia row over wave of arrests………….H1 • I Won’t Defend Drug Traffickers,’ Says Gambian Opposition Leader ………H7 Guinea- Conakry: • Guinea sets presidential poll date……….H1 Guinea- Bissau: Liberia: • President Sirleaf Not Bound by Timeline on TRC Report, Says Minister………H1 • Wife of war crimes suspect Charles Taylor gives birth…..H7 Mali: Niger: • More Than 60 Percent of Niger Facing Food Insecurity……H7 • Aid Agencies Launch Hunger Appeal for Niger…………….H7 • Eight Killed in Attacks on Niger-Mali Border……………….H8

Senegal: • Villagers Fight the Rural Exodus in Senegal…..H5 • Senegalese Children Vaccinated Against Polio….H6 Sierra Leone: Togo: • Togo opposition attacked with water cannon……H1 • Togo’s tension: democracy vs. stability…………H1 • Fabre barred from protest………………………...H1 • Competing Political Rallies in Togo………..H1 • Togo's Opposition Leader: Police Seize Vote Fraud Evidence………H1 • Togo Government Confident President's Win Will Stand Up to Challenge………H1 • Togo Opposition: Election Rigged, Promises Protests

Details of the News

China-African Relations:

• President of DR Congo meets Chinese army official President Joseph Kabila of the Democratic Republic of Congo met here Friday with Ma Xiaotian, deputy chief of the General Staff of the Chinese People's Liberation Army, to discuss the development of bilateral ties and military cooperation.

Kabila said the DRC was satisfied with its cooperative partnership with China, and that Ma's visit would be a new starting point for military cooperation between the two countries.

Ma said that in recent years China has established a new strategic partnership that lays stress on political equality and mutual trust, economic cooperation, and cultural exchanges with many African countries, including the DRC.

Ma hailed the traditional friendship between China and the DRC, saying close cooperation between the two countries was achieved and the political mutual trust was reinforced thanks to efforts by the leaders of both sides.

Ma said China appreciates the DRC's adherence to one-China policy and its all-along support to China's reunification cause and China's stance in international affairs.

With frequent high-level exchanges and increased pragmatic cooperation, the ties between the army forces of China and the DRC kept developing in recent years, Ma said.

He also pledged further assistance from the Chinese side in the DRC's army building and national defense construction as well as efforts in the United Nations peacekeeping mission in the DRC, known as MONUC.

Pan-African issues: • 200m Africans need $620bn for food

More than 200 million people in Africa are malnourished and the continent requires $620 billion to feed its people in the next 40 years, Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Governor Sanusi Lamido Sanusi said yesterday.

The number represents 26 percent of the entire population of the continent. Annually, Africa requires $6.5 billion to develop the sector.

Statistics reveal that food import to Africa is about $15 to $20 billion per annum.

“These huge financial resources that are being expended can be internalised to develop Africa’s agriculture”, Sanusi said at a conference on the Development of Agribusiness and Agro-industries in Africa holding in Abuja.

Agriculture is the predominant economic activities of low developing economies, especially Sub-saharan Africa.

Over 70 percent of the people in Africa depend on agriculture for survival and well beings. It contributes about 20 to 50 percent to the continent’s GDP.

Investment in agriculture in the continent has declined over the years and is still declining.

The share of the official development assistance to the sector in Africa dropped from $1.45 billion in 1998 to $713 million in 2002.

At the end of 2008, only 11 African countries had reached the six percent annual agriculture growth target in the official commitments.

According to the global food insecurity statistic, about 10 million people die annually of hunger related diseases. Half of these are children who die of malnutrition.

The proportion of those living below the poverty line of $1 a day increased from 47.6 percent in 1985 to 59 percent in 2007.

While other jurisdictions like Asia and Latin America have recorded a sharp drop in the number of hungry people due to growth in food productions, about 850 million people were estimated to have food insecurity in 2005.

Investment in agriculture provides the opportunities to address extreme poverty, governor Sanusi said. He said agriculture has not achieve the desired result and this has ensure that a large number of people in Africa have limited access to food, clothing and shelter. “A total budget of $251 billion needed for the period of 2002 to 2015 to successfully implement the agricultural develop is far from been met”, the CBN boss said.

• Africa needs to rebuild economic defenses –IMF With its economies recovering, Africa needs to start rebuilding reserves and thinking about tightening spending to build defences against future crises, the head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said on Monday.

In Kenya as part of a three-country tour of Africa to examine its recovery from the crisis, Fund Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn said it was still too early for many governments to withdraw emergency fiscal measures.

However, Africa’s leaders must keep an eye on future disaster mitigation by ensuring they have sufficient reserves and the ability to boost short-term spending -- factors that allowed the poorest continent to weather the worst of last year’s global economic storm.

“Africa is back, although a lot depends on a global recovery that is still in its early stages,” Strauss-Kahn said in a speech at the University of Nairobi.

`For many countries, it is still too early to remove the crutch.

“A major lesson from the crisis is that countries that sowed in times of plenty were able to reap in times of loss. Policy buffers must therefore be rebuilt to allow for future countercyclical responses, with fiscal policy and reserves.

“This is the first line of defence against adverse shocks,” he said.

He also urged African leaders to plan for unexpected problems by negotiating debt with flexible repayment terms, or taking out insurance against natural disasters.

The IMF is now projecting economic growth in the sub-Saharan region at 4.5 per cent, below the 6 per cent - 7 per cent it enjoyed in years leading up to the global slowdown, but well above last year’s estimates of expansion below two per cent.

The Washington-based institution lent Africa a record five billion dollars last year as global recession hit demand for its commodities and other exports, causing a sharp decline in government revenues.

Remittances from Africans living overseas, an important source of income for many, also declined.

However, more than 30 countries were able to maintain social spending at pre-crisis levels or above due to the prudence of economic policies in the boom years, Strauss Kahn said.

Despite the relatively positive outlook, he said Africa remained at risk from factors ranging from natural disasters to political upheaval and an over-reliance on single streams of revenue, such as mining exports.

“This is not the time to rest on our laurels. African remains highly vulnerable to economic dislocation from many different sources,” he said.

“Think about swings in commodity prices, natural disasters or instability in neighbouring countries,” the IMF boss said.

• Obasanjo: Africans, Their Own Worst Enemies

Taking a critical look at the problems facing the African continent, former President, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, has said Africans are their own worst enemies.

The former president disclosed this at his hilltop home in Abeokuta yesterday, during the inauguration of the Governing Board of the Institute for African Culture and International Understanding, Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library.

"When we are our own worst enemies, it will be very easy for outsiders to join in pulling us down, " Obasanjo noted. According to him, "whenever we Africans put our heads and hands together for anything to be achieved, it can be achieved. No matter, wherever any distraction may come from, from within or from without."

Obasanjo stressed that African group in UNESCO, were undaunted in really making sure that in spite of distraction and diversion, they did what had to be done. He noted that the resilience of the group in UNESCO was a lesson to all that Africans can achieve a lot whenever they put their heads together.

According to him, here were lots of distractions in the course of the establishment of the institute which is a Category 2 UNESCO institute hosted by his library, but thanked all those who made it possible that it was hosted in Abeokuta, Nigeria. In his speech, Education Minister, Dr. Sam Egwu, said the inspiration received from Obasanjo, has in many ways touched the lives of many Nigerians.

"On my part and that of the Federal Government of Nigeria, I remain committed with the same zeal, enthusiasm and determination that brought the idea of the institution to practical fruition today, " the Minister said. He assured that as part of resolve to support the ideals of the institute, government would continue to support it financially within the limits of budgetary provisions and constraints.

"I have no doubt in my mind that dinstiguished men and women of honour that constitute this board are intellectually equipped with immense fountain spring of goodwill and wisdom that will nurture this institution to become not only the first of its kind, but the best of its ilk found anywhere in the world, " Egwu averred.

• African nation condemns homosexuals

Gay rights activists in the African country of Senegal have noted that its political and religious leaders are running violent campaigns against them.

A recent wave of arrests, negative media coverage, and announcements by political and religious leaders targeting Senegal's gay community has sent homosexuals in the mainly Muslim country running for cover.

Anti-gay protests have been springing up with participants suggesting gays have no right to exist in the country.

A recent wave of arrests against homosexual men has been covered by the media in a condemnatory fashion, causing politicians to capitalise on the anti gay feelings by inciting people to violence.

Prime Minister Souleymane Ndiaye Ndene last year called homosexuality a "crisis of values," caused by the world's economic problems.

He said that government ministries and society as a whole should fight against homosexuality.

Senegal's penal code punishes so-called impure or unnatural act with another person of the same sex with a maximum of five years in prison.

Last year, activists fighting HIV/AIDS were sentenced to eight years in jail on charges of homosexual acts and criminal conspiracy.

While their convictions were later overturned on technicalities, an influential religious leader, Imam Massamba Diop, said they should have been killed.

• Nigeria, Tanzania call for close ties among African parliaments

Senate President David Mark and Chairman of the Tanzanian Parliamentary Service Commission Dr. Chrisant M. Mzindakaya have called for closer ties among African parliaments to fashion out a blueprint that would eradicate the problems of the continent.

Exchanging views at the National Assembly yesterday, both leaders agreed that only a common approach to the multifaceted challenges facing the continent would be a panacea to its problems.

“African parliaments should begin to work together for the benefit of all citizens. We need to exchange ideas on how to address the problem of human rights, development, health, education and even aviation in our continent. There is no reason why we should not have direct flights connecting our countries or exchanging programmes on how to address health or education problems for the common good of our people,” Mark said. He said Nigeria runs a Presidential system of government which gives state governors some levels of autonomy and a system of government that upholds sanctity of separation of powers between and among the executive, legislature and the judiciary.

Earlier, leader of the Tanzanian parliamentary delegation led Dr. Chrisant M. Mzindakaya urged Nigeria to use its strength to ensure that democracy remains the option and the best form of government among African states.

• African Union Desires Former Niger President's Freedom

Peace and Security Council Chairman Ramtane Lamamra says Mamadou Tandja should be freed on humanitarian and reconciliation reasons.

The African Union said it wants former Niger President Mamadou Tandja released from further detention.

The 71 year-old Tandja, who was overthrown in a February 18 coup d’état is being held in a presidential building in the capital, Niamey.

African Union Peace and Security Council Chairman Ramtane Lamamra said Mr. Tandja should be freed for humanitarian and reconciliation reasons.

“From the point of view of national reconciliation and the need for appeasement so that they (the military junta) can succeed in conducting a transition, we think that it would be appropriate of course for him as well as for other former leaders of the country to be released,” he said.

AU Peace and Security Council Chair Ramtane Lamamra

Lamamra said the African Union was not trying to impose any demand on Niger’s transitional government.

“We are not imposing anything on governments of our member states. My understanding is that there is no specific threat to the public order, to the security of the country. And therefore as part of the need to promote national reconciliation and to promote some sort of a new beginning for the country, the best way to move forward would be not to be returned back from consequences of the previous area,” he said.

Lamamra would not say whether the African Union would like to see former President Tandja sent in exile following his return.

“It’s not for me or the AU to determine. I think this is a country (Niger) which has shown to know that in knows how to face bigger challenges regarding the domestic situation and the regional environment,” he said.

The military junta has named a cabinet and promised a short transition period. But it has not said when it hopes to return Niger to constitutional rule.

Lamamra said the African Union welcomes the number of positive commitments made so far by the military junta, including the decision not to stand for election and the promise to fully address the root causes of the crisis in Niger.

However, he said the African Union intends to enforce its policy of non-constitutional change of government.

“Due notice has to be taken of the fact that the African Union doctrine stipulates that the timeframe for restoring constitutional order should not exceed six months,” Lamamra said.

• French President Calls for Stronger Forest Preservation Effort

French President Nicolas Sarkozy is calling for rich nations to contribute more to fighting deforestation, particularly in the Congo and Amazon River basins in Africa and Latin America. The French government hosted an international forest conference in Paris.

President Nicolas Sarkozy is proposing that 20 percent of the $30 billion in climate change funds pledged by rich countries during the next three years go to fighting deforestation.

Opening a day-long forest meeting that gathered ministers from about 40 countries, the French president said forests are a world heritage and that all nations must contribute to financing their survival. He outlined a goal to reduce deforestation by a quarter by 2015, and altogether by 2030.

Forests play a key role in fighting climate change and in conserving a rich diversity of species. Andrei Muggiati is Amazon campaigner for Greenpeace International, in Amsterdam. "The tropical forests store large amounts of carbon and are huge biodiversity spots, so they have a crucial role in [keeping] the planet's climate stable. And also for our future in terms of developing new medicines, new cosmetics, new uses of biodiversity," he said.

Muggiati says burning and clearing the Amazon for ranching and farming is responsible for 80 percent of the greenhouse gasses that Brazil, the world's fourth-largest carbon emitter, sends into the atmosphere. In the vast Congo forest basin in central Africa, he says irresponsible logging is a prime culprit of deforestation.

But Muggiati says the international community is beginning to recognize the value of saving our forests."In [recent] years 20 percent of all carbon emissions in the world, aound five percent, come from forest destruction. Second, that stopping forest destruction is one of the most effective and fastest ways to address climate change right now," he said.

The United States and France count among six wealthy nations who have pledged $3.5 billion to fight deforestation during the next three years. Mr. Sarkozy said he wanted more countries to join the initiative, and for the private sector to play a bigger role.

• New HIV/AIDS Research Agenda to Better Respond to Women and Children

About 30 years into the HIV/AIDS epidemic, a new strategy is being launched to better respond to the needs of women and children.

The research agenda -- called Asking the Right Questions – includes 20 specific recommendations to expand and improve care and treatment. The announcement coincides with Monday’s International Women’s Day and is a joint effort by the International AIDS Society (IAS), U.N. agencies, researchers and civil society.

IAS Executive Director Robin Gorna says, “We’re nearly three decades into the epidemic and we have the depressing news that AIDS is now the leading cause of death of women of reproductive age across the globe,” she says.

It wasn’t always that way

“Three decades ago, very few women were infected with HIV. It was a minority issue. But sadly, as HIV has taken its increasing toll on women, the pace of research and the response really hasn’t kept up,” she says.

While “excellent treatments” are available, she says, which can prolong life, many have “not been properly researched on women’s bodies.”

As a result, the full effects of those treatments on women are not known.

“Now that more and more women are accessing treatment, what we still don’t know is how we can best get women into care and how we can make sure that care is integrated,” she says.

That includes, she says, ensuring HIV positive pregnant women get the best health care, while at the same time providing the necessary drugs to prevent HIV transmission to their babies.

What happened along the way

“There are very good reasons for not including women in early research. Doctors and pharmaceutical companies are always very worried about how drugs might affect the growing fetus. And of course we have the terrible history of Thalidomide, where women unintentionally took drugs, which led to side effects in their babies,” she says.

This side effects included severe deformities, including missing limbs. The drug was

13 sold between 1957 and 1961, before being pulled from the market.

“No one ever wants that to happen again. What that means is as an extreme caution,” she says. “Women of reproductive age are not included in clinical trials.”

In the event women of child bearing age are included, they must drop out of clinical trials if they become pregnant.

“For example, one of the drugs that is now used as first-line therapy throughout the world – one of the best drugs we have in combination (therapy) to combat AIDS – is recommended not to be used in women of reproductive age. And yet they are in many countries the majority of people with HIV,” she says.

Kids need special care

“One of the other things we’re looking at is the effect on children. Now in the rich world…we’ve basically eradicated transmission of HIV from pregnant women to their babies. And that’s brilliant news. Sadly, in many of the poorer countries of the world, the opposite is true. And hundreds of thousands of babies are born with HIV every year,” Gorna says.

The head of the International AIDS Society calls it “tragic” that drugs are not available in the “correct formulation” in the developing world.

“We have the drugs, but they need to be mini pills or syrups or a range of other innovative delivery mechanisms. And quite simply, there isn’t any economic rationale for many companies to make those products in that style,” she says.

The IAS, U.N. and other groups are calling on the pharmaceutical industry to increase its research and development of pediatric AIDS drugs “to make sure that these children, who are being born with HIV, can stay alive,” she says.

The IAS, UNICEF and others have set a goal of no more children being born HIV positive by 2015. Gorna says it’s possible, but it will take money and political will.

Universal access

Gorna is in London for a Tuesday meeting on universal access to HIV care, treatment and prevention. In 2005, at the G8 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland, leaders set a goal to provide such access by 2010.

“In 2005, the U.K. led the charge for the G8 and then the whole world at the U.N. to commit to this ambitious goal…. It’s sad, but truly the fact, that we’re about a third of the way there,” she says.

The London meeting, Gorna says, “Is to try very hard to reignite the energy and the

passion to achieve that goal of universal access to HIV treatment, prevention and care. We estimate there are about 10 million people who need HIV treatment today and are simply not able to access it.”

Gorna says Canada is hosting both the G8 and G20 summits this year, but so far has not included HIV/AIDS on the summits’ agendas.

African leaders and HIV positive Africans are expected to address Tuesday’s gathering in London about the problems they face.

“My suspicion is that what they’re going to say we need more money. We need to make sure that this remarkable momentum over the last five years does not slow down, that the funding is not flatlined. And that we don’t get into an unhealthy competition with other diseases or with climate change,’ she says.

She says the need for universal access is no less great today than it was in 2005.

• London Meeting Looks at Road Ahead for HIV/AIDS Prevention

The British government hosted a meeting in London Tuesday to discuss the progress made towards achieving universal access to HIV prevention. Before the meeting, Selah Hennessy spoke to ministers, aid workers, and campaigners about the importance of keeping HIV/AIDS on the global agenda.

Before the meeting at London's House of Commons, ministers and aid workers came together to talk about the road forward for HIV/AIDS prevention.

Scottish musician Annie Lennox, formerly of Eurythmics, was there and told VOA the commitment to fight HIV/AIDS cannot be broken.

"We really need to step up to the plate with the Global Millennium Development Goals," Lennox said. "We need to put more funding in - it isn't a question of pulling back now for these things to be dealt with properly."

At the G8 Summit in 2005 world leaders pledged to achieve universal access to HIV/AIDS by 2010.

But as this year's G8 and G20 June summit approaches, HIV/AIDS campaigners say still only one-third of people in need of HIV treatment worldwide receive it.

And they say they fear HIV/AIDS prevention won't be at the top of the agenda at this year's summit in Canada.

Diarmaid McDonald from the Stop AIDS Campaign says political and economic commitment to universal access is faltering - just as more is needed.

"This is 2010 - this is the year that the people who are living with AIDS right the way around the world were promised they would all have access to HIV/AIDS treatment, prevention and care and support and even though there's been a considerable improvement in the number of people on treatment, we are still over 10 million shy of our targets," McDonald said.

He says the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria is a crucial tool in the fight against HIV/AIDS.

The fund recently reported that nearly 5 million lives had been saved through its programs since 2002, with 2.5 million people infected with HIV now being treated with anti-retroviral therapy.

But McDonald says the fund can not save lives if donors don't provide the money needed.

He says a cash shortage already means that doctors working in Africa are having to scale back their HIV/AIDS treatment.

"We're seeing evidence across the developing world that doctors are having to start rationing supplies of anti-retroviral drugs, we're seeing evidence they're not being able to recruit new people and start them on their treatment services," McDonald said.

Gareth Thomas, Britain's minister for international development, added that political will is needed to keep HIV/AIDS on the global agenda.

"It's very important that political leaders start talking again about the impact of HIV/AIDS on developing countries. And that's political leaders in the developing countries themselves, but also in developed countries as well," Thomas said.

According to the World Health Organization 33.4 million people live with HIV/AIDS worldwide.

• Nearly 5 Million Lives Saved Through AIDS, Malaria, TB Treatment.

The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria reports nearly 5 million lives have been saved since 2002 through programs it has supported for the treatment of these three killer diseases. A new report shows the fund's multi-billion dollar investment is paying big dividends in improving the health of millions of people in developing countries.

Since its creation in 2002, the Global Fund has contributed more than $19 billion to combat AIDS, Malaria and Tuberculosis. The money has supported more than 600 programs in 144 countries. Countries in sub-Saharan Africa have been the major recipients.

The results are impressive. The fund reports 2.5 million people infected with HIV currently are being treated with antiretroviral therapy and this has resulted in a significant decline in AIDS deaths in many countries, including Ethiopia and Malawi.

It says around 6 million people with active tuberculosis are being treated for the disease. And, this too, is resulting in fewer deaths globally.

Through its malaria prevention program, the fund has distributed more than 100 million insecticide-treated nets. The report says 10 of the countries in Africa with the highest incidents of the illness have reported declines in new malaria cases and a decline in child mortality of 50 to 80 percent.

The fund's Director of Strategy, Performance and Evaluation, Rifat Atun, says these programs saved at least 3,600 lives every day in 2009, and even more can be saved through continued funding of these programs.

"We can, for example, given the rate of investment and the scale at the moment we have, eliminate malaria as a public health problem, decline the mortality of under five in children, mothers and beyond," noted Atun. "We can prevent millions of more HIV infections and also in tuberculosis. But, most importantly, we can look to a world that is free of HIV infection in children. We can virtually eliminate transmission of HIV from mother to child."

But Atun, cautions continued progress will require the partnership to continue to work in the effective way in which it has done. He says support must be maintained for the countries that have been able to achieve these results.

The Global Fund is a combination public-private partnership among governments, civil society, the private sector and affected communities. Most of its money comes from the G7 industrialized countries. But, private organizations, such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation also contribute significant amounts.

The Global Fund says it will be able to reach several health-related Millennium Development Goals by 2015, if it receives the money it needs to continue scaling up its activities in the coming years.

The fund is setting its sights on reducing both child and maternal mortality rates by three quarters, to halt the spread of HIV and to reverse the incidence of malaria and other major diseases.

• Smoking has Immediate, Adverse Effects on the Body

The World Health Organization calls tobacco the leading cause of preventable death in the world. In December, the WHO launched a campaign against cigarette smoking in Africa, saying a rapidly growing population is creating “larger and more

accessible markets” on the continent for tobacco companies.

While the risks of cancer and heart disease are generally well-known, smoking has many other effects on the body.

The act of lighting a cigarette and taking a puff is simple enough, but it triggers complex physical changes within the body. And Dr. Ana Navas-Acien says those changes begin within seconds of inhaling.

“The respiratory airway is very effective in absorbing tobacco and all the tobacco components. Tobacco has thousands of components, including many toxicants and many carcinogens. And so these components go immediately to the blood stream, to the respiratory tract,” she says.

Carcinogens are substances that can lead to the development of cancer, a well-known risk of smoking. But Navas-Acien, professor of preventive medicine at Johns Hopkins University, says cancer can be a long-term consequence of tobacco smoking. There are much quicker unhealthy effects, such as nicotine addiction.

“The most addictive component in tobacco is nicotine. And so nicotine reaches the brain in less than a second. So it’s like a peak of nicotine and that immediate response to nicotine is where the addictive power of tobacco is,” she says.

The brain actually has receptors for nicotine – structures that receive and bind to specific substances.

“So, it’s going to target these receptors that are in the brain cells. And actually the number of receptors is very small in people who do not smoke. But in people who start smoking, the number of receptors for tobacco increases. And the younger people start smoking the higher the number of receptors. That means the more addictive you are going to be,” the doctor says.

Heart, veins, arteries

While the body craves nicotine once addiction sets in, damage is being done to the cardiovascular system.

“The cardiovascular disease effects can be quite short term. There can be changes in the platelets that are very important particles in the blood that form clots. For example if we have a wound then we need these platelets to aggregate so that there is a clot and we don’t bleed. However, if we don’t have a wound and if we smoke then the platelets aggregate – that’s going to potentially contribute to the forming of (a) thrombosis and heart attacks, says Navas-Acien.

A blood clot in the wrong place can stop the flow of blood to the heart, triggering a heart attack.

Cigarette smoke also reduces lung function, even if inhaled as second-hand smoke.

“We have some very good evidence from workers in bars in Scotland. And their lung function was measured when smoking was allowed in the restaurants. And then Scotland passed a smoke-free legislation, so it was not possible to smoke in restaurants any longer and in bars any longer. When their lung function was measured a year later their lung function had improved quite substantially,” she says.

The Johns Hopkins doctor conducted a similar study in Accra, Ghana, measuring the effect of smoking in public places. People who worked in those environments, whether smokers or not, had higher levels of cigarette chemicals in their bodies. Another study was done in Nigeria, but those results are pending.

Looking older

The physical changes taking place inside the body can’t readily be seen without the aid of medical equipment. But there are telltale signs on the outside.

She says, “The skin is going to age more rapidly. For instance, if we take some twins, one who smokes and the other one doesn’t, and they do everything exactly the same, the skin of the person who smokes is going to have more wrinkles and is going to look much older. Maybe like even 10 years older.”

Then there are the yellow teeth and fingernails and discolored gums. Navas-Acien says smoking is also very bad for dental health.

She admits quitting is not easy, whether it’s done by sheer willpower or with the help of medication. It may take numerous attempts to break the nicotine addiction, but the Johns Hopkins professor says it’s worth it.

• West Africa: Fewer meningitis cases but more deadly

This year there are less than half the reported meningitis infections than in the same period in 2009, but more patients are dying - 13 percent in 2010 versus 8 percent in 2009 - according to the World Health Organization (WHO) Multi-Disease Surveillance Centre in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, which tracks 14 countries prone to meningitis outbreaks between Senegal and Ethiopia.

Infections typically "peak" at the end of March or early April, when the disease is most widespread.

"This year pales compared to last year's outbreak," the West Africa medical expert at the European Commission Humanitarian Aid (ECHO), Amparo Laiseca, told IRIN.

In response to the 2009 outbreak, ECHO provided more than US$6 million to support meningitis vaccinations in the region. Based on the current threat, ECHO will spend about $400,000 at most this year, she said.

Below is a snapshot of the epidemic across the region.

Ghana

More than 100 people have been hospitalized with meningitis complications and another 27 have died, according to the Ministry of Health. WHO delivered 100,000 doses of meningitis vaccines on 2 March, the second delivery this year from its emergency stock of meningitis vaccine.

Prisons received 200 doses and another 300 went to security agency personnel on a peacekeeping mission in Bawku in Ghana's upper east region, a flashpoint of electoral rows, land disputes and ethnic violence.

The north, upper east and upper west of Ghana, 12 hours by car from Accra, the capital, have all reported cases. Ghana's Health Minister, Benjamin Kumbuor, told IRIN on 4 March: "I just returned from a tour of the affected areas. It was a new strain [W135] ... happily, the cases are dropping. We have not had any more casualties."

Burkina Faso

On 12 March the Ministry of Health said there had been 2,188 reported cases and 336 deaths, and the 15-percent fatality rate had not changed in the past month. Health Minister Seydou Bouda said the situation was "under control", and after vaccination campaigns the five most recently affected of the country’s 65 districts were no longer in epidemic phase (10 infections per 100,000 residents).

Benin

WHO representative Léon Kohossi told IRIN that in the central Benin towns of Tanguiéta and Bassila the pneumococcal meningitis bacteria had led to a number of deaths. Overall, the country has had 104 reported infections and 16 deaths - mostly from the more common "A" meningitis strain - as of 28 February. Benin has not yet introduced the pneumococcal vaccine.

Subsidized mass roll-outs of pneumococcal vaccine have taken place only in Rwanda and the Gambia, starting in 2009. The Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation (GAVI) has estimated that this vaccine could save the lives of seven million children globally over the next two decades.

To qualify for GAVI support for this vaccine – which brings down the price from the retail cost for low-income countries of $7 to just $0.15 per dose - income-eligible

20 countries must give at least half of all newborns the third dose of the diphtheria, pertussis (whooping cough) and tetanus (DTP3) vaccine.

Niger

The recently formed post-coup government is drafting a response plan. As of 28 February, 425 infections and 34 deaths have been reported.

Nigeria

Alejandro Javier Costa, of ICG, said Nigeria's request for vaccines from the emergency meningitis vaccine stock was being reviewed. As of 21 February, 565 infections and 55 deaths have been reported.

Togo

The country has experienced one of the region's highest fatality rates - as of 28 February there have been 188 infections and 49 deaths - but the data is hard to interpret as it may be incomplete, according to ECHO's Laiseca. "Health workers often do not have any means to communicate the information to a central level. It is possible not all infections were recorded [which would decrease the fatality rate.] "

• IMF Boss Impressed by Continent's Recovery

Nairobi — International Monetary Fund is optimistic about the economic prospects of Africa and says the continent has weathered the effects of the global financial crisis.

Speaking in South Africa, the IMF chief Dominique Straus-Kahn, said he was particularly impressed by messages from Kenya, that stressed self-reliance and good governance.

Mr Strauss-Kahn visited the country last week on his tour of the continent to assess the impact of the global crisis. He said the continent was recovering at the same pace as developed countries. The IMF official also visited Zambia.

He said the economies were strengthened by good policies which had provided fiscal space for them to weather external shocks.

"Usually when you have a crisis, African countries' recovery is a little late and lags behind the recovery of the rest of the world. Its not true today. Recovery is taking place at almost the same pace as rest of the world," he said.

Mr Strauss-Kahn said the policies adopted by African countries were appropriate.

• Civil Society Must Hold Gov’t Accountable, Says IMF Chief

Dominique Strauss-Kahn, managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), this week made his third trip to Africa in a year, visiting Kenya, South Africa and Zambia between March 8 and 11. In Johannesburg, AllAfrica senior correspondent Charlayne Hunter-Gault put to him questions sent in by our readers.

Hunter-Gault: Thank you for joining us. You said in Nairobi this week that Africa is back and while noting that last year's slower economic growth caused enormous suffering, you commended African countries for policies that cushioned their people against the global recession, for example, reducing debt but preserving or even increasing public spending levels.

allAfrica.com invited site visitors to submit questions that they wanted me to ask you and several remarked that international financial institutions for decades promoted cuts in spending, including for agriculture, education and health. In retrospect, was that harmful? And also you said that era is over. Is it really over?

Well, it's not totally fair to say that international organizations - and I don't want to talk on behalf of the other organizations let's talk about the IMF - as we're in any way asking for a cut in a specific kind of spending.

When we come to a country having a huge deficit, there's no other way to save the country than to reduce the deficit. Now you may do it in different ways: you may increase taxes or cut some expenditures. Cutting expenditures, you may cut one kind of expenditure or another kind of expenditure. This is the call of the government; it's never the call of the IMF. What the IMF does is to say, 'Look, to be on a safer way, this year you need to save X billion and then next year another Y billion. How do you want to do it?'

And the countries come with proposals and then we discuss. You say this measure will save 100 billion. We don't believe this; it will save only 50 billion. So we have a discussion and finally we find an agreement.

But the nature of the cut at stake is never decided by the IMF and the country has to decide itself what is more important, what is less important.

So many of the countries that I've been in have all talked about how they were forced to cut social spending.

But that's just human nature, you know. If I were in their shoes and have go on TV and explain to my people that I messed up here before, that now I have to cut expenditures, I will always say that it's the responsibility of the IMF. Of course, we are used to that. But the reality is that if we come in a country it is just because they asked us to come because they messed up. If not they don't ask us to come. So the real problem comes from what has been done before the arrival of the IMF, not after the arrival of the IMF.

But you also talked about how things have changed.

Right. The fact is one of the drawbacks of what has been done in the past, in my view, is that when the IMF had to deal with a country because the country was really in a bad situation, the IMF didn't try to solve only the problem at stake but to fix many other problems in the economy. And sometimes they were right: other problems needed to be fixed also, but it was not really the problem of the day and so they created a bigger problem. Let me give you an example. You have a deficit problem. You need to fix this deficit problem. [The] answer is either on the expenditure side or on the revenue side.

At the same time you may realize that there is a huge problem of land reform in the country and obviously it will be good for the country, for the future, to make the structural reforms and have land reform. That's a big political thing. It may be very difficult. It's not absolutely needed to fix the problem which is at stake at this moment. In the past, the IMF would come with a lot of conditions, not only the ones which are needed to fix the problem immediately, but also other conditions.

[They're] certainly useful for the country but not needed immediately and creating more political problems than solving questions. That we got rid of and now the number of conditions in the IMF programmes has been streamlined considerably. There are almost half the number of conditions compared to the past, and that's one way I had in mind when I say the IMF has changed.

You just gave an example, and people who wrote to us talked about failures of costly development programmes and say that there are more failures than success stories. Can you mention examples from both categories and talk about what makes some economic programmes succeed while others failed?

Well, I'm not going to make a list of failures, especially in looking backward. I prefer to look at successes and also to look forward. But it is fair enough to answer your question. You know during the last decade, African countries, not only western Africa, also eastern Africa, have experienced growth of about six to seven percent a year. It never happened in the past - over decades. Never. Why did it happen? Because finally those countries were forced [by events and world changes] to implement good policies. Why were they forced to do that? Because the international community set up a big programme of debt cancellation and the condition for this debt cancellation was to have a good track record in economic policy. So because of this carrot of debt cancellation, countries said, 'Okay we are going to follow what you say, we are going to implement the policy you say,' and the result was the highest growth ever. If this is not a success, what is a success?

Can they do that without the IMF now?

Hopefully.

Have they reached that point?

Hopefully. They have to take ownership of this policy and to implement the right policy. I mean the biggest success in the IMF is that nobody asks us to come. So I hope that in

23 most countries the memories of this period where good policy has been put in place- which, by the way, was the reason they were able to cope with the crisis. They had built some fiscal room and made these countries able to spend more during the crisis to cope with the crisis. And that is one of the reasons why the crisis has not been as bad in Africa. I'm not saying that it has been good, of course, but not as bad as we could have expected because many countries had some fiscal room. This is also the reserve of the policies put in place years ago.

Now some people who wrote in talked about Africa's debt burden and about how it's a widespread concern with debt service siphoning off resources-not only from the social safety net, but also from investments in infrastructure and economic growth. And your own IMF survey, two years ago, found that poor countries were facing litigation from at least 46 commercial creditors. Civil society analysts want to know if the IMF will support curbs on commercial credit practices, such as the so- called 'vulture funds' that buy poor countries' debt and sue to collect it?

Well frankly it's not our job. We have a limited mandate and our mandate does not include that fact that we will be part of litigation between private creditors and debtors. But sometimes again, it's always the same thing, these kinds of problems may have macro-economic and macro-financial consequences and in this case we step in. There are many examples where the IMF was asked to give an assessment of the debt sustainability of the countries but then when we came to the real litigation then it's not the business of the IMF. We can provide advice but we are not part of this litigation.

But is it bad?

Well, everyone has to do his own job. I am happy when the people are asking the IMF to do more. It's not always consistent with the previous question, which was, when the IMF comes in, they messed up. So you have to choose your side. But I think that being a multilateral institution and a public institution, it is right for us to come in, to step in when countries have problems with other countries, even in private questions.

I have a good example about what happened in DRC last year. In a nutshell, the Democratic Republic of Congo had a big deal with Chinese companies which wanted to invest in mining. And our view was that the contract was not really fair and so we decided to help DRC to renegotiate this contract with the Chinese. It was from one point of view a private contract, between private companies in China and certainly the government of DRC on the other side. I decided to help the DRC because I really found that the deal was unfair and at the end of the day we got a much better contract, a much better deal for Congo. So it may happen when the investment is that big that it will have macro-economic consequences on a country, that we need to step in, but in general that's private business.

Just as a note, representatives Maxine Waters and Spencer Bachus this past summer in America introduced legislation that would prohibit sovereign debt

profiteering from poor countries and require greater levels of transparency by creditors suing those poor countries. So you have an ally in the U.S. Congress.

I have had many discussions with Representative Maxine Waters already.

She's very much interested in this question and has a lot of knowledge about it. And it's very helpful to find in the U.S. Congress some support for the kind of policy we want to implement.

Some of the people who submitted questions ask why it is that the impoverished citizens, for example, of the DRC should repay IMF loans that were contracted under the dictator Mobutu Sese Seko?

What can I tell you? It's not IMF money; it's the money of the international community. IMF resources come from the other countries.

When a loan has been made to [the former] Zaïre, not Congo, this loan has been made by the other countries through the IMF and by other countries to this country. So it's just fair that the donor countries want to be repaid. I understand the problem for the poorest people in those countries who say, 'Why should I pay for this?'

Today, we have something [similar] in Iceland, where really some Icelandic bankers messed up in huge proportion compared to the GDP of this small country. And Icelanders - the guy in the street - says, 'Why should I pay because my bankers were so bad?' On the one hand it is totally understandable; on the other hand you have a kind of international commitment and you cannot withdraw yourself from the international community. If you do so, you cannot expect anymore that the international community will come and help you. So at the end of the day, repaying past debt is something which is almost unavoidable. But what I insist on is that formally it is a debt by the DRC to the IMF but the reality is that it is a debt from the DRC to the 185 other members of the IMF, which are providing us our resources.

But could they not be persuaded to do some debt forgiveness based on this issue of fairness?

Of course, absolutely, and as you know a huge programme called HIPC (Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative) has been set up years ago and almost all poor countries on the continent have benefited from this debt relief. Congo, the DRC, was one of the last ones and just because it was stuck - because of the Chinese deal I was talking about a few minutes ago - now we are in the process where something as big as three billion dollars of debt cancellation will appear in the benefit of the DRC's people. So this programme you are asking for, debt cancellation, has been carried on, and is still going on for some remaining countries, including DRC. So that's absolutely right.

The problem then is not to go back to the same level of debt that they had before by new loans because then we really didn't solve totally the problem. On the other hand it would

25 be totally unreasonable to believe that poor countries like DRC can develop without foreign aid and foreign aid may be foreign loans providing that these loans are very concessional. And that's why in the IMF, using the proceeds of the gold sale from the IMF that we made, which was the property of the membership, we created a new facility, which is a facility where the interest rate is just zero; we couldn't go below. We were asked to be as concessional as possible. We went to the lower boundary, which is zero.

So now until the end of 2011 - and we will see what happens for the years after - we are lending to countries like DRC at zero interest rate.

Do you have any concerns that loans are disincentives for governments to be responsible?

It's a very well known concern, and in some cases you may be right, but it sounds to me a little like people arguing that you shouldn't have any kind of social safety net in a country because it prevents people from looking for jobs. I'm not sure I share this view.

This is a follow-up but it comes from one of the people who wrote in.

Why does the IMF dump funds on the lap of corrupt governments in Africa without a rigorous follow-up on how those funds are spent? Why does the IMF ignore small- and medium-scale entrepreneurs on the continent whose businesses have a more direct impact on the poor? Why do you keep lending support to multinationals and corrupt government projects?

So there are many different questions.

I know, but they all came from one person.

Let's try to begin with the first question. We are very much concerned about corruption, not only in Africa. Let's be candid, corruption is not a specialty for Africa, but it does exist in Africa and sometimes at a very big scale. So we are concerned about that and that's why in most of our programmes, this so called conditionality, which seems to me has people so upset, has sometimes to do with improving governance. But it's not a general tale. "We're not saying, 'Oh, you bad guys, you should improve government and fight against corruption.' That's fine, but that produced no results.

What we say is, okay, we are going to have a programme over the three coming years. There will be a review by the IMF of the programme every quarter and the timetable is that in six months from now you will have passed a bill on public procurement, for instance, and that's one way of fighting against corruption.

So we do have conditions in our programme to fight against corruption.

Is it enough? Certainly not. Do we eradicate corruption this way? I don't have this pretension but it's certainly a concern we have.

Now about SMEs (small- and medium-sized enterprises) -again and again our role is a limited role. Our role is to deal with the macro-economic environment, helping governments to be able to create themselves the correct economic policies in their country. So we don't deal directly with SMEs, we don't lend to SMEs; we don't lend to any company, even multinationals.

You were talking about highly corrupt multinationals - I don't know if they are highly corrupt, but what I know is that we never lend to a company. We lend only to governments, then the question for the governments is to implement the right policy, and then the question for the civil society people rightly asking this question is to fight against their government to make them accountable. So we are providing resources to government, we are trying to control the use of these resources, to constrain those governments, to have better governance, but we don't have any kind of direct relationship with companies.

In Nairobi, you heard a Transparency International representative say that civil society needs to become more engaged. Does the IMF see that as something positive and desirable to help facilitate your own relations with governments?

Definitely, yes. It doesn't mean that we will always agree with what civil society organizations are saying but it is absolutely necessary and I try everywhere I go to have this kind of discussion with civil society organizations. I had it in Nairobi with 20 of them, discussing.

Some had very tough questions. But that's just fair and we have to explain to civil society what we are doing. They have to tell us the concerns they have, and certainly the action, especially in Africa, they have [been] trying to put governments on the right track is absolutely necessary.

Is it your sense that there's been some progress in eliminating corruption in countries across the continent? Or is it still a pretty serious problem?

Both of your sentences are true. There has been some progress; it's still a big concern.

We also have some questions about your proposals for a U.S. $100 billion a year Green Fund to mitigate and adapt to climate change, and they want to know about the relationship of climate to core development concerns. A malaria researcher mentions that the Lancet medical journal called climate change the biggest threat to global health in the 21st century and wants to know if the Green Fund could be designed to enable countries to make health-sector investments that prepare for climate change. Can the IMF help Africa cushion the projected effects of changing climate on health and will it?

Look, something which has to be clearly understood is that the IMF is not a development agency. We are trying in this problem to play our role, do our part, which is to help find a financing mechanism which makes it possible to have this $100 billion a year available in

2020, which was the request by the Copenhagen agreement. So our part is to say, ok, you need that much money, it's a huge amount of money which will have a lot of consequences on global stability, so we need to provide you with something which in our view makes it possible. There may be other ideas. There may be one challenged by another one and finally we will see what is a good solution.

Our business is not, down the road, to know how this money will be used.

Of course, we may have an opinion. As a citizen I may have my opinion, you may have yours. A lot of the experts, economic experts at the IMF, may have their own views, but that's not our business. That's the business of our sister institution, the World Bank, and other development banks. We are not directly providing development policy. We are providing the economic environment, the financing, the stability of the economic environment, which makes development possible. That's true for development; it's true for climate change the same way.

What we try to do is provide a contribution, which may be helpful to find the right way for financing this huge amount, which is needed by developing countries to cope with climate change. The way it will be done has to be defined by other specialized agencies.

How much of a concern do you have about poor countries like Liberia, for example? It has a lot of forests and so forth but they also have a lot of hungry people and so there's a real clash between the need to allow those people to make a living by cutting down the trees but also by trying to maintain the forests.

One of the things which really makes me proud - there are not so many - is that one of the first things I was able to manage in the two weeks of my arrival at the IMF more than two years ago was to complete an agreement with Liberia. [It] was hanging for months and months and months, an agreement on debt cancellation. Liberia is a very poor country which absolutely needs to be helped.

Now the question you raise is a very good question - that in those countries people have problems just for living and the living of their kids. Do they care about environment and deforestation or things like this? It's absolutely understandable that it's not their main problem.

On the top of the agenda is what I'm going to eat today and what I'm going to give to feed my family, so that's why they need special help to mitigate and adapt to climate change. That's why the need at the global level is so big.

You were talking about $100 billion a year - can you imagine, can people imagine listening to us, what $100 billion a year means? It's a huge amount of money and it's needed by a country, a developing country, especially poor countries like Liberia, to be able to help people to take into account the problem which obviously for them is not the most important problem of the day. But deforestation in Liberia may have a lot of bad consequences for the future - look what happened to Haiti for instance.

So they need to fight for today's living, but they need to fight for the future generations of their own country too. For this they need help and that's the reason of our engagement in this problem.

Wangari Maathai in Kenya seems to have solved that problem to a certain extent with her tree planting and she was able to get people to grow enough trees to cut some for what they needed and-

Kenya's doing very well in this field.

Finally, there's interest in to what extent the IMF will support grants rather than loans for climate change adaptation. You opened the door to that approach in Nairobi, saying that much of this financing should come from grants or highly concessional loans. Ultimately these will have to come as budgetary transfers from developed countries. Will this idea get backing from the big donors?

Well, first the idea that more, a bigger part, has to come from grants is absolutely obvious. When you have to deal with adaptation you don't expect any kind of return. If you change your economy into a green economy, you expect that the investment you make will produce some return in the coming years and then you may build it starting from a loan - [it] has to be a very concessional loan but a loan nevertheless.

When you have to deal with things which have been destroyed and you need to rebuild without any kind of return which can be expected, only the fact that you will limit the consequences of climate change, then you need to do it through grants. There's no other way to get these grants at the end of the day and whatever the financial process you build, there's no other way but to transfer from advanced countries. Are they prepared to do that? So they say, now they will have to prove it.

• Africa: Continent's New Oil Hotspots

The power balance in Africa's crude oil production landscape is set to shift in the near future as a number of new oilfields come online.

Crude oil has in recent years been discovered in many countries such as Sierra Leone, São Tomé & Príncipe and Ethiopia but it is currently the nations of Ghana and Uganda that are attracting the most attention.

Ghana

Ghana's offshore Jubilee Field, situated approximately 60 kilometres from the mainland is thought to have oil reserves of 1.8 billion barrels as well as significant gas deposits. Production is expected to start in the fourth quarter of 2010.

'The big story for Ghana is that oil production will start [soon], and that will lead to quite a substantial increase in output,' says Peter Allum, the International Monetary Fund's mission chief to the country.

'Now that won't create many jobs in and of itself - it is a very capital intensive industry and the oil is based offshore so a lot of those jobs will be expatriate jobs. But it will generate a substantial boost in revenues for the government - we estimate in the range of 6% to 7% of gross domestic product (GDP). If that money is used wisely, it could lead to a substantial improvement in Ghana's infrastructure and its competitiveness, and that could lead to further growth and job creation.'

The Jubilee Field is set to be developed by a joint venture comprising Tullow Ghana Limited, Kosmos Ghana HC, Anadarko WCTP Company, Sabre Oil and Gas, the EO Group, and the state-owned Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC).

The Ghanaian government, traditionally seen as one of the better administrations in Africa, recently, however, attracted criticism when it interfered with Kosmos' proposed sale of its stake in the project to Exxon Mobil. The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported that energy minister, Joe Oteng-Adjei, sent a letter to Exxon Mobil informing the company that a deal with Kosmos wouldn't receive government approval. Oteng-Adjei allegedly said the GNPC would be the only entity allowed to buy the Kosmos stake.

Ghana's crude oil is of a highly desired grade. 'The variety of crude found in the Gulf of Guinea is known in industry parlance as light and sweet, meaning it is viscous and low in sulphur, and therefore easier and cheaper to refine than, say, Middle Eastern crude, which tends to be lacking in lower hydrocarbons and is therefore very sticky,' writes John Ghazvinian in his book Untapped: The Scramble for Africa's Oil.

'This is particularly appealing to American and European refineries, which have to contend with strict environmental regulations that make it difficult to refine heavier and sourer varieties of crude without running up costs that make the entire proposition worthless.'

Uganda

Another African country that is set to attain oil producer status in the near future is the East African nation of Uganda.

Uganda's oil assets are situated in the Lake Albert basin, in the west of the country. The country has proven reserves of 700 million barrels of oil although this figure has serious upside. According to the WSJ, Uganda has even established an elite army unit to protect its oil fields.

Nearly thirty years ago Shell started with exploration activities in Uganda's Lake Albert region but pulled out because of falling oil prices and political uncertainty. Five years

ago, United Kingdom-based Tullow Oil, however, returned to Lake Albert and found large crude deposits. The firm is currently the largest operator in the country.

Tullow and Heritage Oil Plc were originally 50% partners in two Ugandan oil blocks but Heritage decided to dispose of its assets. Tullow is awaiting final Ugandan government approval for its $1.5 billion purchase of Heritage Oil's 50% stake in the two blocks. It is also in discussion with Total and the China National Offshore Oil Company to take over a part of its assets.

In an effort to decrease reliance on fuel imports, the Ugandan government has contracted an engineering company to undertake a feasibility study into the development of an oil refinery. Such a refinery has the potential to be very profitable for Uganda as it can sell fuel to its neighbouring countries.

As with Ghana, Uganda's government has also attracted negative publicity around the handling of the country's oil assets. Uganda's parliament is currently pushing for details of oil production sharing agreements government signed with international oil companies to be made public.

Avoiding the 'resource curse'

Africa's new oil producers are under pressure to effectively manage production and ensure that oil production benefits the population. The problems experienced in Nigeria are a good example of oil production gone wrong. The Nigerian Federal Government has done little to improve the lives of the people living in the Niger Delta area and oil companies have polluted the environment. This led to militants bombing oil facilities and kidnapping government and oil company officials. The discovery of oil also led to government paying little attention to developing the other sectors of the economy.

'There is a need to institutionalise structures and authorities governing the sector and ensure transparency in managing potential revenue accumulations,' says Catherine Hunter, research manager at IHS Global Insight. 'A close but secondary priority is often to ensure that other parts of the economy benefit as much as possible from oil investment by increasing local content and local employment requirements on the oil sector.'

'Ghana's trying to do this in terms of its new oil revenue management law - which is also expected to see enhanced local content obligations. Uganda's looking at this with the stipulation for a domestic refinery (size unknown as yet) in order to create value added and employment from crude oil production,' says Hunter.

She also says that oil companies in general are becoming better corporate citizens. 'I think shareholders are demanding a greater level of transparency over supermajor and large company operations in more remote parts of the globe (emerging markets) - and oil companies are reacting to that by improving disclosure on operations and ensuring that corporate social responsibility activities take place generally. Smaller unlisted companies however remain somewhat free of these restrictions. Meanwhile, the advent of more

activist national oil companies from countries' with limited disclosure obligations is not generally conducive to oil sector transparency.'

According to Allum it is possible to avoid the so-called resource curse. 'The perceived wisdom is that resources can be a curse for economies. When you look at oil exporters, they have not always seen the benefits in terms of stronger growth and improved living standards. But when you look closely at resource exporters, there are some that have done very well. For example, Botswana has moved into middle-income country status on the back of diamond exports even though it is a landlocked country,' he says.

Increased oil production has the potential to greatly transform the fortunes of African countries but this hinges on ensuring that oil brings properity to the entire population and not only line the pockets of corrupt government officials.

Ghana:

1. Political News: • Gov’t Can Appoint an Independent Prosecutor Now

The Danquah Institute, a governance think tank, has charged the Government of Ghana to go ahead and implement the ruling party’s manifesto pledge to set up an independent prosecution service “now without shielding behind the unnecessary pretext of a constitutional amendment.”

The Executive Director of DI, Gabby Asare Otchere-Darko, made this statement Wednesday evening at public lectures on international corruption delivered by UK barrister and expert on internal criminal law, John Hardy, QC, and renowned criminologist, Prof Ken Attafuah at the K.A Busia Hall, University of Ghana, Legon. The Fourth Republic Constitution of Ghana as it stands now expressly allows the Attorney-General to immediately delegate his powers of prosecution to an impartial agency by a simple Act of Parliament. This could easily create an autonomous prosecution service to realise the stated intentions of President Mills and perform the A- G’s functions that are akin to those of the Director of Prosecutions who heads the Crown Prosecution Service in the United Kingdom,” the Danquah Institute states.

According to Article 88 of the Constitution: ‘(1) There shall be an Attorney-General of Ghana who shall be a Minister of State and the principal legal adviser to the Government. (2) The Attorney-General shall discharge such other duties of a legal nature as may be referred or assigned to him by the President, or imposed on him by this Constitution or any other law. (3) The Attorney-General shall be responsible for the initiation and conduct of all prosecutions of criminal offences.’

Clause 4 of that Article says, “All offences prosecuted in the name of the Republic of Ghana shall be at the suit of the Attorney-General or any other person authorised by him in accordance with any law.”

According to Mr Otchere-Darko, “The relevant authority here is the statement that ‘All offences prosecuted in the name of the Republic of Ghana shall be at the suit of... any other person authorised by [the Attorney-General] in accordance with any law.”

He continues, “What this means is that the NDC can easily make good its manifesto promise now by introducing to Parliament a bill that seeks to create an ‘Independent Prosecution Service’ which will undertake the Attorney-General’s prosecutorial role of law officer of the state to assess and conduct prosecutions and appeals of criminal offences, leaving the A-G to remain the principal legal advisor to the Government.”

“Government can be proactive and use the legal manoeuvrability available under Article 88(4) for the arrangements for the organisation and supervision of the prosecution process, and for safeguarding its independence,” Mr Otchere-Darko argues.

In the view of the DI, “Government may even reserve the prosecution of certain crimes of very sensitive national security nature, such as treason, to the express approval of the Attorney-General.”

The call for the creation of an independent prosecutor now by the policy think tank was prompted by the statement by the Minister of Communications, Haruna Iddrisu, at the public lectures on Money Laundering on Tuesday at the British Council, which were also organised by DI, the Justice and Human Rights Institute and the Faculty of Law, university of Ghana.

The visiting main speaker, John Hardy had argued for the establishment of an independent prosecution service for Ghana.

The Minister of Communications in response associated the Government with it but said that it remains a manifesto promise of the National Democratic Congress until the people of Ghana approve of it in a referendum once the proposal is put before them as envisaged.

While welcoming the NDC’s stated intentions to create an independent chief prosecutor, DI is also calling on government to do more to promote in the police and other investigative bodies the “culture of confidence to investigate without fear or favour. This is because even an independent prosecutor would first need to be presented with a docket before a decision can be taken either to prosecute or not.”

Di suggests further, “We may also consider the situation, as in Finland, where charges against certain high-ranking public officials for offences in office are heard by the Court of Appeal as a case in first instance instead of at a lower court.”

The Danquah Institute has expressed some pessimism about the work of the Constitutional Review Commission leading to constitutional amendments of provisions that are entrenched before the term of the current administration ends in January 2013.

“We are rather cautious about the work of the Constitutional Review Commission finishing in time to be put before a national referendum before the 2012 general elections, especially when it could cost nearly as much as general elections to conduct that referendum and whether or not it would not be frustrated by the usual partisan considerations that distort the appreciation of issues of common national interest,” DI says.

But, DI believes it is “a step in the right direction for a government to appreciate the importance of guaranteeing the integrity of the chief prosecutor of any democracy. This role is central in a democracy governed by the rule of law and critical to the general expectation of an effective criminal justice system.”

The Danquah Institute shares the view that the country is “so polarised that the creation of an independent prosecution service manned by people with unimpeachable credibility would contribute to public safety and public confidence in the administration of criminal justice in Ghana. It must be seen that justice would be carried out objectively and fairly, without improper influence or interference from any source.”

DI is also calling for the “introduction of a standard charge approval process which should ensure that cases which go to court are sufficiently supported by the anticipated admissible evidence, and that prosecutions are pursued only if they are in the public interest and not because party supporters or party leaders want it.”

It sees the current pressure being put on Attorney-General Betty Mould-Iddrisu as “unhelpful to the development of our democratic institutions. We are, therefore, urging the leadership of political parties to advise their followers to allow the rule of law to work.”

In expressing its disquiet with the present political agitations for the prosecutions of public officials, DI poses the question, “What is the guarantee that party supporters would not in the future be marching to the offices of an independent prosecutor to demand prosecutions or otherwise if their leaders are reluctant today to discourage them?”

The powers of the Attorney General fall under Chapter 8 of the Constitution of Ghana, an entrenched provision. The Constitution necessarily sets out a difficult process for amendment under Article 289.

It stipulates, inter alia: 289 (2) A bill for the amendment of an entrenched provision shall, before Parliament proceeds to consider it, be referred by the Speaker to the Council of State for its advice and the Council of State shall render advice on the bill within thirty days after receiving it.

(3) The bill shall be published in the Gazette but shall not be introduced into Parliament until the expiry of six months after the publication in the Gazette under this clause.

(4) After the bill has been read the first time in Parliament it shall not be proceeded with further unless it has been submitted to a referendum held throughout Ghana and at least forty percent of the persons entitled to vote, voted at the referendum and at least seventy- five percent of the persons who voted cast their votes in favour of the passing of the bill.

(5) Where the bill is approved at the referendum, Parliament shall pass it.

(6) Where a bill for the amendment of an entrenched provision has been passed by Parliament in accordance with this article, the President shall assent to it.

• Volta Chiefs Put Mills On the Carpet

Two chiefs in the Volta Region - Togbe Brentua Asafo IV of the Mafi traditional area and Togbe Dzegblade of Adaklu-Kodzobi - have called on President Mills to fulfill all the promises he made to them during his campaign tour of the area in 2008.

The two chiefs claim the President promised to create separate districts for them, a promise he is yet to fulfill.

Togbe Brentua, who was the first to fire the salvo, told the President when he visited the town recently that his people were anxiously waiting for him to redeem his pledge, to ensure the accelerated development of the area, and that the current North Tongu district was too big.

Togbe Brentua Asafo, who took advantage of the visit of the President to Mafi Asiekpe to cut the sod for the construction of the second phase of the Sogakope-Adidome-Ho-Fume road, said the North-Tongu District did not see much development over the years in view of its large size, and that dividing the district was the only way to promote development in the area.

The chief also regretted that though water was being treated in the area for distribution to other parts of the region and beyond, the traditional area still did not have access to potable water, and that his people drink from unhygienic sources.

Togbe Brentua Asafo noted that due to such promises made to the people, the expectations of the people were very high, and urged the President to live up to his

35 promise, but was quick laud the government's determination to continue with projects embarked upon by the previous administration.

He also commended the government for paying particular attention to rural development, which he said, was important in addressing the vast disparities between the urban and rural areas.

The decision, he continued, would go a long way to reduce poverty and its attendant problems in society.

The Chief of Adaklu-Kodzobi,Togbe Dzegblade V, on his part, appealed to President Mills to live up to the promise he made to the people of Adaklu, to create a new district for them. According to him, his subjects were in high spirits awaiting the day the promise would be fulfilled. "Mr. President, I can feel it deep in my spirit that you will rule for eight years, and during this time, you will do great things that you will be remembered for, and this will come to pass," Togbe Dzegblade, who is also a pastor, told the President.

The Minister for Roads and Highways, Joe Gidisu, assured the people that a lot more would be done to achieve the development target of the government, noting that in terms of roads, the Eastern corridor roads would be constructed to open up the region.

He also assured the people that the Asikumah-Hohoe-Jasikan-Kadjebi-Nkwanta Damako road would also be constructed, to open up the region, as well as the ongoing construction of the Asukwakwa-Dambai road.

• Mo Ibrahim calls on President Mills

GNA - President John Evans Atta Mills on Friday received Dr. Mohamed "Mo" Ibrahim, Founder of Mo Ibrahim Foundation, at the Osu Castle in Accra, and stressed the need for the use of political power to improve the quality of life of the people.

The Sudanese-born British mobile telephony billionaire is in the country to deliver a lecture at the University of Ghana, Legon.

President Mills described Africa as the continent for the 21st Century and called for the development of the capacity and ability of the people, especially the youth to take up challenges of the future.

He spoke of Africa's changing roles and said the continent owed the younger generation a huge debt to coach them for the challenges that come with the continent's roles and to turn it around.

President Mills commended the Mo Ibrahim Foundation for its interest in governance, development and progress of Africa adding, the Foundation provided the impetus and

incentive.

On the Mo Ibrahim Award for Good Governance, President Mills said it was setting high standards for African leaders to perform.

He called on African leaders to be upright in their endeavours and in the interest of their people.

Dr. Ibrahim said the Foundation was asking the young generation to come forward for leadership role.

He commended Ghana for her democratic credentials and said: "Ghana gave us a good example in democracy".

In a related development, students of Go Africa Go Germany Federal Agency for Civic Education called on President Mills at the Osu Castle.

President Mills observed that Afro-German relations had come a long way and advised beneficiaries of the scholarship scheme to make the best use of the opportunity.

• Parliament unanimously approves Ayariga's nomination

GNA - Members of Parliament on Friday unanimously approved the nomination of Mr. Mahama Ayariga, former Spokesman to the President as Deputy Minister of Trade and Industry thus ending the controversy surrounding his appointment.

This follows his clearance by the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ) and subsequent approval by the appointment committee of the house of malfeasance and wrongdoing.

According to Appointment Committee's report signed by Mr Edward Doe Adjaho, first Deputy Speaker and Chairman, Mr Ayariga failed to be approved because of allegation levelled against him on acquisition of five tractors to set up a mechanization centre for which he paid 10,000 Ghana cedis as deposit.

Mrs Joyce Bamford Addo, Speaker of Parliament, made the ruling for the approval after members supported the motion for the approval of Ayariga.

Mr Osei Kyei Mensah Bonsu, Minority Leader said Parliament never at any time intend to review the report by CHRAJ as it was said in some circles of the media and by the Chairman of CHRAJ.

He said what was published in some newspapers and "some mushroom radio stations" amounted to undermining the integrity of the house.

Mr. Mensah Bonsu said the committee wanted to be diligent and meticulous and never

37 intended holding Mr. Ayariga to ransom, but only wanted to know whether the copy of the CHRAJ ruling which Ayariga presented to the committee was authentic.

He said CHRAJ gracefully supplied the committee with a certified copy of its decision on the matter "Progressive Nationalist Forum (Complainant) verses Hon. Kwesi Ahwoi and Hon Mahama Ayariga(respondent) for the perusal of the committee." " We were not doing anything to attack the integrity of CHRAJ, adding the committee had some reservations with regard to the brand, cost of the specific and the application of the tractors supplied him by the Ministry of Food and Agriculture.

He said the committee wished to "admonish Ayariga to be candid and forthright in all his future dealings, he needs to be transparent as a Minister we are counseling him to come out as diligent as we know him to be in the house."

Dr. Matthew Prempeh, Member for Manhyia, said the committee said Ayariga should be candid because he was going into a sensitive Ministry.

Mr. Moses Asaga, Member for Nabdam said he tutored Ayariga to become a politician and he was a good material therefore recommended his approval to the house.

Dr. Anthony Osei Akoto, Member for Old Tafo, expressed his sympathy with Ayariga and wished him well by supporting his approval.

Alhaji Abubakari Sumani, Member for Tamale North, said we do not have any authority to challenge CHRAJ and also called for the unanimous approval of Ayariga as Deputy Minister of Trade and Industry.

Mr. Samuel Atta Akyea, Member for Akim Abuakwa South, questioned why the President did not wait for CHRAJ to finish his work before nominating him.

He said the critical issue was that Ayariga has been cleared by CHRAJ pronouncing that there is no conflict of interest, no record of bankruptcy, adding a Harvard trained personality could fit into the office of a Deputy Minister.

• Government asked to show commitment to women's participation in politics

GNA - The management of Hunger Project - Ghana, has called on government to show commitment to women's participation in politics by enforcing the 40 per cent representation of women in the Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs).

It said in addition, government should allocate special funds for the training, grooming and campaign activities of women parliamentary candidates.

The call was made in a communiqué issued at the end of a national rural forum for selected men and women Programme Animators and Epicenter Representatives on the theme: "Equal Rights, Equal Opportunities: Progress for all".

A statement issued and signed by Dr Naana Agyemang-Mensah, Country Director of the Project, said the forum was held at the Odumase-Wawase Epicenter in the Kwahu West Municipality to mark the year's International Women's Day, which fell on Monday, March 8.

The communiqué also called on government, to enforce existing laws that had been instituted to protect women and children, such as the Domestic Violence Act, the Intestate Success Law, The Children's Act and other relevant laws through the training of gender sensitive officers at the MMDAs, to spearhead the implementation and monitoring of gender based policies.

It called for the establishment of Special Scholarship schemes to benefit brilliant but needy girls who would otherwise drop out of school after Junior High School.

The communiqué appealed for sponsorship for girls to enrol in Nursing and Teacher Training Colleges to increase the number of women professionals, who would also serve as role models for girls in rural areas.

It stressed the need for the use of participatory sensitization approaches that would bring out the negative effects of gender inequality on the spread of HIV and AIDS.

The statement also called for the reconsideration of the health policy on "non-delivery of babies" by Traditional Birth Attendants, who were still, regardless of the policy, offering valuable child delivery services to poor women in remote rural areas, until such time that there were enough health facilities and professionals in those areas.

The communiqué called for the improvement in farm gate access roads in food producing areas to address the transportation and distribution challenges of the nation's food farmers, 80 per cent of whom were women.

It said efforts should be made to provide special subsidy packages for women farmers to encourage them, and to recognise those who excel in the field of agriculture at special state events, to inspire other women farmers.

The communiqué called for increased financial and technical support to women's groups as well as take focused steps to introduce into rural areas, simple technologies for processing vegetables and staple food crops to halt post harvest losses, while creating vital job opportunities.

It called for more support to NGOs which utilised sustainable development strategies that created local leadership opportunities for women, as well as build local capacity for self- reliant development, through the creation of community-based animators in critical areas.

The statement stated that areas such as sexual and reproductive health, legal literacy, credit management, functional literacy, agricultural extension, HIV and AIDS education, counseling and referral services, which benefited women.

• Veep in New Delhi, India to attend investment conclave

GNA - Vice President John Dramani Mahama on Saturday arrived in New Delhi, India, to participate in the sixth Annual Confederation of Indian Industries Conclave to explore investment opportunities for Ghana.

The programme, sixth in the series, is organized by the Government of India, Export and Import (EXIM) Bank of Ghana and the Confederation of Indian Industry and it's aimed at fostering investment partnerships between Indian Companies and African countries.

The Vice President, who was accompanied by Mr Elvis Afriyie Ankrah, Deputy Minister for Local Government and Rural Development, Mr Ade Coker, Greater Accra Regional Chairman of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) and a group of Business personalities would among other issues, hold talks with the Business community in India.

Officials of the Ministry of Trade and Industry and the Ghana Investment Promotion Council would also participate in investment conclave.

Vice President John Mahama would also hold bilateral talks with government officials of India, trumpet out the business potentials of Ghana and sign memoranda of understanding with Companies or businesses that would express interest in investing in Ghana.

He would also deliver an address on the investment potentials of Ghana and whip up the enthusiasm of Indian Companies to invest in Ghana, among other things.

The three-day programme, which would attract Presidents, Vice Presidents and top Government officials from selected African countries, would also seek to empower governments to create jobs and reduce the high rate of unemployment in their countries.

Vice President John Mahama is the second Vice President to attend the programme from Ghana after former Vice President Aliu Mahama, who attended a similar programme in 2007.

Vice President Mahama would interact with Government officials of India and the Ghanaian community in the country.

2. Economy:

• Ghana has huge investment opportunities

The Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Edmark International, Mr. Sam Low Ban Chai has indicated that Ghana abounds in huge investment opportunities which could be explored by all potential investors. According to Mr. Low, Edmark International is poised to use Ghana as a platform and a gateway to Africa, to help create wealth among the people in the region.

The CEO of Edmark International was speaking at a press launch of the company's products, as well as its first International convention dubbed -One Edmark, One Africa, in Accra last Friday.

Mr. Low noted that he people of Ghana have demonstrated that if given the opportunity they can turn things around. He said that his company would complement efforts at creating equal opportunity for every one to explore. He disclosed the company's city project, which is aimed at expanding the operational base of the company in the country.

The General Manager of Edmark Ghana, Hajj Awal, observed that the company is making head way on the Ghanaian market due to the positive attitude being exhibited by the staff and distributors.

The company operates in 25 countries including Ghana and Nigeria and is committed to empowering people to succeed in health and wealth creation among others. Some of the company's natural products includes, Meal Replacement Therapy (MRT), Shake-Off, which detoxifies the body and Splina liquid Chlorophyll. Source: Chris Twum - Ghanaian Chronicle

3. Energy: • Unitization - an Indispensable Practice in the Oil and Gas Industry

The Creation Account as per the Holy Bible(Genesis chpt.1),makes it manifestly clear that Man was created in God's image with instructions to be fruitful, populate and dominate the world making use of other articles of creation for their own benefit and survival.

As the population of humankind in those days increased, the inevitable scramble for power, riches including land and its resources ensued. It became very difficult for people, in the pursuit of their legitimate desire to acquire power and riches, to live peacefully with their neighbors. In most instances the inability to surmount the challenge of counter-claims for specific resources almost always resulted in debilitating struggles among close relations.

Thus in a bid to maintain peace, we are told in the Bible that Abraham had to divide the Promised Land into two halves for himself and his nephew, Lot. Since then

resource acquisition and control has always been the germ of unimaginable dispute and conflicts amongst people of the earth in various ways and at various times.

In our times, the modern history of the New World is replete with examples of various scrambles for power and riches. The North American scramble is typified by the rush for gold and oil bearing lands. In 1859, before the American Civil war, Edwin Drake found oil in Titusville, Western Pennsylvania.

After his initial endeavors to invent a mechanism for drilling oil from the ground was successful, thousands of people flocked to Titusville to explore the possibility of enriching themselves by participating in the emerging oil sector; this was reminiscent of the gold rush in 1849.

Thus, the oil industry grew with the application of this potent invention, and until 1901, Pennsylvania produced half of the world's oil. The booming oil industry undoubtedly affected the user and price of land in America in that period. Many risk takers rushed to acquire lands in areas believed to bear substantial oil resource. The surge in demand helped to push up prices of land. In order, therefore, to maximize revenue from their lands, land owners gave out rather small parcels of land for the purpose of oil and gas activities. These parcels tended to be too small in most cases, for the objective for which they were partitioned and acquired. It created situations where oil and gas resources straddled many land parcels belonging to different lessees.

The resultant effect was that concessionaires rushed to develop their concessions in order to avoid the possibility of oil drifting to the field of another concessionaire; or to drill most of the oil in a common field, motivated by the common law "rule of capture" without due regard to the other concessionaires who also had interest in the common field.

This rush to drill for oil anywhere and anyhow became quite baneful to the oil industry in those days and actually epitomized the destructive potency of greed which is accentuated in the ordinary human being when it becomes a matter of gaining material superiority over the other.

Greed therefore goaded concessionaires to drill many wells nearest to the border with one another in order to acquire all that a field contained to them. This action depleted the pressure in the under ground reservoir, which is required to aid rapid recovery of oil. The lack of pressure made oil recovery more difficult and more expensive in a period where secondary recoveries as well as enhanced recovery methods were not as developed as it is today.

In the course of events however, America discovered a causal link between the operation of the "rule of capture" and the decline in oil recovery. The immediate antidote was to prescribe the standard distance at which oil wells could be developed apart. Later on, in the development of the oil industry in America, legislations were developed in the various states to encourage concessionaires to operate in a more economic manner by

making it mandatory for joint operation of oil field wherever the oil straddles different land parcels belonging to different operators.

This arrangement of joint operation of a field has come to be known as unitization and indeed America is the unitization capital. It is the first attempt at resource management to stem the resource curse.

Thus a unitization clause forces or encourages operators or contractors to come together to manage an oil find which straddles respective parcels of land. Unitization, therefore, is a joint operation of a producing reservoir that is located within two or more contract areas in order to maximize recovery.

In the United States unitization is somehow voluntary; however, the Conservation Commission can compel unitization. If this is not achieved the "rule of capture" will prevail in the field even though conservation laws such as prorationing and well spacing will be strictly observed. Application of Unitization outside the USA.

This invidious phenomenon which occurred in America is not expected to repeat itself in Ghana. Because unlike America, land ownership in Ghana resides mostly with the people held in trust by the chiefs and elders of communities .The constitution of Ghana, art 257(6)) also bestows all mineral resources in the raw form to the state. Corollary, individual land owners may not have the motivation to parcel out land for the purpose of oil exploration. On the contrary, land ownership in America was mostly private.

In order, therefore, to maximize revenue from their lands, land owners gave out rather small parcels of land for the purpose of oil and gas activities which necessitated extensive unitization activity to conserve nature and resource. It has turned out, however, that the USA is not the only country to apply and thus benefit from the desirable effects of unitization.

The expansion of the application of unitization has been engendered by the modern economic development paradigm which makes the use of fossil fuels almost indispensable. As a result, therefore, of increasing consumption of oil and gas in many spheres of life, resulting in the expansion of oil and gas exploration in many other regions, unitization has become important in the past three decades not only in America but also in other places.

The following may be assigned as reasons for the rapid growth of unitization out side the USA: In the 1970's due to the oil embargo placed by the OPEC which resulted in a phenomenal hike in oil prices, many more companies were encouraged to join the stampede for exploration for oil in many countries. Having relaxed monopoly over exploration and production by the State in many resource rich countries in the '80'S ;competition in resource development was enhanced providing the impetus for International Oil Companies (IOCs) to venture into countries hitherto considered unattractive to investors.

Exploration blocks have become narrower as oil rich countries tend to seek more revenues through signature bonuses and more rapid development of reservoirs. In a bid to secure large fields for exploration and development, IOCs have ventured into undefined boundary areas contested by rival coastal nations because offshore areas have become promising for the highest potential for large field discoveries. Types of UnitizationUnitization can take place internationally and nationally (between licensees of a host nation). Internationally, unitization may be developed when a reservoir straddles the boundaries of two or more sovereign nations whether the boundaries are delimited or undefined.

The legal framework of such unitization is multilayered and contains: International law - treaties, conventions and international custom, national laws and regulations of the host governments and licensees, and, private contracts among licensees.Nationally, unitization is developed when licensees owning different blocks are joined by a common field within the boundaries of the host country.

Thus, in some jurisdictions unitization is enforced or encouraged when oil reservoir straddles various fields which belong to different licensees within the territorial boundaries of the host country. Unitization for a delimited boundary takes the form of a joint Development Agreement (JDA) where an operator is appointed to develop the resource for the fair distribution to the various nations involved. Where the boundary is undefined however, the area will be declared as a joint Development Zone (JDZ) where the resources will be developed on behalf of the claimants. The revenue accruable on this occasion is lodged in an escrow account until the boundary dispute is resolved.

Purpose of Unitization

Unitization serves three essential objectives:to prevent physical waste;to prevent economic waste; andto protect correlative rights (fair shares).

The purpose of unitization may vary from country to country .For instance, Some countries do not stress on the correlative rights protection as a purpose of unitization because in such countries the state may be the landowner and therefore, will not be affected in the unitization process but rather continue to receive its share of royalties, taxes and other payments regardless of which contract area is produced and developed.

In many jurisdictions, unitization has a strong position in the statutes and is often made mandatory with an accompanying stated objective. In Ghana, the decision to enforce and/or encourage unitization lies with the minister responsible for oil and gas development. PNDCL84 which makes it possible for the minister to exercise the power to cause unitization or not, states in section 4(7) that: "Where a petroleum field extends beyond the boundaries of an area covered by a petroleum agreement or any other authority granted or recognized under this land, the secretary may determine that such petroleum field shall be developed as a single unit and may give appropriate directions to the corporation or the contractor or any other person concerned".

Thus unlike other countries where unitization is often made mandatory without discretionary powers given to anyone and with stated objectives, Ghana's law on unitization is some how vague. Obviously, the intendment of section 4(7) is to cure physical waste as well as economic waste. Section 4(7) as it stands is bereft of any potency and may not ensure that any situation that calls for unitization in Ghana is properly addressed.

I may also like to observe that "field" which may be crucial in the interpretation of section 4(7) is not defined in the Act. A "field" in this sense can mean a geographic area situated over several separate oil and gas reservoirs which are vertically or horizontally separated from each other, or which are overlapping, contiguous, or superimposed on each other. A field may embrace several pools of oil and gas, or a field may mean each physically separate productive stratum that is not in pressure communication with another stratum. (Houston Journal of International Law, 2005).

As a general principle, the unit area should be geographically defined in a manner that best prevents physical and economic waste regardless of how many strata or reservoirs lie within the area. Other host countries, however, have developed much more focused and purposive approach to unitization issues. Angola and China for example, require unitization of separate fields to achieve operating efficiencies that render commercially viable a field that would not be viable unless jointly developed.

Nigeria's 1969 Petroleum regulations require unitization if it is in the national interest for the grantee, Licensee, or lessee to secure the maximum ultimate recovery of petroleum.The 1979 service contract of Nigeria authorizes unitization to secure "as far as is practicable minimum total expenditure and maximum Oil recoveries and economic efficiency... to prevent waste of reservoir energy and consequently prevent the loss of recoverable hydrocarbons".

The U.K. Petroleum regulations state that unitization is authorized if it is in the national interest "to secure the maximum ultimate recovery of petroleum and in order to avoid unnecessary competitive drilling".

Ecuador's 2002 Petroleum Regulations authorize unitization to "improve the efficiency and economy of the operation".

It is quite evident that different oil producing countries have enforced unitization through legislation where appropriate, to avoid the waste of natural resources. Wastage in natural resource is considered as one of the symptoms of resource curse. Therefore, a strict observance of provisions of unitization is necessary to avoid wastage and consequently the occurrence of resource curse.

It is in light of this, therefore, that a unitization and unit operating agreement and plan of development has been concluded recently under the aegis of government for the

Jubilee Field in Ghana which covers a lot of interest relating to Kosmos, Tullow, Anadarko and Sabre.

Effects of Unitization

Apart from its economic and environmental importance, unitization touches on the root of relation between the affected contracting parties.

Internationally, unitization helps avoid conflicts between countries claiming portions of an oil and gas field. Unitization will forge the needed understanding for common exploitation of resources that straddle boundaries.

In Ghana, we may have to consider a unitization arrangement with Cote d'Ivoire and probably Togo. Because a close study of the resource map provided by GNPC reveals that Ghana's oil find is very close to the Ivoirian side. In my view therefore it is prudent practice for Ghana to establish whether the field or reservoir is common to both countries before proper development and production commence. This can be a very expensive undertaking however, the result will be beneficial. In the event that the reservoir is common to both countries, unitization arrangements will ensure that Ghana is reimbursed for the exercise.source:GNPCConversely, failure to establish the commonality of a field will lead to suspicion as nationals of the other side may conclude that with exploitation so near their border, the oil resource which genuinely belongs to them may migrate into the exploited field. This can degenerate into protectionist aggression and consequent border clashes. For example, quite recently in 2009, according to JSN Security Watch, Bangladesh, Burma and India have all laid claim to a potentially lucrative oil and gas fields in the Bay of Bengal. This dispute has created tension in the region and at the instance of Bangladesh and Burma, the United Nations and the Commission on the limits of the continental shelf, has been respectively requested to mediate.

Another conflict situation has arisen between Australia and East Timor as a result of lack of proper delimitation of boundaries and respect for any JDZ arrangements. Inter press Service of December 2004, reports that tension between Australia and East Timor is high as a result of struggle for control over the sea border, which dictates how the two countries will divide oil and gas profits.

There are many of such inter boundary conflicts spotted around the globe which can not be recounted here. Some of these conflicts may develop into fully blown wars leading to a resource curse.

In West Africa, however, Nigeria and Sao Tome and Principe have had a unitization arrangement to exploit deep sea oil and gas resources. This arrangement has wiped out any potential conflict.

Unitization will also limit expenditure on the exploitation of the oil resource. In the first place the cooperation approach means that the licensees will combine resources

to exploit few wells for the same quantum of oil instead of many companies developing wells scattered around for the same quantum of oil resource. Additionally few wells which are well spaced will maintain the integrity of reservoir conditions, requisite pressure will be achieved thus cutting down on expensive oil recovery programme under reduced reservoir pressure which almost certainly occurs under the operation of the "rule of capture" where licensees, in order to capture more of the petroleum resources, drill more wells than needed in the field.

There is also the possibility that the drilling of many wells as a result of the wanton competition among licensees who have not unitized will further aggravate environmental problems as the operation of petroleum wells have the tendency of polluting the environment. For these reasons Weaver and Asmus have concluded that much economy is achieved in the development of petroleum resources where different licensees and countries are concerned, through unitization (cooperative) rather than competitive mechanism. (Houston Journal of international law 2005).

An application of unitization is therefore very crucial for the maintenance of the integrity of oil and gas resource as well as for the protection of the environment. Unitization in effect helps to obviate some aspects of resource curse. In the next issue we shall attempt to discuss to a limited extent resource curse and in particular, the role the Ministry of Trade and Industry can adopt to help mitigate the probable scourge of oil resource curse in Ghana.

• AOS-Orwell invest $ 5million equipment in Ghana's oil industry

Accra, March 13, GNA - Two multi-national oil field service providers- Africa Oilfields Service Limited (AOS) and Orwell International (Oil & Gas) Limited, have committed $ 5million worth of equipment to Ghana's oil and gas industry.

The two corporate entities plan to grow the investment to $ 15million, subject to demand expansion in Ghana.

The equipment will be operated at its Takoradi- based office whilst its administrative centre in Accra will provide client management services.

Ghana is recognised as one of the most promising exploration regions, offshore in West Africa, which has attracted the interest of national and international companies.

Orwell and AOS announced the capital intensive investment in Accra at the 14th Offshore Oil and Gas West Africa Conference and Exhibition, in Accra.

The event sought to offer solutions for West Africa's offshore challenges. The exhibition also served as a platform for the oil companies, their partners and suppliers in the offshore industry an opportunity to showcase their products and services.

Mr. Femi Omatayo, Managing Director of Orwell International said in Accra that the company aspire to build local content, grow capacity and impart proven knowledge.

Mr. Andy Jones, Managing Director of AOS noted that that there is tremendous feeling of excitement within AOS and Orwell with respect to the venture.

He said the two Companies were underpinned by excellence in service delivery, training and development of human resource and the true transfer of blue chip, fit for purpose technology.

"These are the standards that will provide a true foundation for our enterprise in Ghana," he said.

Mr. Isaac Saforo, Country Manager of Orwell said the investments in Ghana would facilitate the economic freedom of Ghanaians and expressed the hope that the best business practices that avoids waste could lead to the fulfillment of the corporate dream.

AOS provides multiple product lines to the industry such as well intervention fishing, drilling tools rental and directional drilling services.

It also undertakes electric wire line, pipe recovery, machine shop manufacturing and repairs, production logging, pressure control/testing, production enhancement solutions and specialised welding services.

AOS also operates a joint venture and partnership with international Blue-chip manufacturers of oilfield equipment thus extending its portfolio and scope.

Orwell International is a drilling tools and well services company with product lines spanning over downhole tools rentals, assorted range of crossovers and handling equipment, fishing, milling and one-trip whipstock solutions, geological hydrosurvey, casing and tubular running.

It also deals in non-destructive testing and tubular management, pigging and sales of cutting-edge new technology agency products.

The tools have been designed and field proven to deliver maximum performance.

4. Environment: 5. Immigration/Refugee/Idps: 6. Health: • Behavioural change significant in quest for better health status

Cape Coast, March 11, GNA - The quest to secure a better health status for citizens would be a mirage if pragmatic measures to foster behavioural change among the

populace were not put in place, Dr Joseph Nuertey, Cape Coast Metro Director of Health Services, has said.

"Behavioural Change is very important if the nation would make a headway in its health status," he emphasized, adding that, it was important for the public to drastically change for the better because bad behaviour affect every aspect of life.

Dr. Nuertey was opening an advocacy workshop on Behavioral Change for traditional rulers, opinion and religious leaders, health personnel, civil society organizations, and other stakeholders from the Metropolis, at its capital on Wednesday.

It forms part of the Ministry of Health's Behaviour Change Support Project (BCSP) being carried out in three regions: Greater Accra, Western and Central.

It seeks to create a platform for the participants to share ideas and map out strategies to facilitate behavioural change to ensure better health for all.

The BCSP is being facilitated by the Johns Hopkins University of Communication Studies, with support from CARE and Plan International, to help attain some specific health related MDGs such as Maternal and Child Health, combating HIV/AIDS, and Family Planning.

Dr. Nuertey described as "unacceptable" reported cases of malnutrition among babies as young as six months, saying, the directorate's report revealed that some mothers had refused to breastfeed their babies 'to prevent their breasts from sagging.'

He pointed out that breastfeeding was not related to the sagging of breasts, explaining that the breasts would naturally "fall' at a stage and advised mothers to breastfeed their babies to improve their health and ensure a good future for them.

On Family Planning, the Health Director expressed regret that "people just don't want to plan, in our part of the world" and urged couples to systematically plan their lives for their own comfort and that of their children.

He said even though the HIV/AIDS cases seemed to be on the decline in the region, much needed to be done to further reduce the incidents of new cases which stood at 45 in 2008 and 126 in 2009.

Giving the health profile of the Metropolis, Ms Cynthia Asamoah, the Metropolitan Health Information Officer, said the area which has a total population of 142,398 with an annual growth rate of 2.8 per cent, was still grappling with high rates of malarial deaths and infant mortality. She revealed that of the 82,628 cases of malaria reported at its facilities in 2008, 156 people died of the disease, but the number reduced in 2009 with 122 deaths out of the 117,000 cases.

Ms Asamoah said 53 out of 13,599 children who were taken to the health facilities died

in 2008 while in 2009, 40 of the 19,593 children lost their lives.

The Health Information Officer said during the same period the reported cases of HIV/AIDS were 483 and 549 in 2008 and 2009, respectively. She said to enhance accessibility to all communities, the metro directorate, would among others, open four additional Community-Based Health Planning and Services (CHPS) compounds at Akotokyir, Mpeasem, Kwaprow and Ebubonko. A clinic will also be opened at the Kotokoruba market this year. Ms Mercy Kwafoa, Regional Coordinator of the BCSP for Western, Central and Greater Accra, said the project seeks to build the capacity of stakeholders to help ensure reduction in neo-natal and maternal deaths, support key interventions in malaria and TB controls.

It will also promote simple practices like hand washing with soap to prevent infections and communicable diseases, ensure good water and sanitation practices through its behavioural change communication approach. Mr Seth Frimpong Mensah, Central Regional Manager of the Project, noted that since malaria is the cause of many deaths reported at health facilities, there was, therefore, the need for all communities to strategize and identify social norms that are impediments in accessing quality health care.

He urged mothers to promptly send their sick children to the hospital and not to resort to self medication.

• WHO team in Ghana to study CSM outbreak

Accra, March 12, GNA - A team from World Health Organisation(WHO) is in the country to assess the outbreak of Cerebro- Spinal Meningitis (CSM) in the Northern, Upper East and Upper West regions.

Dr Benjamin Kunbuor, Minister of Health (MOH) made this known on Thursday when answering an urgent question by Dr Mathew Prempeh, Member of Parliament for Manhyia on the floor of Parliament. He said mass vaccination against CSM was ongoing, explaining that the situation was getting stabilised.

Dr Mathew Prempeh asked about the measures the MOH was taking to prevent the perennial deaths caused by CSM in the three regions. Dr Kunbuor said the Ministry had taken measures to manage the perennial epidemics and deaths in the regions including, selective preventive vaccination.

He said although WHO does not recommend preventive vaccine, the MOH each year procured reasonable quantities of the A and C vaccines for communities at high risk in the belt. Dr Kunbuor said this year the ministry acquired 380,000 of the vaccines for the three regions.

He noted that surveillance for early detection of cases for effective preventive measures has been institutionalised.

Dr Kunbuor said there was no evidence of the disease in the Ashanti Region, but the ministry would cross check and intervene should there be any report.

He said laboratory validation was necessary to establish whether a person suffering from disease was a CSM patient. Dr Kunbuor urged parliament to take a look at the various measures that could be adopted to prevent the occurrence of the disease. Mr Ambrose Dery, member for Lawra Nandom asked why only 20,000 people were vaccinated in the area with a population of 120,000 people. Dr Kunbuor said the District Directorate did an assessment of the situation and noticed that the area had not yet reach the alert level. He explained that CSM is an inflammation of the covering of the brain and the spinal cord.

The commonest cause is a bacteria called Neiseria Meningitides. The bacteria have nine sero-groups, namely A, B, C, D, E29, X, W135, Y and Z. The bacteria normally reside in the nose and throat but sometimes invade the blood system causing the disease, which then spread by direct contact including respiratory droplets from nose and throat of infected persons or carriers.

• Know sickle cell status of your marriage partner - Mettle- Nunoo

Accra, March 9, GNA - Mr. Rojo Mettle-Nunoo, Deputy Minister of Health, has stressed the need for Ghanaians to know the sickle cell status of their prospective marriage partners to reduce its incidence in the country.

He said in view of the prevalence rate, the pain, anguish and cost of medications that patients had to bear, it was important to exercise restraint in expressing love to a member of the opposite sex before marriage.

Mr. Mettle-Nunoo made the call when inaugurating a 17-member Local Organising Committee (LOC) for the upcoming First Global Congress on Sickle Cell Disease, in Accra on Tuesday.

Ghana is expected to host the congress in July.

It would be co-organised by the Sickle Cell Foundation of Ghana, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, Sickle Cell Disease International Organisation, Global Sickle Cell Research Network and supported by the LOC.

The congress is expected to bring together medical and research scientists, public health officials, community-based sickle cell organisations, national, non-governmental organisations and people suffering from the disease to find solutions to the challenge.

Mr. Mettle-Nunoo said the congress was important because the disease together with other communicable diseases had debilitating effect on the quality of life and economic well-being of patients and their families.

"The negative effects of the sickle cell disease on the human and economic development of the country cannot be taken for granted. The Ministry is happy that the upcoming congress would provide one of the platforms to enable researchers to meet to share ideas on the ways of finding solutions to this disease," he said.

Mr. Mettle-Nunoo charged members of LOC to be committed to make the congress successful.

Dr. Ivy Ekem, Chairperson of LOC, expressed gratitude for the responsibility entrusted in their care and pledged to work hard to live up to expectation.

She said the congress would address issues related to the health educational and psycho- social needs of affected persons and families, public health issues, medical care, research, programme development as well as development of international community based organisations.

Briefing journalists on the prevalent rate of the disease in the country, Dr. Ekem said two per cent of children born everyday had the disease adding that the figure represented the statistics available solely to the sickle cell centre at Korle Bu Teaching Hospital.

She said a national newborn screening programme was expected to be implemented soon following the pilot programme initiated in Kumasi since 1995.

Other members of the LOC are; Dr. Jemima Dennis-Antwi, Mr. Eddie Tettey, Mr. Steve Mawuenyega, Professor G. Ankrah-Badu, Mr. Peter Mensah, Mrs. Mary Lamptey and Dr. Frederica Sey.

The rest are; Ms. Tina Ayeh, Mrs. Odile Nkrumah, Mr. Andrews Adjei Druye, Mr. Kodwo Morgan, Mr. Ekow Arthur, Ms. Lucy Adomah, and a representative each from the Ghana Health Service (GHS) and Ghana Police Service (GPS).

• Nutrition awareness project advocates strategic health planning

Ho, March 11, GNA - Mr Kofi Adusei, Programme Manager of Regenerative Health and Nutrition Awareness Project of the Ministry of Health (MOH), has asked all human resource departments to make the health needs of their employees a crucial strategic planning issue.

He observed that many workers contract preventable non-communicable diseases because of squalid workplace atmosphere, poor working conditions and unprofessional supervisory attitudes.

Mr Adusei, who was opening a three-day training of trainers programme in Ho for selected health workers in the Volta Region, said it was the responsibility of employers to

provide good drinking water and facilitate the provision of hygienic food for employees while at work.

He said managements should provide their workers yearly medical checkups going along with health education to enable them make the right choices.

Mr Adusei said it was unfortunate to see many workers with horrendous Body-Mass- Indexes, (BMI) when organised education would have made the difference.

BMI is a number calculated from a person's weight and height. It provides a reliable indicator of body fatness for most people and is used to screen for weight categories that may lead to health problems.

Mr Adusei mentioned complications resulting from hypertension, cancers, especially prostrate cancer among men, diabetes as among non-communicable diseases plaguing the country and accounting for 30 per cent of morbidity in the hospitals.

He said the project was aimed at tackling the problem among the general populace before it reached crises levels.

Mr Adusei mentioned lack of exercise, poor dieting; stress from stormy interpersonal and spousal relationships and galloping materialistic tendencies as some causes of the increasing occurrence of these diseases among Ghanaians.

He observed that people as young as 30 are reporting at the hospitals with strokes, which used not to be the case in the past.

Mr Adusei said the stance of the MOH was based on the premise that the "Regenerative Health and Nutrition Concept is seen as a sound and pragmatic strategy for a developing nation such as Ghana in addressing the broader determinants of health".

He said this concept shifts the emphasis from curative to preventive health and proposes healthy lifestyle, health promotion and disease prevention as the health development paradigm for the country.

7. Human rights/Gender/Social Issues: • Africa Legal Aid setting up Gender Network Forum

GNA - Africa Legal Aid (AFLA), an Accra-based non-governmental organisation (NGO) is establishing a Gender Network Forum in co-operation with a core group of organisations and individuals on the Continent.

The forum will provide legal assistance to women in litigation on gender -based violence; request for advisory opinions from the African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights and take up test cases, either directly or by assisting others to do so.

Mrs Evelyn A. Ankumah, Executive Director of AFLA, made this known in Accra at a seminar on: 93The Ghana Domestic Violence Act and Contemporary forms of Violence against Women: Commemorating International Women's Day."

She spoke on: 93A Policy Agenda for Gender Justice," at the seminar organised by AFLA in collaboration with the Commission for Human Rights and Administrative Justice. Mrs Ankumah said the NGO was establishing an interactive website to create online direct communication with the steering committee of the forum in a timely and cost efficient manner.

The steering committee will formulate principles and policies to expand the list of offences that constitute gender crimes. The body will also emphasise the African perspective to be used for advocacy and lobbying initiatives at the national, regional and international levels.

Mrs Ankumah said AFLA was proposing a convention for the prevention and punishment of crimes against humanity to complement the statute of the International Crime Court (ICC). "With respect to gender, there are a number of offences that fall through the cracks because they are neither addressed in a national legislation or in the statute of the ICC=85 When they are addressed they are not implemented."

Mrs Ankumah noted that gender-based crimes, which are on the rise but do not receive sufficient attention in Africa and more generally in South Africa, include gendered violence perpetrated through the media.

"Forced marriage although recognised as a crime on paper is not implemented and the gendered aspect is ignored. "Contemporary forms of slavery is recognised on paper but not implemented and the gendered aspect is ignored.

"Gender violence in sports is hardly addressed. There is the need to define sexual violence and adopt a holistic approach to combating violence against women in all its forms." Mrs Ankumah said there was a notable increase in numbers of women who have risen to positions of governance due to the global awareness about gender justice, citing post -conflict Rwanda, which boasts almost of 50 per cent of women in Parliament, the highest in any country of the worldwide.

She said however, women continue to be violated, targeted, scorned and disparaged, at all levels of society, and through crude and sophisticated means.

The Executive Director said AFLA sought to mainstream gender in all its activities, including strengthening the justice sectors in Africa and contributing the much needed African perspectives to international and gender justice.

8. Geo-Strategic issues: • Ivory Coast 'Battles' Ghana over Oil

Even before Ghana goes partying over its latest discovery of oil in deep waters offshore in the Western Region, La Cote d'Ivoire, Ghana's Western neighbour, is said to be laying claims to portions of the oil field.

Alhaji Collins Dauda, Minister for Lands and Natural Resources, explained in a telephone interview with The Chronicle yesterday, that Ghana's boundary with Ivory Coast had not been clearly demarcated, but both countries have since shared and respected a ' median line' which has served as a boundary between the two countries. But, this long shared and respected boundary changed when Ivory Coast, in its recent correspondence with the government of Ghana, indicated that it no longer respected the existing "median line" dividing the two countries, and subsequently served the United Nations with a similar correspondence.

Collins Dauda says the development could have serious international and diplomatic repercussions, if not handled with tact.The Minister was of the opinion that the claim by Ivory Coast was baseless, as the claim by Ivory Coast was not in line with certain acceptable internationally standards of determining maritime boundaries.

Collins Dauda disclosed that last year, Ghana appealed to the United Nations to extend its maritime boundary by 200 nautical miles, and as a precondition, the country was directed to negotiate boundaries with its neighbours, he disclosed.

He said the government was in the process of fast-tracking the establishment of a National Boundary Commission, to negotiate the country's maritime boundaries with Ivory Coast, adding that the bill for the institution of the Commission had since been sent to Parliament, under a certificate of urgency.

"A National Boundaries Commission will be put in place that would engage our neighbours in La Cote d'Ivoire, with a view of negotiating our maritime boundary between ourselves and our brothers in Ivory Coast," the Minister indicated in an earlier interview on Joy FM.

Issue, and could have far reaching consequences, if the media especially, does not exercise circumspection in its reportage. AO Lukoil, Russia's second-biggest oil producer, and closely-held Vanco Energy Company, made yet another significant find of oil and gas deposits in deep waters in the Western Region.

The partners, together with the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation, drilled a well at the Dzata field off the Cape Three Points deep-water block in the Gulf of Guinea. The Dzata 1 well, drilled to a depth of about 4,500 meters (14,500 feet), tapped a 94-meter- thick hydrocarbon column. The new discovery puts Ghana in the limelight, as it is set to become one of Africa's newest oil exporters later this year, when production begins at the Jubilee Field, which has potential resources of as many as 1.8 billion barrels, according to Tullow Oil Plc, its operator.

• The Ivoirians’ Claim: A Classic Case Of Intelligence Failure.

In a press briefing on the increasingly unstable situation in Afghanistan after the American led invasion in 2002 former American Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld stated,

“There are known knowns, these are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we now know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. These are things we do not know we don’t know.” As we ponder over the motives behind the Ivorian claim we should also ask, is this a case of known knowns or known unknowns or unknown unknowns? Reports that our western neighbour Ivory Coast is said to have laid claims before the UN to portions of our oil find in the deep waters of the Western Region is worrisome to every Ghanaian everywhere. That our government is now rushing a bill through parliament to establish the Ghana Boundary Commission to undertake negotiations with the Ivory Coast to determine and demarcate Ghana’s land boundaries and de-limit Ghana’s maritime boundaries, even more worrying. Indeed it is an intriguing paradox that given all the frenetic activity of government, policy initiatives, draft bills and large-scale symposiums and seminars on ‘oil and gas’ since mid 2007, the prospects of a neighbour claiming parts of our continental shelf, and for that matter securing the oil fields has never been considered. That government is surprised by the Ivoirians’ move is itself surprising therefore. This is a classic failure by our intelligence services and like the Japanese attack on the United States of America in 1941, this may well turn out to be our ‘Pearl Harbour’

Amidst this worrying state of affairs is the knowledge that though steps are being taken on the national level, nothing thus far has been done on the international front to register our displeasure of this illegitimate claim and our preparedness to safeguard this strategic national asset of ours, come what may. In international matters of this nature, time is of the essence.

We should have by now raced the amber flag too: that is, dispatched our navy to the disputed area, tabled a counter statement at the UN, summoned the Ivorian ambassador to the Jubilee House (Ministry of Foreign Affairs) to explain the basis of their claim, and have the president address the nation stating the government’s measures to retain and protect the 200 nautical miles of our continental shelf and the oil wells. This would have sent a clear and unequivocal message to the Ivoirians that their decision is indeed a clear case of miscalculation as well as assure every Ghanaian everywhere of the security of the wells.

International relations is less about negotiations and more about games. Thus when the Ivoirians raced the red flag days after the United States operator Vanco struck oil in the deep-waters –Dzata well, it is not so they can negotiate for a share of our oil but so they may ‘win’ a share of it. Because in games there is often a winner and a looser whereas in negotiations it is not often certain as to the outcome.

Eventually when the Boundary Commission is in place and we subsequently sit on the table with the Ivoirians, we would both be engaging in completely different diplomatic activities: whilst we would be negotiating, they would be playing a game: one known as rational choice in international politics where all decisions, crazy or sane, are arrived at by a 'rational' process of weighing costs against benefits. It is important for our team to note that in rationalism, there are no connotations of normative behaviour. That is there are no ethical, moral, cultural, or religious considerations in the decision making process.

So whilst we would be negotiating “with our brothers and sisters”, the Ivoirians will simply be “playing” with a competitor. You don’t enter into a boxing ring “with our brothers and sisters” unless you are prepared to hit and hit hard enough to win otherwise you would have lost before the match begun. With the talk of “our brothers and sisters” being expounded by our authorities, the Ivoirians are already aware that Ghana is not prepared to hit hard and so the cost of engaging us is far less than they stand to gain. The only conceivable cost to the Ivoirians in this case is perhaps that of hosting our delegation and of cause the time they will spend on the “negotiating” table- a trillionth fraction of the benefits of an oil well.

Therefore, in the absence of a firm public statement from government except that “a national Boundaries Commission will be put in place that would engage our neighbours in La Cote d’Ivoire with a view of negotiating our maritime boundary between ourselves and our brothers in Ivory Coast” as was put forward by the Lands and Natural Resources Minister Collins Dauda is like passing a ball when indeed it is not in your interest to play the game. One simply protects what belongs to him or her not negotiate for it. The Dzata Well is over 200 kilometres away from Ghana’s maritime boundary with cote-d’Ivoire. A boundary though not clearly demarcated but nonetheless has been respected by both Ghana and Ivory Coast for years. In a sense therefore the Ivoirians do not have their eyes on the Dzata well but on the Jubilee field itself since it is about 60 kilometres away from Ivory Coast.

Hence the timing and the logic behind the Ivoirians claim prompts one that it is not a decision that was taken overnight but one that has been hatched and nursed for a long time, probably since the day we amateurishly made known to the world our oil discovery in the jubilee field.

Amateurish- because in other jurisdictions where the leaders have the nations’ interest at heart and not necessarily bent on awarding contracts, and consumed by the thought of enriching themselves would have intelligently put a lid on an ‘intelligence product’ such as an oil discovery in an area that is not clearly demarcated. This would have placed Ghana in a strategic position to negotiate the boundary quickly. Ivory Coast, who would not have had wind then of any oil potential in the area would be less motivated by the fish than they are of the oil. Admittedly, hindsight is not wisdom but second guessing sometimes provides the most valuable intelligence product. We should have at least guessed and guessed well! Amateurish- because in other jurisdictions where the intelligence services are highly professional in nature and in practice; intelligence services that are well resourced with qualified and well trained personnel on the

collection, processing, analysis and dissemination of intelligence would have picked signals of this coming and advised government accordingly. It appears President Gbagbo’s visit last December was the grand finale of a chain of strategic measures put in place by the Ivoirians towards making this claim. First, they would have probably by now illegally shifted our land boundary coordinates, accessed our leadership and negotiating style, examined our economic and military might and concluded the process by giving the national U-20 team, Black Satellites, a presidential reception at the Ivorian capital for winning the World Cup to harness positive public opinion.

Whatever they may or may not have considered before making this hostile claim, we take solace in the fact that it is a case of ‘known knowns’- that is we now know the intentions of the Ivory Coast regarding our oil. But there are also “known unknowns”, which is what we must be weary of: that is there are things we must know that we don’t know- for example the intentions of our other neighbours, i.e. Togo and Benin. The efficacy of our assessment of and response to both their intentions presents the bridge between us and the “unknown unknowns” state of affairs. That is, not knowing that we don’t know. This is the worst case scenario in decision analysis and for policy initiatives and must be avoided at all cost.

• Third phase of rehabilitation works of Bolga Hospital underway

Bolgatanga, March 10, GNA - Ghana and Saudi Arabia on Tuesday signed a contract for the commencement of the third phase of the rehabilitation of the Bolgatanga Hospital in the Upper East Region.

The Saudi Government is to provide 12 million dollars as grant while Ghana would contribute two million dollars towards the execution of the project expected to take four years to complete.

As part of the preparations, a technical team made up of architects, surveyors and engineers from a Saudi Consultancy firm has arrived in Bolgatanga to hold a stakeholders meeting with the Ministry of Health and the Ghana Health Service.

DAOVTECH, a Ghanaian consultancy firm will partner Saudi Consultancy Service to undertake the project.

Dr. John Koku Awoonor-Williams, Regional Director of Health Services said feasibility studies had been completed and work would soon commence.

He expressed dissatisfaction about the first and second phases of the project, explaining that following series of meetings held by the stakeholders it is expected that quality work would be done to raise the hospital to a regional hospital status.

The Deputy Regional Minister, Mrs. Lucy Awini entreated the consultants to do effective supervision and monitoring to ensure that the contractors executed good job.

She expressed optimism that after the completion of the project the hospital would serve as one of the first class institutions in the country.

The External Co-ordinator of the Ministry of Health (MOH) Dr. Jennifer Brown Aryee said the two countries had committed themselves to the project with the view of entering into other areas of development.

The Principal Architect of Saudi Consultancy firm, Mr. Ashraf Hassan assured the MOH that his outfit was burnt on delivering quality services to enable it establish good and harmonious relationship with Ghana.

He said about 240 beds would be attached to the health facility while additional surgical, maternity and children's wards would be provided.

Nigeria:

1. Political News: • Buhari: Yar’Adua’s Impeachment Only Viable Option

Former Head of State, Gen. Muhammadu Buhari, has joined the growing number of Nigerians calling for the removal of President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, maintaining that the only viable option out of the present political logjam in the country is for the Executive Council of the Federation (EXCOF) to declare the President incapacitated and have him impeached.

According to Buhari, Nigeria should not have been in this situation in the first instance because the constitution has made it clear on how an ailing president could be succeeded.

He said the refusal by the EXCOF to apply constitutional provisions has led to the present chaotic situation. Speaking in Kaduna yesterday when he received members of the National Unity Forum who paid him a solidarity visit, Buhari said it was wrong in the first place to introduce extra-constitutional measures to tackle problems already addressed by the constitution, adding that the joy of political expediency would never replace clear laid out regulations.

“Political expediency won't remedy this kind of problem because if the Executive Council of the Federation had acted in accordance with the constitution, by invoking the necessary sections to declare the President incapacitated, we would not have found ourselves in this present situation.

“As you can see, adopting extra-constitutional measures have not addressed the problem. If it had, we would not have been subjected to the raging debates and controversy going

on. “So, we must go back to the constitution. The EXCOF must do the right thing because once we start moving away from the constitution, then we are inviting anarchy,” Buhari added.

While urging Acting President Goodluck Jonathan to make electoral reform his priority, the former All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) presidential candidate said he had a feeling Nigerians would reject any imposition, or any government that wins power through unfair means. He said unless free and fair elections are conducted next year, both the polity and the country could not be stabilised.

According to him, the first measure of commitment to the electoral reform agenda is to reorganise the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and make it more effective. He said the electoral umpire, as it is currently constituted, would not give Nigerians what they need in 2011.

“Look at what happened in Anambra. Voters’ list went missing and a lot of people were denied the right to vote in the election. If INEC cannot organise credible poll in one state, how can they do it in 36 states and the FCT?” He asked. Buhari urged the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP)-led Federal Government to consider its days numbered, saying, “in one way or the other, the party will be out of office by next May”.

He therefore asked the Acting President to do everything within his power to “bow out gracefully”. While appealing to the members of the forum to be steadfast in their quest for a better Nigeria, he assured them of his cooperation in their resolve to move the country forward.

Earlier in his remarks, Chairman of the forum, Alhaji Maigida Abdul, said they were in Buhari’s residence to seek for advice on how best they could carry out their programmes.

Following Yar’Adua’s return from Saudi Arabia after spending three months in a hospital and his inability to perform his constitutional role as President, various groups - the Nigeria Bar Association (NBA), Save Nigeria Group (SNG), Coalition of Northern Professionals and Courage in Leadership Initiative - have called for his impeachment.

• Senate Set to Approve 5 Special Advisers for Jonathan

Senate’s approval for the appointment of five Special Advisers by Acting President Goodluck Jonathan is under way. A formal request by the Acting President, which was forwarded to the Upper House on Monday, was announced yesterday on the floor by Senate President David Mark.

The one-page executive communication dated March 5, 2010, was received on Monday (March 8) in the Office of the Senate President.

In the letter, entitled “Request for Approval to Appoint Five Special Advisers,” Jonathan said the request stemmed from increasing responsibilities of his office.

“Following my recent appointment as the Acting President, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, the responsibilities of my Office have increased tremendously.

“In order to cope effectively, I would require to appoint five (5) Special Advisers. “I am, therefore, through this medium requesting for approval of the Senate of Nigeria accordingly.” Section 151(2) of the 1999 Constitution vests the power to prescribe the number of advisers and their remuneration and allowances in the National Assembly.

Specifically, Section 151(1) provides: “The president may appoint any person as a Special Adviser to assist him in the performance of his functions. “(2) The number of such Advisers and their remuneration and allowances shall be as prescribed by law or by resolution of the National Assembly.”

There were indications yesterday that the approval may be given either today or tomorrow in demonstration of Senate’s support for the Acting President in effectively carrying out his responsibilities. The Upper House resolved into a closed door session, after the announcement and the approval of the votes and proceedings of last Thursday’s sitting, where it discussed the Jos carnage. At the end of the session, which ended about 2pm, the Upper House resolved to commend the Acting President on the actions so far taken to address the issue.

The eight-point resolution was contained in a two-page statement issued at the end of the session by the Vice-Chair of the Committee on Information and Media Anthony Manzo. Entitled, “Senate Resolution on Recent Jos Crisis,” it reads: “Senate condemns the recent crisis in Jos that has led to the loss of so many innocent lives. It is, in our opinion, one crisis too many.

“Our heart goes out to all those that lost loved ones during this recent crisis and indeed all previous crises. There can be no place for such barbaric acts in our democracy. “Senate believes that the crisis is not religious and we must resist any attempt to give it any religious coloration. “The Senate urges all Nigerians especially leaders to be calm and steadfast and must not do or say anything that will aggravate the crisis.

“The Senate further urges Nigerians to demonstrate greater respect for the sanctity of human life. The issues of internal security especially intelligence gathering must be taken more seriously. “Senate notes with satisfaction the actions so far taken by the Acting President to address the issues.

“Senate urges the Federal Government to punish and implement all previous recommendations. “Senate urges the Federal Government to take steps to arrest and prosecute all those who carried out this carnage and all those behind the crisis. “Senate urges the Jos Community to learn to live together as brothers and sisters. “Senate observed a minute silence in honour of those who lost their lives in the crisis.”

• Poll Wants NJC to Appoint INEC Chair

An opinion poll conducted by the Alliance for Credible Election (ACE), on who between President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua and the Nigerian Judicial Council (NJC) should appoint Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), has indicated preference for NJC.

The poll, conducted by NOI Polls, noted that out of 2,122 randomly selected people, 85 per cent said the NJC should advertise the position and select the top three candidates, out of which the chairman should be selected. According to the Poll, only eight per cent felt that the President should select a candidate of his choice, while 84 per cent said the name of the preferred candidate should be sent to the National Council of States for the Senate's confirmation.

On funding, 85 per cent of the respondents were of the opinion that INEC should control how funds should be used once it has been approved by the National Assembly, while nine per cent said the President should control how INEC spends its approved funds. When asked what should become the fate of State Independent Electoral Commission (SIEC), 75 per cent of the respondents called for the reforming of SIEC, while 65 per cent said SIEC should be integrated into the newly reformed INEC. 36 per cent of the respondents said SIEC should be reformed and made to be independent of state governors.

On the appointment of the Inspector General of Police, 81 per cent of the poll respondents said police boss should be appointed by the President based on recommendations of the Police Service Commission and the National Police Council, while 13 per cent of the respondents said the President should directly appoint the Inspector General of Police without consultation. The NO1 Polls was established by former Minister of Finance, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala. The method of the polls was telephone interviews with 2,122 randomly selected phone-owning Nigerians between ages of 18 years above across the six geo-political zones.

• NLC holds protest to oust Iwu

The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) said it would hold a “national mass action” to call for the removal of Professor Maurice Iwu as chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).

No date has yet been announced for the protest by the union.NLC reached the decision during its emergency National Executive Council (NEC) meeting held in Kaduna State last Thursday to discuss Acting President Goodluck Jonathan’s plea for it to accept the controversial deregulation policy.

A communiqué signed at the end of the meeting states that Iwu must be removed and that “the leadership of Congress was therefore mandated to convey this to the Acting President and the leadership of the National Assembly.”

The congress leadership was also mandated to fix a date for national mass action “to drive home our point that Maurice Iwu must go as INEC boss.” The union regretted that if Iwu could not conduct a credible election in just one state (Anambra) with all the resources he had.

“In this respect and in the light of the recent failing of INEC during the Anambra governorship election, NEC-in-Session resolved that it is of utmost importance that Maurice Iwu must be removed as the Chief Electoral Officer of the Federation” the union added.

• Jonathan should prioritize electoral reform—Buhari

General Muhammadu Buhari (rtd) The first priority of Acting President Goodluck Jonathan is to conclude the electoral reform programme and ensure that a credible Independent Electoral Commission (INEC) is put in place because government will just be wasting time if the next election is not free and fair, retired General Muhammadu Buhari said yesterday.

General Buhari who spoke in Kaduna when members of the Unity Forum paid him a courtesy visit yesterday also said he had a feeling that Nigerians would not accept flawed elections in 2011.

“This government will have to go by May next year, one way or the other. So, in fact, it is even more in their own interest to organise proper election so that they can go out or remain gracefully”, he said.

The former ANPP presidential candidate reiterated that unless there is free and fair election, “I don’t think we will be able to stabilise the polity, not to talk of the country”. He recalled what he told the National Assembly when he went under the auspices of the National Democratic Movement (NDM) that the bane of the nation’s problem was the elite’s failure to lead the country.

Buhari criticised INEC on the Anambra gubernatorial election, saying, “If INEC cannot organise election in one state, how do we expect INEC to organise election in 36 states and Abuja?”. Buhari noted that the PDP Anambra primaries were characterised by rancour until a “so called” winner emerged, adding that one of the groups was so upset that they adducted the father of the said winner. According to him, the voters’ register

that was used in the last election was so jumbled up that the register of Funtua town in Katsina State was taken to some local governments in Anambra State. “At this stage of development, I think this is unacceptable”, he said, adding that the first priority of the government should be to effect the electoral reform and make sure that there is a credible electoral umpire that can organise elections.

On the constitutional impasse, Buhari said there was no problem about succession in the constitution and it would be wrong for anyone to have introduced extra constitutional measures to resolve the issue. According to him, some patch work was done for political expediency but “instead of stabilising the polity, we are still arguing.” He pointed out that if the Federal Executive Council had the integrity to follow the constitution strictly, and raised a medical team to go to Saudi Arabia, the nation would have been spared the current impasse.

Buhari said the constitution has to be followed whether we like its provisions or not. According to him, even when the political expediency was resorted to, the media is still awash with where the president is. “The moment you start doing extra constitutional things, you are gradually introducing political anarchy. And I don’t think that is good,” Buhari further said.

He praised the unity forum for sacrificing its time and resources to embark on the agitation for a better Nigeria, adding that it is firmly on the right track and that he associates with their aspirations.

• Jos: Reps demand truth commission

The House of Representatives yesterday asked the Federal Government to establish a Truth and Reconciliation committee that would reconcile the warring parties in Plateau State to avoid recurrence of crisis in the state. For its part, the Senate asked the Federal Government led by Acting President Goodluck Jonathan to publish and implement all reports on the various crises in Jos and to also implement their recommendations.

Emerging from a closed door session which lasted for over two hours, the House also condoled with the people of Plateau State over those that lost their lives during the crisis.

Reading the resolution on the floor, House Leader Rep Tunde Akogun (PDP, Edo State) said the MPs urged the Federal Government to investigate, identify and prosecute perpetrators of the crisis in order to forestall its recurrence.

He said, “the House condoles with the families of all those who lost their lives in Jos crisis and totally condemns the barbaric act; asks security agencies to investigate, identify and prosecute perpetrators of the crisis; and we urge the Federal Government to set up a Truth and Reconciliation committee to reconcile the parties.”

Earlier at the plenary session, Rep Halims Agoda (PDP, Delta State) raised a Point of Order, drawing the House’s attention to the crisis that engulfed Plateau State, saying there was the need to come up with a motion for members to find a lasting solution to it.

But Speaker Bankole said the matter was too sensitive to be debated openly, and called on the House Leader to request for a closed door session that would allow members to discuss it freely and come up with a unanimous stand. When the House resumed, Bankole said they discussed issues revolving around the Plateau State crisis and he asked the Leader to read the resolutions.

Thereafter, Bankole asked for the observance of one minute silence for the repose of the soul of those who lost their lives during the crisis. He also asked Rep Bitrus Kaze (PDP, Plateau State) to move a motion for the adjournment of the House, to which he did.

Speaking to newsmen after the session, Kaze said the House decided to debate the matter in a closed door session to avoid emotional contributions by the members. He said, “Anything that comes out of the floor can be sensitive and we did not want to do anything that would aggravate tension. Jos is a microcosm of Nigeria and whenever there is crisis in Jos, the victims are always from various parts of Nigeria. We thought it would be best to handle it in the executive session.

“During the previous crises, the House set up a committee that went to Jos and the court ruled it was outside our legal competence. A motion would have brought up emotions in the House”, he added.

After its own long closed door session yesterday, the Senate called for calm and restraint, saying “The Senate urges all Nigerians especially leaders to be calm and steadfast and must not do or say anything that will aggravate the crisis.”

While urging the Federal Government to take urgent steps at arresting the perpetrators of the recent killings in Jos, Senate “expressed satisfaction with actions so far taken by the Acting President to address the issues.” It said the crisis has no religious dimension and urged the Jos community to learn to live together as brothers and sisters.

Senate also said, “It is in our opinion once crisis too many. Our hearts go out to all those that lost loved ones during this recent crisis and indeed all previous crises. There can be no place for such barbaric acts in our democracy.”

Daily Trust however gathered that there was heated debate among senators as to how past crises in Plateau State were handled by government. One senator said, “We are tired of crises in Jos. This thing keeps occurring because no one has been punished; people kill their fellow humans and get away with. It is time for government to take a critical look at the issues behind the recurring crises in Jos.”

• Shagari, Shonekan sue for peace

Despite the fresh crisis that erupted in Dogo Na Hauwa in Jos South Local Government Area of Plateau State Sunday, former Heads of State, Alhaji Shehu Shagari and Chief Earnest Shonekan were yesterday hosted to a peace conference in Jos where they all called for peace.

The former leaders made the call at the inaugural conference organized by the Institute of Governance and Social Research (IGSR) in collaboration with the British Department for International Development supported by the Plateau State government.

Alhaji Shehu Shagari, who decried the recurrent crises in the state, pointed out the importance of the unity in the country, saying there was the need to find a lasting solution to the Jos crises.

“There is something wrong which we must all examine and correct and provide a suitable solution”, he said.

Shagari who pointed out the strategic position of Jos which encompasses various tribes and religious groups in the country, said what all Nigerians want is unity, adding, “It is time to live in peace and concord, we cannot afford therefore to ignore any situation which will disturb the peace, unity and integrity of this country”.

Chief Earnest Shonekan who led the National Interim Government, attributed the recurrent crises in the state to lack of coherent economic structure, saying the problem of Jos was beyond mere ethnic and religious dimensions. He added that if government would create an enabling environment where people have access to basic necessities of life, people would have no time to resort to violence, saying, “we all know that a hungry man is an angry man”.

• Don’t tag all Muslims as terrorists –Sultan

The Sultan of Sokoto and President, Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs (NSCIA) Alhaji Saad Abubakar has said it is not right to generalize the entire Muslims as terrorists whenever an individual among them does something wrong.

Sultan Abubakar, who spoke in Lagos at a fund raiser for the Najah Joint Muslim Organizations (NAJOMO) mosque at the weekend, said rather than accuse all Muslims of terrorism, the acts of the United States and its agents should as well be examined.

He alleged that violent acts being perpetrated all over the world were being carried out by non-Muslims, including American citizens and agents of the American government. According to him, many Christians and Jews perpetrate terror acts on a daily basis but they are not tagged terrorists by the US and the media.

“Our dear brother, the Baba Addini of Egba Land (Adegbite) was correct when he said Muslims are not terrorists and that Islam is a religion of peace. Let me add here that some people somewhere are known for their lies against Islam and Muslims. Violent acts are

66 perpetrated all over the world by adherents of different faiths and not only Muslims commit them.

Let me say here that it is unfair to Muslims and Islam for the US government to rush, as it used to do, to tag Muslims as terrorists whenever they commit any violent act. It is sad that if an adherent of any other religion commit any terror act the US and the media would not call such a person a terrorist, the US and the media must change this.

“I make bold to say that if we should put all violent acts being perpetrated all over the world by Americans and the ones Muslims commit on a scale, we would surely see that those being committed by the US citizens outweigh those they claim Muslims committed. But as Muslims we should try to change this negative attitude they have towards us. We can change this by showing them the beauty of our religion”, he said.

• Jonathan Fires NSA Over Jos Mayhem

THE Jos crisis which led to the death of about 400 people on Sunday, has led to the sacking of the National Security Adviser, Sarki Mukhtar, by the Acting President, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan.

To replace him is Aliyu Gusau, a one time National Security Adviser to former President, Olusegun Obasanjo.

Meantime, about 400 corpses of the victims of Sunday's massacre were, yesterday, given a mass burial at Dogon Na Hauwa village in Jos South Local Government Area of Plateau State amid tears and wailings.

This emerged as, former Head of State, General Yakubu Gowon, said there was no alternative to dialogue in resolution of conflicts. He spoke at a peace conference on the recurring crisis in Jos.

Strong stench of decomposing human bodies permeated the air as the bodies were removed from the truck which conveyed them to the burial site. An elderly man collapsed and had to be revived on sighting the bodies lined up in the mass grave. He was later led away from the scene by some of his relations.

The burial was preceded by a funeral service at the village square where various clerics preached on the need for all to accept what has happened as the will of God.

State Commissioner for Works and Transport who headed the Rescue and Recovery Committee said three mass graves were dug for the bodies.

He said about 380 were being buried at Dogon Na Hauwa while about 36 corpses would be buried in the two other graves. According to him, some of the bereaved made their own burial arrangements.

Police arrest 96 over the massacre

Meanwhile the Plateau State Police Command said that about 96 persons had been arrested over the massacre, with the Police spokesman, Mohammed Lerama, indicating in a statement, that four of the fleeing Fulanis were shot dead by the security men.

Speaking at the workshop on peace organized by the Institute for Governance and Social Research, Gowon lamented that the peaceful nature for which Plateau was known had been disrupted. He said the issues must be addressed honestly to resolve the problem.

While reiterating his commitment to one indivisible country, Gowon recalled that it was this commitment that made him resort to the use of force to keep the country one during the civil war.

He said: "Those who know me know that I have been on the side of peaceful resolution of all conflicts. If you will recall, as head of state, I did all that was possible to secure a peaceful resolution of the Nigerian crisis in the second half of the 1960s. Unfortunately, due to circumstances beyond my control, I had to use force to preserve the unity of our nation."

Second Republic President, Alhaji Shehu Shagari, regretted that present leaders of the country were not doing enough to sustain the unity of the country which former leaders stood and fought for.

He lamented: "if past national leaders fought to keep the unity of this country like Gowon did and late J.S Tarkar fought to keep the Middle Belt one, what are the present leaders doing to sustain the unity of Nigeria and Middle Belt?"

The conference was almost disrupted by pandemonium in the town following rumour of an outbreak of violence in some parts. This led to shut down of business houses and schools as people ran helter-skelter and scampered to their homes. However, there was calm after a while as people went about their businesses with most shops remaining shut throughout the day.

Troops deployed

Authorities deployed troops to arrest the marauding gangs that rampaged across villages near the city centre, where hundreds died in clashes early this year. Under fire for failing to prevent another outburst of sectarian violence, authorities said they had arrested scores of people in connection with the attacks.

Agency reports said that Muslim residents of the villages had been warned by phone text messages, two days prior to the attack, so they could make good their escape.

Dozens of university students, yesterday, carried placards outside a Jos hotel where several former heads of state and the state government held a peace conference.

Placards read: 'We want peace in Plateau State' and 'Say no to genocide'.

In Bukuru and Dadin Kowa on the fringes of Jos, police fired warning shots to disperse protesters and rounded up youths trying to demonstrate, according to a police source.

Witnesses meanwhile described how victims in Sunday's three-hour systematic orgy of violence, mainly women and children, were caught in animal traps and fishing nets as they tried to flee attackers who hacked them to death.

Vatican expresses sadness, concern

The Vatican, yesterday, lamented "horrible acts of violence" committed by machete- wielding gangs. Vatican spokesman, Federico Lombardi, told a news agency that the church reacted with "sadness and concern" to the violence in Jos, blaming it on Muslim pastoralists.

Asked to comment on the nature of the conflict, Lombardi deferred to Nigerian church authorities. The Archbishop of Abuja, John Onaiyekan, told Vatican Radio, yesterday, that the violence was rooted not in religion but in social, economic, tribal and cultural differences.

Ban Ki-moon appeals for calm

The United Nations Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon, also appealed for "maximum restraint" amid revulsion at the slaughter of more than 500 Christians, as survivors told how the killers chopped down their victims.

Survivors said the attackers were able to separate the Fulanis from members of the rival Berom group by chanting 'nagge', the Fulani word for cattle. Those who failed to respond in the same language were hacked to death.

One report said the gangs shouted Allahu Akhbar before breaking into homes and setting them alight in the early hours of Sunday. Churches were among the buildings that were burnt down. Ban told reporters he was "deeply concerned," adding: "I appeal to all concerned to exercise maximum restraint."

200 hospitalized after attack - Plateau govt

The Plateau State Information Commissioner, Gregory Yenlong, who gave details of the attacks said more than 200 people had been hospitalized in Jos.

He said: "Most of the survivors are ... receiving treatment. Over 200 are admitted in hospitals in Jos. People were attacked with axes, daggers and cutlasses - many of them children, the aged and pregnant women. Churches, houses and food stores were torched and crops were slashed with cutlasses."

Atiku seeks improved intelligence gathering

Meantime, former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, has tasked security agencies in the country to improve their intelligence gathering mechanism to be able to prevent the frequent massacre of innocent people in internal conflicts in the country.

Condemning the weekend killings in Jos, Plateau State in a statement, yesterday, Atiku called on the government to bring the perpetrators of what he described as a massacre to book.

He said: "Such horrific massacre of innocent people, especially women and children, has assumed a disturbing trend in the country and all those behind it must be prosecuted. Such killings dehumanize all of us. Nigerian security forces must review and overhaul their intelligence gathering capability to be able to nip in the bud this sort of wanton loss of lives and property."

Atiku who said he was worried by the culture of impunity and brazenness with which these crimes were being committed, stressed that both the Federal Government and the Plateau State Government must do every thing possible to protect the lives of the people.

• Gen Gusau bounces back as NSA

Top spymaster Lt. Gen. Aliyu Mohamed Gusau (rtd) bounced back as National Security Adviser (NSA) to the president yesterday, four years after he last quit the post in 2006 in order to seek the ruling Peoples Democratic Party’s (PDP) presidential ticket. It would be the fourth time in 25 years that Gusau would hold this post, having held it twice under military ruler General Ibrahim Babangida and for another 6 and a half years under President Olusegun Obasanjo.

Gusau’s appointment was announced last night after Acting President Goodluck Jonathan removed retired Major General Abdullahi Sarki Mukhtar, who was appointed to the post by Obasanjo in 2006 and retained by President Umaru Yar’adua in 2007.

Jonathan’s Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity Mr. Ima Niboro announced the changes in a terse statement soon after yesterday’s inaugural National Security Council meeting chaired by Jonathan.

Although no reason was given for Mukhtar’s removal, Daily Trust gathered that it was not unconnected with the renewed sectarian violence in Jos and the recent mobilisation of the Brigade of Guards without the acting president’s knowledge during President Umaru Musa Yar’adua’s return to the country after a 93-day medical sojourn in Saudi Arabia.

Presidency sources said although the police had earlier alerted the nation on the likelihood of re-eruption of violence in Jos, the former NSA did not act on the police security report.

Gen. Mukhtar was also said to have been involved in the mobilisation of troops for Yar’adua’s return without clearance from the acting president, who is the acting Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces.

Niboro only said, “Jonathan thanked the former NSA for his services to the nation and the present administration, and wished him well in his future endeavours.”

The new NSA General Gusau actually handed over to Mukhtar in 2006, having held the position since Obasanjo’s inauguration in May 1999. Before his re-emergence as a major PDP player in 1998-99 and one of the small group of retired Generals who orchestrated Obasanjo’s return to power, Gusau had been the Chief of Army Staff under Chief Ernest Shonekan’s Interim National Government. He was retired soon after General Sani Abacha overthrew the ING in November 1993.

Prior to his appointment as Army Chief in the dying days of Babangida’s regime, Gusau served twice [1987-89 and 1990-93] as the regime’s National Security Adviser, having earlier headed the Directorate of Military Intelligence. He also served as General Officer Commanding [GOC] the army’s 2 Division, Ibadan in 1989-90. A native of Zamfara State, General Gusau was also the godfather of the Zamfara State PDP, at least until Governor Mamuda Shinkafi left the ANPP and joined the Zamfara PDP last year. He finished third in the PDP’s presidential primaries of December 2006, after Yar’adua and Chief Rochas Okorocha.

• Jonathan Meets Mark, Onovo, Security Chiefs

Abuja — Acting President Goodluck Jonathan was yesterday briefed by the Inspector General of Police (IG), Mr. Ogbonna Onovo, on the situation in Dogo-Na- Hawa in Foron district, Jos South Local Government Area of Plateau State.

THISDAY gathered that the briefing by Onovo at about 2.30pm was followed by a meeting with Senate President David Mark.

The meeting with Mark, according to a source, was part of the consultations the Acting President was undertaking to ensure that the government deals with the perennial sectarian crisis in Jos.

Jonathan has also summoned security chiefs to appraise him with the security situation in the trouble spot and to adopt fresh strategies of nipping the outbreak of violence in the bud.

Yesterday's expected meeting between Jonathan and security chiefs is coming ahead of today's Security Council meeting, which will also have the fresh outbreak of violence in Jos South Local Government Area of Plateau tops on its agenda, a top security chief told THISDAY last night.

The source said that more troops may be redeployed by the Acting President to ensure maximum coverage of other areas that may be prone to violence.

The source said that prior to yesterday morning's attack in the village of Dogo-Na-Hawa, the soldiers and other security personnel engaged in the joint patrol had been concentrated in Jos and Bukuru thereby making other areas that are not in the immediate vicinity of the two areas vulnerable.

Meanwhile, the Christian Elders Forum (CEF) has accused the military of failing to take appropriate action over yesterday's attacks on Dogo-Na-Hawa, a Christian community.

In a statement issued yesterday in Abuja, and signed by the National Coordinator, Bishop Andersen Bok and Secretary, Dr Musa Pam, the Forum condemned the attacks.

"Their dead bodies are still lying in their own pool of blood as we speak. The attack, yet another jihad and provocation of the Christians, started at about 1.30am last night. We are in touch with the survivors though many of them are still in trauma," Bok and Pam said in the statement.

The Forum claimed that "eye-witnesses said the Hausa-Fulani Muslim militants came chanting 'Allau akbar' and broke into homes, cutting human beings including children and women with their knives and cutlasses."

They claimed that militants came into Plateau state from neighbouring Bauchi State.

"We are indeed worried as we have severally made it clear about the role of the Nigerian Army. Since the last religious crisis when the Federal Government mandated the Nigerian Army to take over the security of the state, we have never failed to show our fears and worries because of the role the military has played in previous crisis.

"Shortly after the militants besieged Dogo Nahawa this morning, we contacted the soldiers at exactly 1.30am since they are in charge of the security of the state. But we were shocked to find out that the soldiers did not react until about 3.30am after the Muslim attackers had finished their job and left," the elders said.

"We want the soldiers to again explain the reason for this deliberate delay which we consider part of the ploy. We want to state here that we no longer have any confidence in the Nigerian Army as the security of Plateau state because of their bias against Christians. We are also worried because the Hausa-Fulani Muslim militants this time descended on Governor Jonah Jang's Berom community, about 15 kilometres from his family residence. We are tired of these genocides on our Christian brothers and state here that we will not let this go unchallenged," they said.

• Jos Crisis - When a Mining City Becomes an Eternal Killing Field

IF many can turn back the hands of time, the political equation in Jos would have remained in its pre-1991 status. For it is largely believed that efforts at taking governance to the door steps of the people literally sowed the seeds of discord that have turned Jos into a land of violence and destruction.

So, an action that was originally intended to usher in the gains or dividends of democracy turned out to be a curse on the land and the people have since then not known peace just as it appears that sleep has been murdered. It all began with the creation of Jos North Local Government Area through States Creation and Transition Provision Decree No 2 of 1991.

Unknown to those who conceived the idea and gave concrete expression to it, it has now become synonymous with the recurring decimal now known as the Jos crisis with high toll in human lives and property. In the process, the bond of brotherhood that used to exist appears to be permanently broken.

The result? The once peaceful plateau has transformed into a battle zone, where human lives are slaughtered at irregular intervals. Time was when Jos was famous for its tin mines. But today it is notorious as killing field. This is where Charles Darwin's theory on survival of the fittest is always defeated, as both the unfit and fittest are usually eliminated.

Ethno-religious crisis

Therefore, it is now safe to conclude that life has become short, nasty and brutish in that North Central State.

Even while the nation has not come to terms with the last mayhem, another ethno- religious crisis hit the city on Sunday. But reporting the nightmarish incident invokes a feeling of it no longer being regarded as news.

This is because, considering the frequency at which this has continued to happen, the latest incident, even if it has recorded a higher casualty figure, stand the risk of being dismissed in some media quarters as not sufficiently newsworthy. Rather the news can only be found in a lasting solution to this perennial problem.

With that, questions surrounding the frequency or even the existence of the crisis might be laid to rest.

Anything below that, would keep tongues wagging. Instructively, these crises have always had religious colouration.

The last crisis that engulfed the city started when Christian youth tried to stop a Muslim man from renovating his house that was destroyed in the November 2008 riot.

Whatever colouration that might be given to the current one, many feel that implementation of the Ajibola panel recommendations, would make a difference in the search for a peaceful Jos.

The incumbent administration of Governor David Jang had set up the Bola Ajibola Commission of Inquiry into the recurring crisis in the state.

Accordingly the 339-page report faulted the creation of the local government area by former Military President, Gen. Ibrahim Babangida.

The Ajibola commission also said it was not satisfied by the explanations of former President Ibrahim Babangida that he did not create Jos North local government to favour a particular group. The commission said it found out that the former military president created Jos North local government in 1991 to favour the Hausa Fulani of Jos North as it was the Hausa Fulani community that demanded for the local government in the form in which it was created.

It also recommended that the present Jos North Local Government be re-delineated into three sustainable local governments with an equitable representative number of wards within each local government, while "the state government should give due consideration to all ethnic groupings in appointments, nominations and promotions within the state."

In addition, it recommended that the state government should promote inclusion and participation through a 'State Character' principle similar to the Federal Character policy of the Federal Government, "as this would take into consideration citizens' right in any part of Nigeria that they may find themselves.

"This means that all persons who are bona fide citizens should have equal rights, opportunities and access and not to deny those designated as non-indigenes of an area the access to some of the most important avenues of socio economic mobility be it government jobs, academic scholarships, university admission or fees," it noted.

While observers ponder over why these recommendations have not been acted upon, the fact remains that the succession of violence in Jos has forced peace to go on exile. And the question remains: When will it return?

Let's wait for Ajiboye panel

As Ajibola Commission was wrapping up its duties, General Emmanuel Abisoye (rtd) Presidential Panel of Inquiry was set up by the Federal Government.

Accordingly, it commenced sitting at the National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies (NIPSS) Kuru, Plateau State. It is believed that the Hausa/Fulani who allegedly refused to make appearance before Ajibola Commission stormed the venue of the sitting with their memoranda along with others.

Among the burning issues raised by the Hausa/Fulani under the auspices of Jama'tu Nasril Islam before the Abisoye Commission are that the crisis was political in nature having arisen as a result of the Local Government election in Jos North Local Government Area.

Also the allegation that Governor Jonah Jang used his military connection, especially the Air force to exterminate the Hausa/Fulani in favour of his kinsmen, and that the governor gave the police and the Army shoot on sight order but government has consisted refuted this allegation.

• Don't Cancel Nitel Sale, CNPP Tells NCP

The National Council on Privatisation (NCP) has been urged not to cancel the NITEL sale to the preferred bidder, New Generation Telecommunication Limited.

The Conference of Nigeria Political Parties (CNPP) said this at a press briefing yesterday in Abuja through its National Publicity Secretary Osita Okechukwu, ahead of today's meeting of the NCP over the moribund national telecommunication company.

New Generation Telecommunication Limited offered to pay $2.5 billion for the NITEL when the bidding opened on February 16.

Two days after the deal, one of the partners in the Consortium, Unicom China said it was not party to the deal. It later said a unit in Europe was the partner.

As controversy continues to trail the deal, the Director General of the Bureau for Public Procurement (BPE) Dr. Christopher Anyanwu got a letter of suspension.

CNPP said if the deal is cancelled it will expose the rots in the NITEL privatisation exercise since 2001.

CNPP said: "Information reaching CNPP is that the new cabal around the Acting President is persuading the Acting President as the Chairman of NCP to cancel the bid with utter disregard that Unicom China has stated clearly that Unicom Europe is in contact with New Generations Telecommunications' bid, thus reversing their earlier position.

"CNPP wishes to warn that it will be too early in the day for the Acting President to allow predators and scavengers who are alleged to have collected huge sums in dollars to deceive him into cancelling the NITEL bid." It was said that the liabilities trailing the NITEL transaction is hovering between $1.5 to $1.8 billion.

CNPP alleged that the $510 billion earlier paid by Transcorp on NITEL was not paid into the federation account, saying government was forced to pay N70 billion to the banks that borrowed Transcorp the money.

"Consequently, CNPP will open up the Pandora's Box if the NITEL bid is cancelled for it is our considered view that there is no cogent and verifiable reason to do so", Osita said.

• Lingering Nigerian Leadership Crisis Causes Continued Unease

Nigeria's ailing President Umaru Yar'Adua, whose return to the country last month sparked renewed uncertainty, has again come under pressure to relinquish power. Hundreds of protesters marched down the streets of Abuja to protest what is seen as a leadership vacuum in Africa's most populous country.

The installation of Vice President Goodluck Jonathan as acting president has failed to satisfy the protestors who rallied under the hot tropical sun. They demanded the sacking of the cabinet and a public appearance of President Umaru Yar'Adua, two weeks after he returned from a Saudi hospital.

Mr. Yar'Adua is too frail to rule but his return has prompted fears that his inner circle of aides led by his wife Turai, will seek to sideline the acting president and stir instability in the world's eighth biggest oil exporter.

Acting President Jonathan sacked the country's national security adviser on Monday, in a bid to stamp his authority on the presidency.

A Nigerian analyst, Udenta Udenta, says removing the ailing president was unnecessary and could be a recipe for instability. He says with an acting president in charge, Mr. Yar'Adua should be left alone.

"We have an acting president," he said. "Why are we chasing the shadow of a visible and invisible president? Let the man who is sick be. Democracy is a process; complicated and difficult. There was a problem-everybody accepted there was a problem and we needed to find a solution. The solution was to create an image of order and stability and coherence in government, and move from there. What is necessary today is that an acting president is in charge. The president is sick. Let the man who is sick be away."

Vice President Jonathan assumed full presidential powers last month to fill a power vacuum left by President Yar'Adua, who was in Saudi Arabia since late November receiving treatment for a heart condition.

Mr. Yar’Adua, who returned to Nigeria on February 24 after spending 93 days in Saudi Arabia, has not been seen in public since his arrival. A pro-Yar'Adua group, known as the 'Future Nigeria', also staged a parallel march to rally support for the ailing leader.

• Protesters Demand to See Yar'Adua

Lagos — Protesting Save Nigeria Group (SNG) has said it is unacceptable that ailing President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua has been incommunicado since he left the country for medical treatment in Saudi Arabia on November 23, 2009.

The group therefore demanded to see the ailing President.

SNG said yesterday in a letter to Acting President Goodluck Jonathan where the group also stated its demand that members of the Executive Council of the Federation (EXCOF) should invoke Section 144 of the 1999 Constitution and declare Yar'Adua incapacitated to continue in office.

The group has been agitating for Yar'Adua to step aside in the light of his medical problems. The letter received on behalf of Jonathan by Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF) Yayale Ahmed was the highpoint of yesterday's rally in Abuja by the group.

"For more than 100 days, Nigerians have not seen or heard from President Yar'Adua since he was evacuated to Saudi Arabia for treatment. For the three months he reportedly stayed in an intensive care unit of a Saudi hospital, several of his aides continued to claim that the President was getting better. Some claimed he had started intense physical exercises. It is now more than two weeks since he was brought back to Nigeria in the dead of the night. We have not still heard from or seen President Yar'Adua.

"The refusal of President Yar'Adua to resign from office on account of his deteriorating ill-health and failure to transmit a letter of vacation on time as required by the constitution has resulted in a severe but avoidable constitutional crisis. This crisis has compounded other political challenges caused by an electoral system that is designed to aid electoral malpractices. This dysfunctional electoral system threatens democracy and good governance in Nigeria," SNG said.

SNG's National Coordinator, Pastor Tunde Bakare, who presented the letter containing the group's requests to government, listed their demands as follows:

• An end to the invisible Presidency of Yar'Adua by activating Section 144 of the Constitution so that presidential powers will be fully accountable; • The dissolution of the present Executive Council of the Federation which has largely collaborated with presidential aides to foist this crisis on the nation; and • Quick and thorough implementation of the Uwais Report on Electoral Reform starting with the immediate removal of Professor Maurice Iwu as Chairman and the reconstitution of INEC with persons of impeccable integrity and competence.

Protesters under the umbrella of SNG had gathered at the Fountain Square before Transcorp Hilton Hotel, Abuja by 9am from where they marched to the junction of the Presidential Villa.

The protesters, were, however, denied access to the seat of government.

Security led by Deputy Inspector General of Police in charge of Operations (DIG 'B') Mr. John Ahmadu was tight as both plain clothed and uniformed policemen far outnumbered the SNG protesters.

Around 10.45am, riot policemen had formed a human shield at the Presidential Villa Junction and the Federal Secretariat.

The operatives particularly locked out human rights activist and Chairman of the West African Bar Association, Mr. Femi Falana, and former Chief of Defence Staff, Lt. Gen. Alani Akirinade (rtd), from entering the National Assembly to present their petition to the parliament on the current political crisis in Nigeria.

The duo, who were part of the mass protest of SNG, stormed the gates of the parliament in company with the vibrant preacher, Pastor Bakare, and hundreds of other protesters at about mid-day but were prevented from going beyond the gates.

Before the arrival of the protesters, all the three entrances to the National Assembly were shut and policemen deployed at every pole along the routes leading to the National Assembly and the Aso Rock Presidential Villa.

The presence of the protesters created a long traffic jam on major routes in the Three Arms Zone as lawmakers and other people who work in the National Assembly struggled to gain entry into the area.

Vehicular movement was disrupted throughout the over four hours rally.

It was when the police and other security agents had refused the protesting members of SNG access to the vicinity of the Presidential Villa and sensing a violent response that the SGF arrived to address the rally.

Before then, proponents of the rally notably Gen. Akinrinade, Ayo Opadokun, Falana, Hajia Mohammed Najatu, Uche Onyeaguocha and Faruk Aliyu Adamu among others had addressed the rally.

Akinrinade charged the rally to brace up for more protests, if the government is unwilling to listen to their demands.

"Nigeria does not need two Presidents, one acting and the other sick. We want an effective President who shall be fully in charge," he said.

Falana, Najatu and others called for the full invocation of Section 144 of the 1999 constitution to save Nigeria from collapse.

They said two options are open to Yar'Adua: to govern if he is well enough for the rigours of governance or quit and that in the alternative, the EXCOF should exercise the powers granted it by the constitution.

Several placards were carried by the protesters with the following messages: "Greedy Governors Don't Destroy Nigeria", "No Division in the Presidency", "We Demand to Know Where Yar'Adua is", "Sack Iwu Now", and "On Uwais Report We Stand", among others.

Meanwhile, another rally, a pro-Yar'Adua one, was holding simultaneously with the SNG march, but at the Eagle Square near the Presidential Villa junction.

Coordinator of that rally, Musa Yakassai, said in a statement he distributed that the ill- health of President Yar'Adua is a natural occurrence and should not be used to disparage his integrity as President of Nigeria

He said there was no need for the full invocation of Section 144 of the constitution as "the Acting President is the legitimate Commander-in-Chief whose ability is not in doubt; the three arms of government are functional, an indication that Dr. Goodluck Jonathan is in charge".

He said the incessant anti-Yar'Adua rallies were anti-establishment, designed by the opposition to distract the Federal Government from delivering on the assured dividends of democracy to the people.

"We rallied today to give support to the Federal Government, the PDP and the Nigerian political fathers whose commitment to the Nigeria project deserves commendation," the group, which claims to belong to Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) youth organisation said.

The rallies were generally hitch-free as policemen, led by DIG Ahmadu were on ground to ensure peace.

Senate has, however, said it has no hand in the decision to bar SNG members who embarked on a protest march from entering the premises of the National Assembly.

The police, citing orders from above, had barred the protesters from gaining access into the complex like they (protesters) did on January 12, this year, when it embarked on a similar action to call for the empowerment of Jonathan as Acting President.

Reacting to the police action, Vice-Chairman of the Committee on Information and Media Anthony Manzo stated that the Upper House was not party to the decision to stop the protesters.

Manzo also explained that Senate President David Mark and the leadership of the Upper House had no reason to shun the protesters, explaining that the inability by Mark to address the protesters did not amount to shunning them.

According to him, "I am not aware the protesters were barred from entering into the National Assembly because we are ready to receive anybody who engages in any meaningful protest (and) provided that it is not violent.

"Why I used the word meaningful is because what is meaningful to a group may not be meaningful to another group. It is the beauty of our democracy; we are growing and I hope that time will come in which we will have a speaker's corner here like they have in the UK where people can come up and protest on anything.

"Non-violent protest, that is what we encourage and it is good; it is part and parcel of democracy and it is very good for us."

Responding to another question on why the protesters were prevented, he replied: "They were prevented? I hope you know that it is not by Senators who were in the National Assembly. Are you telling me that they were prevented by the security services?

"The Senate President can never issue that directive; we are very open to receive any peaceful demonstration that is why this is the Parliament and it is regrettable if that happened...

"The Senate President always receives any group of people; you can see that his schedule is busy; but if you are saying that whether the Senate President will receive them tomorrow, I can't make a categorical statement.

"This is because the Senate President is a busy man; he has schedule; and I don't think that the Senate President will have any objection whatsoever to receiving any group of Nigerians, because we are a law making chamber.

"This is the centre of democracy and certainly Professor Wole Soyinka and his group are welcome any time."

Manzo also reacted to the call by former Head of State, Gen. Muhammadu Buhari, for the impeachment of ailing President Yar'Adua by the National Assembly, saying the Senate was not contemplating impeachment of the President.

He said the Senate was standing by its resolution empowering Jonathan to step in as Acting President pending the resumption of office by the ailing president, stressing that the resolution had helped to stabilize the polity.

Manzo (acting Senate Spokesperson) stated: "In my own view, on the issue of the President, the Senate has already spoken. There is a subsisting resolution on ground, which is working; the one that enabled the Vice-President to become acting president. We believe that the situation is stable.

"As for impeachment, it is a process; there is a parliamentary process that would be started; but, that is not something that we are contemplating at this time."

Briefing journalists in his office after the rallies, the Commissioner of Police FCT Command John Haruna said there was no reported case of violence of any sort and that he was personally on ground to ensure peace.

He, however, said a young man who was found with a dagger was immediately arrested.

"I want to thank God that everything went on well and there was no record of violence or manhandling by the police. We ensured that every policeman in the command went out and performed his duty by ensuring peace. The young man here was found with a dagger, my men immediately arrested him, but he said it was just for personal protection. Thorough investigation will be carried out on his claim. There was no violence, no problem at all," Haruna said.

• In the Shadows of Men - Women's Political Marginalization

Kano — Ten years after Nigeria returned to civil rule women still play second fiddle in the male-dominated politics of Africa's most populous nation, women politicians and activists say.

Since this West African country of 140 million people broke from military rule and embraced uninterrupted multi-party democracy in 1999, men have been calling the shots while women, who constitute more than half of voters (54 percent), only hold marginal elective offices.

"Although it has been a decade of uninterrupted civilian rule, Nigerian women are still battling political marginalisation where they are not given the chance to hold political offices," Rabi Musa, a women's rights activist told IPS.

"Despite the relative improvement in women political participation and representation between 2003 and 2007, such improvement does not reflect women's numerical superiority," said Musa, coordinator of the Women's Right Advancement and Protection Alternative (WRAPA).

Between 1999 and 2003 a total of 15 female parliamentarians, were elected. This figure marginally improved from 2003 to 2007 and there are currently 26 women are in parliament.

Nigeria is signatory to the United Nations convention to eliminate discrimination against women but women in the country continue to voice dissent against their continued domination by men in the realm of politics and in other spheres.

"We women constitute the majority of voters during elections we are hardly given a level playing ground to actualise our dreams of active involvement in the politics of our country through elective offices," female politician Maryam Jari told IPS at a political meeting.

"The Beijing conference requires every country that participated in the conference to reserve 30 percent of positions and offices to women but in Nigeria we are yet to have even 10 percent," Jari said.

Why marginalised?

Social, cultural and religious factors are largely responsible for the marginalisation of women in politics in Nigeria, particularly in the Muslim-dominated part of the country where politics is seen as men's exclusive preserve.

Nigerian politics is capital intensive as it requires spending large amounts of money to organise and mobilise support to win an election. In Nigeria, female candidates rarely receive sponsorship from donors.

Women in Nigeria are not as economically empowered as men. In most communities women are economically dependent on their husbands who control family income. Even where women are allowed to engage in money-making ventures, their husbands control the purse. Mairo Usman, a politician in northern Nigeria's Kano city, said women's weak economic base contributes to their political domination by men.

"Women in Nigeria have far less money than men and even in politics there is a wide economic disparity between women and men, which gives men competitive political advantage over women because they are the ones with money to throw around and win votes," Usman said.

"Those among us that aspire to political office need the financial support of men who usually prefer supporting their fellow men due to prevalent male chauvinism that runs through the veins of our men," she said.

Politicking is time-consuming with politicians travelling far and wide and often staying overnight in hotels far from their homes during political rallies. Such political rallies are often rowdy and at times violent with political thugs taking centre-stage, hurling insults and brandishing assortments of locally made weapons. Given such scenarios, women politicians are generally seen as promiscuous in a society that believes women's role should be confined to domestic management.

"We are seen largely as lose women because we are politicians who, by the nature of politics, stay out late at night attending political meetings and rallies and sometimes sleep in hotels far away from our homes," Jari told IPS.

"Politics involve intermingling between men and women and our culture and religion strongly abhor mixing between the two sexes which is viewed as indication of lewdness," she added.

Aisha Suleiman, a Kano resident, was initially reluctant to join partisan politics due to the stigma associated with it. She said the unwholesome attitude of some female political

82 supporters, which portray women politicians as "uncultured" and "ruffians" put her off from entering politics.

"The way women political supporters hurl abusive and violent language, take drugs such as hemp and other stimulants during political rallies give them an air of irresponsibility," Suleiman said.

The desire to make a difference and change the negative public perception of women politicians eventually changed Suleiman's mind and she entered the political arena.

"If we all stay away and allow such uncultured women to continue exhibiting their uncouth attitude in politics, we will never be taken seriously," the 25-year-old Suleiman said.

Mohammed Ali Mashi, head of rights organisation General Improvement of Persons Initiatives (GIOPIN), said tradition and distorted religious dogma play a significant role in women's political marginalisation.

Hard line Muslim clerics mount campaigns on the pulpit and on radio denouncing women's political participation as being against the tenets of Islam. Mashi faulted such radical clerics, arguing that their views do not represent true position of Islam.

Mashi believes women are gradually defying such notions and venturing into politics and contesting elective offices due to sustained public enlightenment campaigns. He, however, said more campaigns have to be intensified to minimise the wide political margin between men and women.

"Since Islam encourages women to seek an education, I see no reason why society should deprive women political equality with men because they also have the right to contribute to nation building as men," Mashi said.

Measures to change the trend

Gender-based NGOs like WRAPA have mounted rigorous sensitisation campaigns to erase the promiscuity stigma attached to female participation in politics. "We are all out to disabuse the minds of the public of the popularly-held belief that women politicians are flirtatious simply because they mingle with men and attend meetings in hotels and sleep there when the need arises," said Musa.

"We wonder why the society doesn't see men politicians that sleep at hotels for (political) meetings and rallies as immoral. Why women? It is very disheartening," she lamented.

• Jonathan Orders Probe of Nitel Sale

Acting President Goodluck Jonathan Friday ordered an immediate probe into the controversies surrounding the recent sale of the Nigerian Telecommunication Company, NITEL, to a new generation telecom outfit at the cost of $2.5 billion.

A statement by the Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity to the Acting President, Mr Ima Niboro, said the probe decision is one of the outcomes of the NCP meeting presided over by Jonathan.

"The Acting President has set up a committee to take a fresh look at the sale of NITEL, following the controversy that has trailed the transaction with New Generation Telecoms Company".

The Acting President who doubles as the Chairman of the National Council on Privatization, NPC, has also approved the immediate release of the total sum of N1.068 billion for the pay-off of workers of the Skypower Aviation Handling Company Limited, SAHCOL.

"Also today (yesterday), the National Council on Privatisation approved One Billion, Sixty-Eight Million, Six hundred and Eighty-Six Thousand, Five Hundred and Seventy- Eight Naira (N1, 068, 686, 578 .00) as pay-off of active staff liabilities of Skypower Aviation Handling Company Ltd (SAHCOL) which was successfully privatized recently. The money will be deducted from the earnings from the sale of SAHCOL.

According to him, the decision followed the fresh report that heralded the sale which indicated that one of the technical firms to the bid winner had denied knowledge of the transaction.

"It would be recalled New Generation Telecoms Ltd had won the bid for NITEL at $2.5bn but its technical partners, China Unicom, had denied knowledge of the deal", he said.

He said "the panel is to look into the sale to examine the recurrent issues surrounding it and report back to the NCP by next Friday".

Members of the Committee include the Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, (Chairman), the Minister of Finance, the Minister of State for Commerce and Industry, the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Principal Secretary to the Acting President, the Acting Director General, Bureau of Public Enterprises and the Chairman of the Technical Committee on Privatisation.

• Secrecy on Yar'Adua Can Happen Only in Nigeria - Obasanjo

The secrecy with which President Umaru Yar'adua's illness and his return from medical trip are being handled could happen only in Nigeria, former President Olusegun Obasanjo told American news network CNN on Wednesday.

Yar'adua returned from a three-month medical sojourn in Saudi Arabia three weeks ago, but he has not made a public appearance and not been seen yet by Acting President Goodluck Jonathan.

Obasanjo said the whole episode with Yar'adua's illness is unusual.

"I think the way it was handled by his handlers and the way it's been couched in secrecy and shrouded in mystery is strange. Somebody said it can only happen in 'wonderland' Nigeria," he said.

He said it will be very dangerous if Jonathan fails to implement reforms quickly because the country is full of expectations for change.

The former president also spoke about the recent violence that claimed at least 200 lives in Plateau State, saying it was not driven by religious tensions between Christians and Muslims-but by ethnic, social and economic problems.

"If you have one group or a community that has land that's been encroached upon by another community or even by itinerant cattle farmers, then the people who lay claim to the land will fight back," Obasanjo said.

"If there are job opportunities in an area, and persons believe they are indigenous to that area, and (are) not getting enough out of the jobs that are available, they will fight those who are getting the jobs," he added.

Obasanjo said he's convinced the conflict in the country does not have religious roots, because religious leaders have come together and deliberated on the problems in Jos.

2. Economy: • Deregulation: FG Ready to Meet Labour’s Conditions

The Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Mr. Odein Ajumogobia, has said the Federal Government has accepted some of the conditions given by organised labour for the implementation of deregulation in the downstream petroleum sector.

In a related development, governors of the 36 states of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) have asked the Ministry of Finance to commence investigation into the N1.15 trillion claim made by the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) as petroleum subsidy from 2005 till date.

Out of the amount, N880 billion accounts for direct subsidy on oil, while the balance is for the cost of crude and products lost owing to pipeline vandalism.

Ajumogobia, who spoke during a working visit to the headquarters of the Petroleum Equalisation Fund Management Board (PEFMB) in Abuja on Monday night, said government was prepared to address all legitimate issues raised by organised labour in an effort to avert labour crisis or any form of social dislocation.

“As for whether we are doing what labour said or not, yes we are taking them on and we are addressing their legitimate concerns that should be addressed. For instance, the Acting President has directed that the Nigerian Ports Authority charges be halved as a way of bringing down the cost of petroleum products. We are going to continue to implement all issues that are legitimate as we prepare to go into deregulation,” he said.

Labour movements have consistently opposed the introduction of deregulation in the downstream sector, saying government should tackle the lapses in fuel supply chain as well as ensure that refineries are restored to functional state to ensure that the policy would not amount to imposing greater hardship on the poor.

Ajumogobia, however, said though the Federal Government had accepted the proposals put forward by members of organised labour and had taken measures to re-operationise the refineries, it is not going to wait till everything is done before implementing deregulation.

“Warri and Kaduna refineries have come back on stream which is one of the conditions demanded by labour. The 5,000km pipelines infrastructure is being repaired around the country wherever they are damaged and a lot of efforts have begun by NGC (Nigeria Gas Company) to repair gas pipelines. I disagree with those who think that we should do everything before we implement deregulation policy,” he said.

Commenting on the upsurge in attacks on pipeline infrastructure, Ajumogobia said part of the challenges facing the efforts at securing the facilities is that a lot of young people are without jobs and as such they see tampering with the pipelines as a means of livelihood.

He said because of the endemic nature of the problem of pipeline vandalism, making its repair a condition for deregulation means that “we will never deregulate”. Speaking on the fate of PEFMB under a deregulated environment, the minister said there would be no role for equalization in product prices in a deregulated environment; but under a transition period, there might be a need to reserve certain roles for the PEFMB to see how the deregulation policy would unfold.

He said PEFMB could be seen as an organisation in transition as far as the Petroleum Industry Bill is concerned. Meanwhile, rising from their National Economic Council (NEC) meeting at the Presidential Villa Abuja yesterday, the governors threw their weight behind the Federal Government’s proposal to embark on the deregulation of the downstream sector of the economy.

They also appealed to the organised labour to cooperate with government to ensure early completion of the deregulation exercise. Governor Emmanuel Uduaghan of Delta State, while briefing State House correspondents on some of the outcomes of the meeting, said the governors expressed concern that part of the revenue from the excess crude account, which ought to have been distributed to the states, is used to settle claims by the NNPC on fuel subsidy. Said Uduaghan:

“This is where the states are very concerned… N880 billion has to be paid to the NNPC, it will definitely affect the revenue coming to the state, because the money that is to be paid is supposed to be part of the money that is to be shared by the states. So the states will be short-changed. And that is why states are worried about this issue of paying money to some persons. And the people that get this money are very few in the society, so should we continue to enrich certain persons to the detriment of all of us?”

The governor said the other thing the states were worried about was the Joint Venture Cash Call, in which money is deducted directly by the NNPC to their joint venture funds, noting: “Last year, for 4-5 months NNPC did not make any contribution to the federation account. For 4-5 months there was no money coming from oil revenue to federation account because the money that was gotten by NNPC is directly paid into the joint venture account and that really affects us.

“We have said as economic council that a committee be put in place to look into this arrangement and see to rearrange the funding of the JVCC, to such that the at least the state and federation accounts gets some funds.” Governor Gbenga Daniel of Ogun State said the governors, while throwing their weight behind the Federal Government on the deregulation of the downstream sector, expressed worry that the greater chunk of the money spent on petroleum subsidy goes into private pockets.

According to him, for each litre of fuel sold to motorists in this country, government pays about N35 as subsidy. “For practical terms the illustration that one can give is that for each and every litre of fuel, the Federal Government is providing a subsidy of about N35. On the contrary that subsidy is not translated to the people on the streets because people are still buying it at the free market prices.

“The issue, therefore, is where are the subsidies? And if the subsidy is running into billions of naira, then the NEC feels we do have a responsibility to stop this leakage one way or the other?” Daniel said.

Minister of Finance, Dr. Mansur Muhtar, while providing clarifications on some of the outcomes of the meeting, said: “Right now, we have an invoice from the NNPC to the amount of N1.15 trillion for various expenditures incurred on behalf of the Federal Government including cost of crude and products lost owing to pipeline vandalism and losses incurred from supplying petroleum products at regulated prices. So this is the size

of the whole thing we are talking about. “There are outstanding claims from the NNPC to the tune of N880 billion.This dates back to as far back as 2005, there are claims that have not been settled.”

Asked if there is proper auditing of the claims by his ministry before payments are made to NNPC? the minister said: “We have been doing the auditing systematically and for all payments we have an independent auditor that audits whenever the PPRA makes submissions that is why the payment circle takes over 45 days. We submit it to external auditors and they bring it back to us.

“What we wanted to audit was to do a process audit, because a lot of it is based on the details, but we know that there could be flaws or weaknesses in the existing system in terms of the arrangement itself and that relates to issues relating to making sure that cargo that is brought is fully inspected even though we have auditors. Audit relation to the movement of the trucks and supplies to the various depot themselves but these are all part of the general improvement in the system.

“But the key thing is as long as you have a distorted price mechanism it really creates all sorts of inefficiencies and leakages. The audits we are talking about will relate even down to the filling stations and again that is where the BPR has been trying to make sure that this prices are enforced, but when you have only about 440 staff responsible for overseeing 15,000 filling stations there is no way you can succeed in ensuring full compliance. Even the NNPC claims are being subjected to very rigorous audit.”

Meanwhile, the governors and the Federal Government have jointly set up a committee for the celebration of the nation’s 50th independence anniversary, which comes up on October 1, 2010. Governor Uduaghan, who disclosed this yesterday, said the committee is headed by the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Alhaji Yayale Ahmed.

• US firm invests $3m in Nigeria

Minister of Commerce and Industry, Achike Udenwa has lauded Cummins Global Holdings of USA and AGLeventis of Nigeria for investing over $3 million into the Nigeria’s economy.

Speaking when a delegation of Cummins and AG Leventis led by the chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Tim Solso visited him in his office, the Minister said the Marine transportation they are going into was an area that Nigeria is interested in.

He said “I’ m sure the dredging of the river Niger will enable you to participate very actively in the development of inland waterways in Nigeria.”

Udenwa said he is happy to see the delegation of the largest diesel engine manufacturer of the world’s market share in Nigeria in its effort to explore business opportunities in the country.

He commended their joint venture with AG Leventis which he described as a leader in the private sector of Nigeria economy.

He expressed his disappointment over the country’s infrastructure especially in the areas of power and transportation and challenged Cummins Holdings to help develop the sectors.

Chairman of Cummins incorporation USA Mr. Tim solso in his remarks said they were in Nigeria to see the possibility of expanding their joint venture and to inject more capital into their earlier $3million investment in the country.

He said the company is into mining, oil and gas and presently investing into the Nigeria’s marine transportation at the border coastal region.

• Cocoa Producing States Decry FG’s Attitude

Cocoa producing states, yesterday in Akure, Ondo State capital decried the Federal Government's attitude to the economy of the crop which accounted for larger percentage of the country’s earning before the discovery of oil.

Various stakeholders who spoke at the opening of the maiden National Cocoa Convention, attended by deputy governors from some producing states, decried the Federal Government’s neglect of the cocoa aspect of agricultural programme.

The ball was set rolling by Ondo State Deputy Governor, Alhaji Alli Olanusi, who condemned non-inclusion of cocoa in the list of benefiting crops in the N200 billion loan approved in 2009, by the Central Bank of Nigeria, for agricultural development. Olanusi said despite the protests by cocoa farmers and allied associations in the producing states, the request for the reversal of the situation was contemptuously ignored.

He also alleged failure of the Federal Government to reimburse cocoa producing states with money spent on the raising of seedlings for farm rehabilitation in Year 2005/2006, adding that the National Cocoa Development Committee (NCDC) has also not supplied any agricultural inputs to the states since 2008, despite the release of N400million for the purpose.He said producing states are in the dark on research findings and revenue from cocoa exports, as well as its relative contributions to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

• NNPC: FG May Push for Higher OPEC Quota

If the current relative peace in the Niger Delta is sustained and oil and gas installations remain free from militant attacks, the Federal Government may prevail on the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) to increase Nigeria’s crude oil production quota, a top official of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has said.

The oil cartel’s 156th Ordinary Meeting will hold on March 17, 2010 where Nigeria may make a case for an increase in its export quota, which currently stands at 1.67million barrels per day.

At its 155th Ministerial Meeting held in Luanda, Angola on December 22, 2009 the oil ministers of the 12-member countries had agreed to keep the production quota unchanged and called on the member states to comply with production ceilings. The decision at the Luanda meeting was the fourth time in 2009 that OPEC kept its crude oil production quota unchanged as the cartel insisted that the falling oil prices was caused by massive oversupply.

Following the decline in crude oil prices after hitting an all-time high of $147 per barrel on July 6, 2008, OPEC members agreed to slash their actual crude production by 4.2 million barrels per day to be implemented in phases. But even with the cut in supply to the international market, Nigeria could not immediately meet its initial production quota of 1.67 million barrels per day, as disruption of oil production by militants dwindled crude output.

However, the amnesty granted to the militants had boosted the country's crude production, drawing it above its OPEC quota. NNPC’s Group Executive Director in Charge of Refining and Petrochemicals, Mr. Austen Oniwon, said in an interview in Cape Town yesterday that the country was producing 2.3 million barrels a day of crude and condensate combined. OPEC’s crude oil output ceiling does not however affect production of condensate.

“If the amnesty prevails and there is no disruption, we intend to sustain that and probably make a case to OPEC to increase the limit,” Oniwon said, according to a Bloomberg report..

Militants renewed attacks on oil and gas workers and installations had reduced crude oil output to about 1.4 million barrels a day at the peak of the hostilities in May 2009 but it has since risen to about 1.9 million barrels a day.

Oniwon also said once the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) before the National Assembly is passed, the NNPC may be listed on the Nigerian Stock Exchange within 30 months of the passage of the bill. He said the NNPC hopes the PIB will be passed before the middle of the year.

• NNPC groans under N387.5bn liabilities, losses – Minister

The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) might be heading towards insolvency unless a complete transformation process of the corporation is taken to address the problem, the Minister of the Petroleum Resources Dr Rilwanu Lukman has warned.

Lukman who raised the red flag over the company’s finances warned that unless the NNPC remained a viable company, the Federal Government’s oil and gas industry reforms were in danger of failing even before they start.

“Corporation is currently running at a loss of more than N200bn, with contingent liabilities of more than N146bn and $277 million (N41.5 billion), respectively,” Lukman told the ‘Transformation Town Hall Meeting’ of the NNPC in Abuja.

He called for urgent transformation of the Corporation to save it from going under, pointing out that the first phase would require the stabilization of the company’s financials and operations.

“Without NNPC’s transformation, the vision and aspiration behind the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) will remain theoretical. NNPC is the delivery engine for the execution of the PIB when passed into law and the NNPC transformation programme lies at the heart of the energy sector reform,” he added.

At the event also, the Group Managing Director of the NNPC Dr Mohammed Sanusi Barkindo presented a 12-point agenda to the forum, which outlined a number of reasons why the transformation of the corporation has become imperative.

The Corporation’s performance had been impeded by a motley of extraneous factors, chief among which was the insurgence in the oil-producing Niger Delta where militants say they are fighting for larger control of oil resources.

“For instance in 2009, capacity utilization of the refineries was 13 percent. This was compounded by actual pms yield of 18 percent which was below the planned 30 percent,” Barkindo said.

“The main cause of the downturn is lack of crude supply leading to a loss of N25billion by the refineries. As a result of the downtime we have increased imports of fuel from 50 percent of demand to 100 percent at a cost of N800billion.’’

In addition he stated that NNPC performance was not helped by the plethora of externally imposed obligations.

“We have 172 contingent liability cases with total value of N188billion naira as at January 2010. In 2008 alone N7.7billion was spent on legal costs while N7billion was spent on demurrage as a result of Customs and clearance delays.’’

The huge losses were exacerbated by reduced oil and gas revenue potential and this in turn led to potential project deferrals.

3. Energy: • Deregulation only answer to fuel scarcity

Minister of Petroleum Resources Rilwanu Lukman yesterday said deregulation of the petroleum sector and the quick passage of the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) are the only way out of the incessant fuel shortages that have plagued the country.

He spoke at an interactive meeting with the House of Representatives Committee on Petroleum (Downstream).

Lukman also listed logistics, regulation of the petroleum sector and vandalism of the pipelines as some of the factors causing shortages of fuel in the country.

Lukman also urged the National Assembly to pass the PIB “to solve the problems that have existed in the industry for 20 to 30 years.”

He said transportation of products by trucks, economic downturn which has hit marketers; backlogs owed importers and the inability of banks to advance loans to importers, were also part of the problems causing scarcity.

He lamented that people were given licenses to build refineries when Obasanjo was president, but none was built “because there was no deregulation. No one will bring in money to build a refinery in a regulated environment knowing he will lose money.”

4. Environment: 5. Immigration/Refugee/Idps: • Demolition displaces 10,000 in Lagos

Many residents of Ajelogo and Akanimodo market in Mile 12 area of Lagos State have been displaced following the demolition of their houses and shops by men of the Lagos State Task Force on Environment and Special Offences.

Our correspondent who visited the area yesterday reports that over 10,000 residents who are mostly women and children were rendered homeless by the exercise.

Some residents who spoke with Daily Trust said they were taken by surprise. They maintained that they did not receive any quit notice from the state government. One of the displaced residents, Mr. Jaye Olalekan, said the exercise had shattered the plans of many people in the area.

Mrs. Daramola Aina, a mother of six who was also affected, decried the action, saying, “We have nowhere to go, our children cannot go to school and we have nowhere to lay our heads”.

The Chairman of the task force, Superintendent Bayo Sulaimon, said government moved into the area because it discovered that some residents were in possession of unauthorized guns. He denied the allegation by some of the residents that they were not given notice

before the demolition, adding that government had a stakeholder’s forum with the residents where they were asked to relocate.

Sulaimon added that some members of the task force had been stationed in the area to ensure that the displaced people did not return.

6. Health: • Gowon Tasks Gov’t on Malaria

Former Head of State, General Yakubu Gowon (rtd), has challenged government at all levels to take pro-active measures in the fight against malaria.Gowon made the call yesterday in Sokoto, at a draft agenda for the North-west zonal monitoring and evaluation stakeholders’ workshop, organised by Yakubu Gowon Centre.

He said malaria can be controlled if adequate support is given and the affected communities play their role in curbing the ugly trend.

Represented by Director of the Centre, Dr Remi Sogunro, Gowon said the centre will work with governments in both federal and state levels, to ensure that malaria is completely eradicated in the country.

According to him, Nigeria is on its way to become a guinea worm-free country and no single record of guinea worm was recorded in the country in the last 24 months.

He attributed the success recorded so far to the giant strides and efforts made by governments at all levels and the Centre. In his remarks, Sokoto State Commissioner for Health, Dr Jabbi Kilgori, said both federal and state governments have been playing significant roles in the fight against malaria through provision of drugs and insecticide treated mosquito nets, as well as sensitisation on sanitation.

• Nigeria: Violence delays polio vaccinations

A polio vaccination campaign in the violence-wracked central Nigerian city of Jos has been delayed until 13 March due to the violence and an on-going health worker strike, aid workers said.

"We needed more time to plan because of the displacement that happened after the previous violence [in January] said Mathew Dabup, The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) polio immunization manager in Plateau State, which includes Jos.

IFRC has been conducting training for health workers who did not join the strike in Plateau State he told IRIN. IFRC is one of the agencies running a weeklong regional campaign to vaccinate at least 85 million children in West Africa against polio, a highly

infectious viral disease that invades the nervous system and can cause total paralysis in a matter of hours.

The Nigeria Red Cross has estimated that some 20,000 people were displaced by violence in Jos during January. When asked if the latest violence, which has again displaced unknown numbers and killed hundreds, would disrupt the campaign, Dabup said he hoped the vaccinations would take place as planned. "We have taken into consideration in our ... [vaccination plan] the camps for the displaced, along with the other sites to target."

Violence and polio

Chris Maher, head of country operations for polio eradication at the World Health Organization (WHO), told IRIN: "Implementing vaccination activities in security- compromised areas is both logistically and operationally challenging, and it is obviously more dangerous for the staff working on the ground."

He said strategies in southern Afghanistan and the conflict-affected areas of Pakistan and Somalia included quick campaigns carried out during "lulls in conflict".

In areas like Jos, where there were "periodic acute flare-ups of civil unrest, rather than the constant levels of insecurity", WHO's strategy was to adjust the timing of vaccinations so as to reach as many children as possible while protecting health workers.

"Their dedication to ensuring that all children, even in security-compromised areas, are reached with vaccine and protected from polio is heroic." he told IRIN.

Two hundred thousand vaccinators are trying to vaccinate 43 million children younger than five, the age group most vulnerable to infection. In Jos the goal is to reach 215,000 children - the official census of under-five children - although the actual number of children is higher, based on the more than 300,000 children vaccinated against polio in December 2009, according to IFRC.

Nigeria is the epicentre of the current outbreak in the region that erupted again in the second half of 2008. After multiple rounds of vaccinations, in 2009 the number of reported cases in Nigeria fell by half to 387, according to the multi-agency global polio eradication initiative.

Neighbouring countries in West Africa have discontinued polio vaccination campaigns in recent years, making them vulnerable to re-infection during Nigeria's 2008 outbreak. Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d'Ivoire, Guinea, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Togo have reported polio cases in the past 12 months.

7. Human rights/Gender/social issues: • Jang Indicts Army over Jos Massacre

Plateau State Governor Jonah John Jang has blamed the army for last Sunday’s killings in the Jos South Local Government Area of the state.

He said if the military had acted on the intelligence he provided; the dastardly attacks in which over 300 persons mostly women and children were massacred would have been avoided.

But another round of attack that would have thrown Jos into more turmoil was somehow brought under control at the Police Staff College, Jos yesterday.

Some Berom youths had thronged the college over the Fulanis arrested for allegedly participating in last Sunday’s attack. In a bid by the task force maintaining security in the area to disperse the youths, however, one man was killed while two others sustained serious injuries.

Fielding questions from State House correspondents at the end of the National Economic Council (NEC) meeting at the Presidential Villa Abuja, Jang said when he received reports at about 9pm on Saturday on movements of people with arms and ammunition around the three affected villages, he promptly reported the matter to the GOC of the 82 Division of the army in Jos, Major-General Maina Saleh.

The governor said the GOC assured him that he was going to move some troops there. Jang, however, said he was shocked when about three hours later he received a Save-Our- Soul call that some people had started burning the villages and people were being hacked to death.

He said surprisingly when he was working the telephone to locate the GOC he could not get him. Jang lamented that the violence could have been averted had the GOC acted on the early intelligence report provided him.

He said: “We know that what happened was that some people came across the border of Plateau State and started attacking villages, because nobody within Plateau got to these villages and started attacking them.

“I received reports at about 9pm that some movement of people with arms was seen around those villages and I reported to the GOC and he told me he was going to move some troops there, and because it is near where I live, I even saw a tank pass through my house and I thought it was going towards that area.

“Three hours or so later, I was woken by a call that they have started burning the villages and people were being hacked to death and I started trying to locate the GOC but I couldn’t get him on the telephone. It could have been avoided if they acted on my report.”

Asked about the way forward, the governor said the security particularly the army should redouble its efforts at providing security for the people and acting timely on information.

“You are asking what am I doing. I have said it several times, state governors are highly incapacitated. You are the chief security officer of a state and you don’t command even a fly. What do you use to stop anything?

“The security report that I gave, I didn’t even get that security report officially; it was the villagers themselves that saw the movements and reported. I didn’t receive any security report about what was going to happen.

“So the security people have to double up their efforts, particularly the army that said they have now taken over security in Plateau State because the police are unable to cope. I expect that the army should live up to expectations and stop the carnage in Plateau. If they cannot, then they should as well get out of the place,” the governor said.

Jang further stated that it was wrong for people to argue that the Sunday violence was precipitated by reprisal, which took place in Kurujenta on January 17, 2010, noting: “To the best of my knowledge what happened in Kurujenta I don’t think Fulanis were involved. If you look at the houses that were burnt in Kurujenta, Kurujenta is a tin- mining camp, and houses burnt there, I mean everybody who lived there was involved.

“You could not say it was one-sided because the houses that were burnt cut across, which means the killings cut-across. But what happened there, some people moved Aljazeera there, and then covered dead bodies and start labelling them. “When you cover dead bodies and start labelling them, who knew who you are covering? And then today Daily Trust was saying it was because of what happened in Kurujenta, because Fulanis were killed in Kurujenta. Fulanis don’t live in Kurujenta.”

The two who sustained gun shot injuries yesterday at the Police College, Jos were rushed to hospital and are at present receiving treatment. Witnesses said the Berom youths had spotted some of the Fulani men believed to have sneaked into Kuru area on Sunday to attack some farmers.

As they ran after them, the Fulanis ran into the Police College through a broken fence but they were later captured. The soldiers who got wind of the development quickly headed for the college to forestall the crisis. THISDAY gathered that there was a near showdown between the police guards at the gate and the military men who were said to have gone to the college in two armoured tankers with registration nos NA 25-950322 and NA 25-95032333 and a Toyota Hilux car with registration no FGN 373A0/3.

The military men were said to have recovered the captured Fulanis from the Berom youths who protested that the Fulanis should be released to them to deal with.

The soldiers led by a captain shot into the air to scare the youths away, but when they persisted, the soldiers opened fire on them, killing one and injuring two others. The police who were upset that the soldiers killed in their premises attempted to force the soldiers to take the body of killed Berom youths whose name was given as Mr. Gyang and the two injured persons along with them, a development that caused another row.

But instead, the soldiers left with the four Fulani men, leaving behind the dead body and the two injured persons who were later taken to an undisclosed hospital for treatment. THISDAY could not get to speak with the GOC.Other military officers contacted declined to speak on the development. Meanwhile, the Director League for Human Rights, Mr. Peter Shamaki, said Jos residents were beginning to get worried that killings have continued despite the presence of security agents in the state.

He said the people were gradually losing confidence in the ability of the military to protect them as there are now allegations of bias levelled against the security personnel. Meanwhile, women from Chugwi Village, Vwang District of Jos South Local Government Area have protested the recent massive attack on them and the children of Dogon-Nahawa by people alleged to be Hausa/Fulani, describing it as unacceptable. The women, who wore black attires and carried cross and thorns on their heads, chanted Christian songs as they matched to the palace of the village head, Da Wakili Gundong. Carrying placards with various inscriptions, the women expressed concern that the security personnel, especially soldiers brought in to maintain security had allegedly taken sides.

Leader of the women, Mrs. Sarah A. Dennis, told the Gwom Rwei Vwang, Da. Choji K. Balat of the district that the Fulanis and their collaborators had brought untold hardship to mothers and children and that enough-is-enough. The Chugwi community, they alleged, had lost over 250 women since 2001 to date while “able family men and youths” were also lost to the unending crisis.

According to the women leader, the community had also lost over 2000 cattle belonging to their husbands to the HausaFulani who “not only engaged in killing our people but also allegedly stole the people’s livestock.”

Following the incessant attacks, they added that they now live in fear, as reports indicate that their tormentors might come back anytime to finish the rest of them, as Chugwi has been listed as one of the villages lined up for fresh attacks. The women called for the withdrawal of security men who have shown bias in their duties. The district head, in his response, appealed to the women to be calm, promising to do everything possible to ensure that their demands are presented to the appropriate authorities.

• Gunshots heard in violence-wracked Nigerian town

JOS, Nigeria - Automatic weapons fire punctuated by screams erupted after dark Tuesday in a Nigerian city located near villages where massacres just two days ago left more than 200 people dead.

Nerves remained on edge, despite a long-standing dusk-til-dawn curfew in Jos, the capital of Plateau state. When sustained gunfire rang out for about three minutes, apparently from several automatic rifles, people ran screaming through the streets.

More than 100 people, mostly women and children, sought shelter in a hotel where journalists and military commanders were staying. They wailed in terror as they heard gunshots coming one by one from outside. A ranking police officer in Jos said the shooting happened after people gathered in the street because of a suspicious truck in their neighborhood.

The officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to discuss the shooting with reporters, said soldiers opened fire to scare away the group.

However, human rights group say extrajudicial killings remain common in Nigeria — especially in situations of civil unrest.

Evarisitus Fuanbal, a former soldier who now works at Jos' City Lodge Hotel, said the military officers staying at the hotel left Tuesday evening after receiving word of people assembling nearby.

Earlier Tuesday, the U.S. government and human rights activists called for Nigeria to investigate and prosecute those responsible for Sunday's killings.

Acting President Goodluck Jonathan had promised that the fighting would stop after more than 300 people, mostly Muslims, were slain in January. Some described Sunday's massacres, which targeted Christians, as revenge for what happened in January. Others said the bloodshed has ethnic roots, with Fulani cattlemen wanting to take over nearby land.

Human Rights Watch urged Jonathan to provide protection for villages surrounding Jos, a central Nigerian city that has become the epicenter of violence in the region.

Jonathan fired his national security adviser Monday following the weekend violence.

"After the January killings, the villages should have been properly protected," U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said. "Clearly, previous efforts to tackle the underlying causes have been inadequate, and in the meantime the wounds have festered and grown deeper."

Those who survived attacks Sunday in three mostly Christian villages said security forces never provided them any guards.

Human Rights Watch researcher Corinne Dufka said authorities must protect the communities, bring the perpetrators to justice and address the root causes of violence.

The U.S. Embassy in Abuja, Nigeria's capital, called on Nigeria's federal government to seek justice "under the rule of law and in a transparent manner," the embassy said.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton called the violence "tragic."

Plateau state Gov. Jonah Jang told reporters Tuesday he received a tip that villagers saw suspicious people with weapons several hours before the massacres. Jang, who leads the Christian-controlled state government, said the army ignored him when he called to warn them.

"I reported to the commander of the army and he told me that he was going to move some troops there," Jang said. "Three hours or so later, I was woken by call that they have started burning the village and people were been hacked to death and I tried to locate the commanders. I couldn't get any of them on the telephone."

As night fell Tuesday, police and soldiers began massing on two neighborhoods in Jos — one near the city's police college and the other along the road to the city's airport, witnesses said. Both are mixed neighborhoods of Christians and Muslims.

Jonathan said security forces would lock down the borders of Plateau state to stop weapons and potential fighters from infiltrating the region. But people could pass through checkpoints without being searched. Some posts were unmanned, while police and soldiers at others merely watched cars pass by without stopping them.

The killings Sunday add to the tally of thousands who have already perished in Africa's most populous country in the last decade due to religious and political frictions. Rioting in September 2001 killed more than 1,000 people. Muslim-Christian battles killed up to 700 people in 2004. And more than 300 residents died during a similar uprising in 2008.

Nigeria is almost evenly split between Muslims in the north and the predominantly Christian south. The recent bloodshed has been happening in central Nigeria, in Nigeria's "middle belt," where dozens of ethnic groups vie for control of fertile lands.

• 200 killed in Jos villages’ raid

At least 200 people were killed yesterday when suspected pastoralists attacked three villages near Jos, where sectarian violence left hundreds dead in January, villagers and officials said.

Witnesses said armed persons stormed the Berom villages of Dogo Nahawa, Ramsat and Kamang, in Shen district of Jos South Local Government Area, at about 3.00 am, shooting in the air, thereby creating pandemonium as villagers scamper for cover. People who came out of their homes were bludgeoned or macheted to death.

The villages are 10 kilometres south of Jos city, and about five minutes’ drive to the country home of Governor Jonah Jang.

Our reporter saw corpses— including those of women and children— with cudgel and machete wounds strewn along the streets. Many houses in the villages were also razed.

Witnesses said they were suspecting the invaders to be Fulani pastoralists because they were heard speaking in Fulfulde as they attack the villagers.

Dogo Nahawa resident Peter Gyang said he hid at an uncompleted building and saw the invaders chanting incomprehensible codes at their would-be attackers before killing them.

“They came around 3 o’clock in the morning and they started shooting into the air,” Reuters news agency quoted Gyang as saying. “The shooting was just meant to bring people from their houses and then when people came out they started cutting them with machetes.”

An elderly man David Kyang told NAN news agency: “They came and attacked us when everyone slept; they first set the houses ablaze and shot sporadically into the air to scare the able-bodied men away.”

Military units began surrounding the affected villages around the same time journalists and officials visited the areas, reports said. “It appears to be reprisal attacks,” Red Cross spokesman Robin Waubo told AP news agency, referring to the massacre of Fulani people in other villages of the state in January.

In nearby Bauchi state, more than 600 people fled to a makeshift camp still holding victims of January’s violence, said Red Cross official Adamu Abubakar. “They started running away from the fighting,” Abubakar told AP news agency

State Commissioner of Information Gregroy Yenlong said up to 500 people were killed and many others were being treated at various hospitals in the state.

“It is nothing but ethnic cleansing,” Yenlong told newsmen shortly after visiting the attacked villages. He said all the three villages attacked were Berom villages, making the state government to suspect that it was aimed at a particular ethnic group. He said preliminary reports on the attack indicate that the attackers were Fulani. He said government suspect former state secretary of the PDP Saleh Bayeri of having foreknowledge of the attack because he had been making statements inciting the Fulani people against the Beroms.

But Bayeri denied this, adding that since the attack on the Fulani in Kim Kim and Kuru Karama in January, he had been appealing to his people to be calm. He wondered why the state government was swift to point at a suspect over the latest killings when it failed to name a single person when the Fulani were killed in January.

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Secretary of Fulani organisation Miyetti Allah in the state, Mohammed Nuru Abdullahi, said his members had no hand in the attacks and only heard about them on the radio.

Police spokesman Mohammed Lerama confirmed the attacks but said he could not gives figures of the dead until the end of investigations.

Gbong Gwom Jos, Da Jacob Gyang Buba, who visited the areas affected, said the situation was “sad, heinous, unacceptable and man’s inhumanity to man.”

Director of the League of Human Rights in Jos, Shamaki Gad, condemned the attack saying the killing of women and children was despicable.

In Abuja, deputy force public relations officer Yemi Ajayi said normalcy had returned to the villages. “The Commissioner of Police in the State had informed the Police Headquarters about the crisis and said it has been contained. It was prevented from spreading,” he said.

• Stampede in Jos again, one feared dead

There was another stampede in Jos yesterday as people took to their heels on hearing reports of a clash between military men and some villagers around the Police Staff College in Jos.

There was a similar commotion on Monday when the military tried to prevent youths from staging a protest march into the town.

Yesterday’s stampede was said to have been as a result of an attempt by some youths to prevent some hoodlums from vandalizing some vehicles damaged during the January crisis which were parked at the roadsides. Another version has it that confusion broke out when some youths tried to stop some Fulani who were relocating from that part of the town to another and members of the joint task force intervened.

Another account however attributed the commotion to a clash by members of the joint task force and some policemen at the Police Staff College, while trying to arrest some fleeing Fulani men who ran into the college’s premises.

The soldiers were said to have opened fire when the police men refused them entry into the premises saying they must first clear with higher authorities.

The shot fired by military men was said to have hit two persons. One of them was said to have died instantly while the other was injured. One military man was said to have been shot too. It was not clear whether he died.

The military men were said to have gone to the college in two armoured personnel carriers (APCs) with number NA 25-950322 and NA 25-95032333 and two Hilux trucks

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with number FGN 373A0/3 and PL274101. The Fulani men were alleged to have sneaked into the premises of the college through a collapsed fence.

Police public relations officer ASP Mohammed Lerama could not confirm the incident but said the police would be addressing the press today to answer to all questions emanating from the recent crisis. Army spokesperson Lt. Col. Galadima Shekari could not be reached for comments.

In another development, women in Vwang district of Jos South local government came out yesterday to protest the alleged killing of a young man.

The women, numbering about 30, who wore black attires, lamented the situation saying it is unfortunate if those sent to defend them were now killing them.

• Muslim group warns against reprisal killing

The Muslim Rights Concern (MURIC) yesterday advised Nigerians to always channel their grievances to the appropriate authority rather than take the laws into their hands.

The group said was reacting to the reports of reprisal killings in parts of Jos, Plateau State, allegedly carried out by nomadic Fulanis to avenge the killings of their kinsmen and cattle in January.

About two hundred people were reported killed in the latest bout of killings.

The group’s Director Dr. Is-haq Akintola said “We cannot make meaningful progress if Nigerians live like cats and mice everyday of their lives.”

He said there is urgent need for security agents to be deployed to every nook and cranny of Plateau State until peace is fully restored.

“No adherents of any religious group must be treated as sacred cows,” he said.

“We call on Muslim leaders and scholars in Plateau State to imbibe the teachings of forgiveness, tolerance and patience,” Akintola said.

He said the citizenry needs the protection of the government of the day to be able to go about their works without any fear of molestation and remind stakeholders of the need to exercise caution and maturity on this issue so that the crisis may not escalate.

• Christians flee after Nigeria's massacre

JOS, Nigeria - Christian villagers in Nigeria fled their homes fearing new attacks Tuesday even as a senior official accused the country's military chiefs of ignoring warnings about last weekend's massacre.

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Jonah Jang, governor of central Plateau state, said the carnage that claimed hundreds of lives of mainly Christian villagers could have been avoided had there not been security lapses.

Jang told reporters he alerted the Nigeria's army commander about reports of movement around the area and was told troops would be heading there.

But while he saw a military tank rumble by his home, located a few kilometres (miles) away from one of the affected villages, "three hours or so later, I was woken by a call that they (armed gangs) have started burning the village and people were being hacked to death.

"I tried to locate the commanders, (but) I couldnt get any of them on the telephone," Jang told journalists in the capital Abuja.

Near the central city of Jos, mass burials were held for some of the hundreds of victims of a three-hour orgy of violence, while survivors nursed wounds in hospitals.

Troops patrolled the three villages where members of the mainly Muslim Fulani ethnic group embarked on their killing spree. But residents of neighbouring villages said they had already received new threats.

With a six-month-old baby strapped to her back, Patricia Silas, 30, and two neighbours turned their heels on their village of Tin-Tin, opting not to hang around to become another statistic.

"We are afraid we might be the next target of attack," Silas told AFP.

Silas said she had received threats from Fulanis who had previously settled in the village but left after violence in January in which at least 326 people died.

"They are saying they want to avenge their loss," said Silas.

Officials said more than 500 people from the mainly Christian Berom ethnic group were hacked to death with machetes, axes and daggers in three villages of Dogo Nahawa, Ratsat and Zot on Sunday morning.

But police say they have recorded only 55 while rights groups and local media have various tolls ranging between 200 and 400.

In a surgical ward of Jos hospital, women nursing deep scalp wounds mourned the loss of their children.

Chindum Yakubu, 30, mother of four, described the screams of her 18-month-old daughter who was hacked to death as the family tried to flee the pre-dawn attacks.

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"They removed the baby (from her back) and killed her with machete," Yakubu said.

Survivors say the authorities did nothing to prevent the butchery.

Thousands have been killed in recent years from strife in and around Jos, which is on the dividing line between the mainly Muslim north and Christian dominated south.

"One moment it's relaxed, then the next moment people are running for their dear life," said hospital administrator Ruth Mutfwang, summing up life in the restive region.

As a group of men huddled in small groups at Dogo Nahawa, one was overheard saying "we will take revenge".

Meanwhile, observers warned that the government must tackle deep-rooted poverty to combat the underlying causes of ethnic tensions which have seen thousands killed here in recent years.

Expressing horror at the massacre, the UN's human rights chief Navi Pillay said, "what is most needed is a concerted effort to tackle the underlying causes of the repeated outbreaks of ethnic and religious violence . . . namely discrimination, poverty and disputes over land".

Nigeria's senate described the attacks as acts of "terrorism" and crimes against humanity.

But the main opposition Action Congress accused the federal government of "hypocrisy in its reaction" to the latest unrest, saying perpetrators of the region's violence in recent years had not been brought to justice.

Indeed, Sunday's attacks were only the latest between rival ethnic and religious groups.

Locals said they resulted from a feud first ignited by cattle theft that was fuelled by deadly reprisals.

• Survivors wail as children, women buried in Nigeria

DOGO NAHAWA, Nigeria - Villagers wail as mechanical excavators heap earth on the bodies of dozens of children and women slaughtered in a weekend attack on a Nigerian Christian village blamed on a Muslim clan.

This group of dead — 40 women and children — are laid in rows inside a mass grave carved out of the ground in bush outside the city of Jos, capital of central Plateau state plagued by ethno-religious violence.

As the women weep loudly, grim-faced men watch the excavators fill the grave.

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The once-virgin bush on the fringes of the village of Dogo Nahawa turned into a cemetery overnight, after more than 500 Christians were hacked to death with machetes in a three-hour orgy of violence on Sunday close to Jos.

Cactus branches cover other fresh graves, filled in earlier.

David Kyeng, a local vigilante who fled to the hills when the attackers raided the three Christian villages, estimates hundreds of herdsmen from the Muslim Fulani staged the slaughter.

"I saw these attackers shooting into the air, scaring people out of their homes and hacking them as they tried to flee," he tells AFP.

Pregnant women and children were among the scores of people cut down by axes, daggers and cutlasses, officials said.

Much of the violence was centred on Dogo Nahawa, where gangs set fire to straw- thatched mud huts as they pursued the rampage. Around two-thirds of the houses are burnt to the ground.

Amid the devastation and heartache, tensions are running high: Around 30 men attack and wound a Muslim journalist covering the funeral, accusing him of spying.

He is pushed to the ground, kicked and pelted with rocks. A government official who tries to intervene is punched and left with a bloody nose.

"It is a provocation that you come here after all the dastardly things done by your people to our kids and kin," one yongster yells.

Police fired warning shots to disperse the mob and pull the journalist — his nose broken and face swollen — into their car and drive him to a hospital.

After the burial, surviving men from the Christian villages huddle in groups to talk, the subject of their discussions unclear.

Other Christian elders speak of "yet another jihad (holy war) and provocation".

The weekend's explosion of violence is the latest between rival ethnic and religious groups in the same area. In January 326 people died in clashes in and around Jos, according to police, although rights activists put the overall toll at more than 550.

• Nigeria Clash Isn't About Religion, Clarifies Prelate

(Zenit.org).- Last Sunday's violence near Jos that caused the deaths of perhaps several hundred people is being portrayed as a Muslim-Christian conflict, but according to an archbishop of the area, the real issues are political and ethnic.

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Archbishop John Olorunfemi Onaiyekan of Abuja, a city slightly south and west of the Nigerian capital, explained to Vatican Radio that the violence is a "classic conflict between herdsmen and farmers, only the Fulani are all Muslims and the Berom all Christians."

The attackers belonged to the mainly Muslim Fulani tribe, whereas the villages were mainly Christian Berom.

Archbishop Onaiyekan noted that the international media is quick to "report that it is Christians and Muslims who are killing one another; but this is not true, because the killings are not caused by religion but by social, economic, tribal and cultural issues."

Archbishop Ignatius Ayau Kaigama of Jos echoed the same sentiments in a peace committee meeting Monday. The committee was established by the government and includes elders of various tribes, as well as religious leaders, and former civil and military directors.

The archbishop told Aid to the Church in Need: "We need to look for solutions. It’s too simplistic to say it’s just Christians fighting Muslims, that it’s a religious war.

“We need to look beyond that, we cannot say it’s just religious, we need a political and social solution -- I said this at the [peace committee] conference.”

Sunday's violence is held to be a type of retaliation for fighting in January in Jos, when the majority of those killed were Muslim.

And a side factor that favors violent outbreaks, Archbishop Kaigama observed, is the wide circulation of weapons in the area.

"It's very easy to find persons who will come to fight only for a handful of dollars," he said.

Archbishop Onaiyekan lamented that the victims are simply poor people "who know nothing about, and have nothing to do with, any of this and are completely innocent."

He said that members of the Church continue to work to promote good relations between Christians and Muslims.

"We pray for peace, for good government and for truth," he said. "And we pray also that people may realize that the only way to survive in this country is to recognize one another as brothers and citizens of the same nation."

• UN Rights Chief Calls for New Approach to End Cycle of Violence in Country

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The United Nations human rights chief said today she was appalled by the latest "massacre" of hundreds of villagers in northern Nigeria, and called for authorities to tackle the underlying causes of the tension in the region.

As many as 500 people in the area around the city of Jos may have been killed last weekend during the latest wave of clashes between Christians and Muslims, which followed similar attacks in January and in November 2009.

"In both cases, women and children and elderly people were among those who were viciously slaughtered," High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said in a news release. "After the January killings, the villages should have been properly protected."

She stressed that better security is clearly vital, but added that it would be a mistake to think of the situation as simply sectarian or ethnic violence, and to treat it solely as a security issue.

"What is most needed is a concerted effort to tackle the underlying causes of the repeated outbreaks of ethnic and religious violence which Nigeria has witnessed in recent years, namely discrimination, poverty and disputes over land," she stated.

"The Government needs to address these issues head-on."

Ms. Pillay stressed that it was essential that the forces of law and order in the Jos region act in a "visibly even-handed fashion," and that justice is seen to be done by all sides.

"The job facing the security forces and the judiciary is extremely sensitive," she said. "It is important to avoid stimulating new resentments, while at the same time ensuring that those responsible for these atrocious acts do not escape justice."

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, speaking to reporters yesterday, called for all sides to exercise maximum restraint, and said the country's political and religious leaders should work together to address the underlying causes and to achieve a permanent solution to the crisis.

• Retaliation fears stalk Nigeria city after clashes

JOS, Nigeria (Reuters) – Sporadic shooting rang out overnight in the central Nigerian city of Jos and witnesses said at least one person was killed by soldiers enforcing a curfew days after attacks on three nearby Christian villages.

Jos, which lies at the crossroads of Nigeria's Muslim north and Christian south, has been tense since raiders attacked the villages of Dogo Nahawa, Zot and Ratsat just south of the city on Sunday, violence in which hundreds are feared to have died.

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Fierce competition for control of fertile farmlands between Christian and animist indigenous groups and Muslim settlers from the north have repeatedly triggered unrest over the past decade.

Retaliatory attacks are not uncommon and Acting President Goodluck Jonathan has put the security forces on red alert to try to prevent unrest from spreading to neighboring states at the heart of Africa's most populous nation.

"Last night until this morning everybody kept vigil. Nobody slept," said Felvis Aduba, a Jos resident who owns a shop selling electronic goods.

Jos was already under a dusk-to-dawn curfew after clashes between Christian and Muslim mobs in January which killed more than 400 people, according to community leaders.

Aduba said the city had been put on edge by SMS messages sent to mobile phones warning that militants from the Muslim Hausa-Fulani ethnic group, blamed for Sunday's attacks, were coming from the northern city of Maiduguri to wage war.

Gangs of youths gathered in self-defense, witnesses said.

Gunfire also rang out from the Tudun Wada neighborhood of the city overnight, where residents said panic was sown when a resident from another state received a truckload of cows.

Many of the herders around Jos are Hausa-Fulani and when a vigilante group saw the animals, they took the man for a northern Muslim and mobbed him, before the security forces opened fire to disperse them, killing one person.

POPE SENDS CONDOLENCES

The latest unrest at the heart of the oil-producing nation comes at a turbulent time, with Acting President Jonathan trying to assert his authority while ailing leader Umaru Yar'Adua remains too sick to govern.

The United Nations, United States, rights groups and opposition politicians have all urged the authorities to ensure those responsible face justice and called on the security forces to protect civilians.

"My deepest condolences to the victims of the atrocious violence which has bloodied Nigeria and which has not even spared defenseless babies," Pope Benedict said in Rome.

"Once again, with a sorrowful heart, I repeat that violence does not solve conflicts but only worsens their tragic consequences ... I call all those in the country who have civil or religious authority to work for the security and peaceful coexistence of the whole population," he said.

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Plateau State Governor Jonah Jang on Tuesday blamed the military, which took control of security in January, for failing to respond to his warning that movements of armed men had been reported by villagers shortly before Sunday's attacks.

Police have made 93 arrests but rights groups are concerned that those responsible may not actually be prosecuted.

More than 300 people were arrested in January and about half of them were due to be sent to the capital Abuja for prosecution, but it is unclear how many actually faced justice.

Local officials said many of those responsible for January's violence were the same people arrested but not prosecuted after similar unrest in November 2008.

• Nigerian Women Protest Sectarian Massacre

Thousands of women in Nigeria have protested the massacre of mostly Christian villagers by a Muslim clan. The demonstration coincided with the start of a three- day fast declared by the authorities in central Plateau State as a mark of reconciliation.

Dressed all in black and carrying Bibles and wooden crosses, the women waved branches full of green leaves as a sign of traditional protest. The group prayed for an end to the sectarian violence.

Some of the protesters said they had lost faith in the security forces. A similar protest involving 500 women took place in Abuja.

The police chief in Jos, Ikechukwu Aduba, confirmed the arrest of several ethnic Fulani herdsmen, who are mostly Muslims. He said the attackers confessed the massacre was in retaliation for religious violence in January that left more than 300 people dead.

"Fulanis who were arrested immediately after the incident and in their various statements owned up to carrying out the invasion and killings in the aforesaid villages," said Ikechukwu Aduba. "They further stated they were on a revenge mission."

The police have also reviewed the death toll from the weekend's massacre. Police Commissioner Aduba says 109 people were slaughtered in three villages near the central city of Jos.

"Total number of casualties 109," he said. "The figure is authentic and undisputed. The unwholesome figure of 500 and 300 variously credited to the state government should be disregarded."

The International Committee of the Red Cross says about 8,000 Nigerians have fled their homes around Jos after the violence.

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8. Geo-Strategic issues: • EU Donates N196m IT Equipment to Gov’t

European Union (EU) under the aegis of EU SRIP, has donated Information Technology equipment and accessories worth N196 million to the Cross River state government.

Speaking during the presentation of the items to the state government in Calabar, state coordinator of EU SRIP, Mr. Etiene Yemek, said the gesture which is meant to support public finance-based institutions, House of Assembly and civil society organisations, through its budget base network group (BTAN), will further enhance productivity and efficient service delivery that will better the lots of Cross Riverians.

He maintained that the benefitting groups which were carefully selected, need to be supported to enhance qualitative service delivery after conducting NEEDS assessment, and urged them to be responsible and accountable in the use of the equipment. Responding, the state governor, Senator Liyel Imoke , who was represented by the Secretary to the State Government, Mr. Fidelis Ugbo, said the donation which is part of the support for reforming institution programme, is an indication that the international communities are abreast with the various initiatives of the state aimed at ensuring standardised service delivery which will have positive impacts on the citizenry as a proof of good governance.

While calling on other development partners to emulate the European Union which he described as a reliable partner in service delivery Imoke pointed out that the gesture as demonstrated by the Union with the donation of modern information technology equipment will further reposition the state service delivery system.

In his goodwill message, Special Adviser, International Donor Support, Mr. Roy Ndoma-Egba, who lauded EU for its benevolence, said the effort was an attempt to computerise bureaucracy and make it more result-oriented for effective and efficient service delivery, adding that the support was the right step in the right direction.

Special Adviser, Budget Monitoring and Evaluation, Dr. Peter Oti, thanked the European Union for the donation which he noted will enhance their performance in the discharge of their duties and promised to make judicious use of the items.

• Bakassi - Nation May Return to UN

Calabar — Nigeria may seek the assistance of the United Nations to compel Cameroon to implement the Green Tree Agreement which set the implementation of the judgement of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ceding the Bakassi Peninsula to Cameroon.

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Cross River State Security Adviser, Mr. Bassey Okim said in a press briefing in Calabar, yesterday that Nigerians living in the ceded territory had been subjected to series of breaches by Cameroon.

He noted that by the provisions of the Green Tree Agreement, while Nigeria lost the administrative control over the territory, the title rights still belonged to Nigerians living in the territory. "What the Green Tree Agreement sought to do was to address the concern of those indigenous people. They had to guarantee their fundamental rights: they should have freedom of fishing, freedom of occupation, live in peace and harmony, “he said. Okim said the Agreement also called on Cameroon to "hold the status quo as far as the indigenous people are concerned. “He however expressed concern that the indigenous population has been harassed continually by the Cameroonian authorities. "Cameroon has been implementing the Green Tree Agreement only in breaches. We as a State have chronicled all acts of breaches and sent to the Federal Government. The last time we inquired about the outcome of our complaints on behalf of our people.

"We were informed that the Ministry of External Affairs and the office of the Inspector General of Police have met with their Cameroonian counterparts on the issue and that there are some grey areas that the Ministry may be contemplating taking up with the United Nations or Security Council," he said.

On the security situation in Cross River State, Okim said the incidence of cultism in the State was decreasing following the State Government's concerted fight against cultism.

He confirmed that nine councillors of Calabar South Local Government Council arrested over their involvement in cultism were already standing trial while awaiting trial for murder.

The State Security Adviser maintained that the State would ensure that all aspirants to public office would be screened to ensure that no cultist gets into any public office. Okim also announced plans to upgrade the State's Emergency Response Centre with acquisition of more communications equipment that would enable the Centre receive about 30 calls simultaneously. He expressed satisfaction the residents of the State have keyed into the Security plans and are now conversant with the use of the Emergency Response Centre.

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Other West African States

Benin: Burkina Faso: Cameroon: • Are Women the Magic Bullet for 'Electoral Apathy'?...... H1

Yaoundé — A support network for women's political participation, are challenging head-on what it calls "electoral apathy", after noting a growing trend in electoral abstention.

The civil society organisation, More Women in Politics, took advantage of International Women's Day commemorations to address the issue and discuss some of its own strategies during a conference in Yaounde, the capital of Cameroon, on Mar. 8.

The Central African country's 2007 legislative and municipal elections in particular were marked by their low levels of participation.

According to figures published by the minister of territorial administration and decentralisation, only five million Cameroonians registered to vote in 2007 out of a total estimated population of 18 million. And 62 percent of those, three million Cameroonians, actually voted.

The reclaiming of Cameroon's electorate, obviously tired of political games, is now the battle cry of many political groups and several civil society organisations in the country.

The More Women in Politics network is part of this same movement. It was launched by a group of women led by Justine Diffo, a lawyer who teaches at the University of Yaounde II.

"Women alone account for 52 percent of the Cameroonian population, so they carry a potentially determining demographic weight that should be mobilised for a massive registration and greater political participation electoral process," Diffo told IPS.

"Women must register to vote. But first the need their official documents. Whereas still today there are women who go about their daily business without a national identity card," Catherine Abena, Minister for the Defense of Women and Families, said during the conference.

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Guy Parfait Songué, a political scientist and lecturer at the University of Douala, the economic capital, said that the low participation of Cameroonians - including women - in the political process has its roots in the violence of the decolonisation process.

"There was a veritable crisis of citizenship in Cameroon. We must not forget that the heart of this country was decimated before independence and during the 10 following years. The nationalists who fought for the country's independence were decimated by napalm by French settlers. This has weakened national sentiment," he said.

For the academic, weak political involvement - from both men and women - in Cameroon is also due to psychological and anthropological causes.

"Asking people to be involved in politics is tantamount to spurring them into leadership. But we cannot promote the spirit of leadership of an individual while refusing to value their potential. It starts in the family where children's leadership (whether boys and girls) is prohibited. They are taught fear and doubt instead. You cannot foster the leadership potential of a child after denigrating them their whole life. Parents should start by changing their relationships with children," Songué explained.

The ministry for the defence of women and families agrees that there is a real problem. "Women have weak political culture. And texts that establish gender equality, such as the constitution, are not very well known or understood," said Jean-Pierre Makanga, the ministry's deputy director for family rights advocacy.

This is despite the fact that political parties advocate for more gender parity. One of these is the the Rassemblement démocratique du peuple camerounais (Democratic Rally of the Cameroon People), the party currently in power.

"The party rarely follows the rules set by its hierarchy in regards to integrating women and youth in its candidate list during legislative and municipal elections," Makanga noted, highlighting the attitude that hampers women's political participation.

However, the representation of women in political life in Cameroon has improved slightly due to the feminist advocacy and government efforts.

Quoting the ministry of territorial administration and decentralisation, Makanga noted that in 1982 there were 336 women in municipal councils as opposed to 1,651 today. Progress was also registered in parliament where a woman was elected for the first time in 1957. The National Assembly now has 10 women MPs out of 180.

But progress is still insufficient, since according Makanga, since its creation women represented only 8.41 of those in parliament, as opposed to 11.16 of elected officials in municipal councils.

"Women should get involved in associations and groups, and not only to pay dues, eat, drink and assist each other in difficult times," said Songué.

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"I'll use every gathering to spread the message: women's vote is key to choosing representatives and especially in electing other women," Ngala Esther Ntale vowed. Ntale is an MP and member of the Social Democratic Front, the main opposition party.

Senate elections are planned this year in Cameroon since President Paul Biya has announced the establishment of a senate, while the next presidential election is expected in 2011.

Aware that "elections are a success only if we managed to mobilise a critical mass of 60 percent of the electorate," the "More Women in Politics" network intends to take decisive action to mobilise 52 percent of Cameroon women so that the voice of women is now heard more forcefully, Diffo stressed.

• Worrying International Scaling Position……………………...H1

Doing Business and Transparency International have so far placed Cameroon in a disturbing position.

Every year, the World Bank's Doing Business programme and German-based Transparency International publish their reports on the business environment among selected nations and the corruption index respectively in a bid to measure the World socio-economic and political trends.

Doing Business in effect, investigates regulations that enhance business activity and those that constrain it. The report presents quantitative indicators on business regulations and the protection of property rights that can be compared across 183 economies. A set of regulations affecting 10 stages of a business's life are measured: starting a business, dealing with construction permits, employing workers, registering property, getting credit, protecting investors, paying taxes, trading across borders, enforcing contracts and closing a business.

The 2010 report puts Cameroon in a very disturbing position. As far as ease of doing business is concerned, Cameroon is reported to occupy 171st position out of 183. Other rankings are as follows: starting a business, 174th, dealing with construction permits, 164th, employing workers, 126th, registering property, 143rd, getting credit, 135th, protecting investors, 119th, paying taxes, 170th, trading across borders, 149th, enforcing contracts, 174th, and closing business, 98th.

According to Doing Business, it takes at least 34 days to start a business, 426 days to obtain a construction permit, 93 days to register property, 23 days to trade across borders, 800 days to get contracts through, and 3.2 years to close business.

The story is not different on the Transparency International report for 2009. The report tells of Cameroon as still having a corruption problem. "In Cameroon, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Uganda, more than 50 per cent of respondents reported paying a bribe in the

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past 12 months", the reported stated. This situation deters investors many who foresee bribery as the leeway to getting installed.

Companies must do more, according to the report, to address the challenges posed by corruption. More than half of those polled in the survey process believed that the private sector uses bribes to influence public policy, laws and regulations. Half of respondents view the private sector as corrupt.

• German Investor Interested in Cameroon's Energy Sector…….H3

Prime Minister, Philemon Yang, yesterday had discussions with the Director of the German Energy Company EnBW Energy Baden-Wurttemberg AG.

The Director of the German Energy Company, EnBW Energie Baden-Wurttemberg AG, Stefan Liebing is in Cameroon for exploratory discussions about the fields of cooperation in the energy sector, including natural gas. Stefan Liebing, accompanied by the German Ambassador to Cameroon, Karin-Elsa Blumberg-Sauerteig, yesterday, March 11 had discussions with Cameroon's Prime Minister, Philemon Yang.

After the audience, Stefan Liebing in an interview said World gas markets are becoming more difficult, prices are declining and demand is going down due to the economic crisis, but still, Cameroon has very huge amounts of resources available and there seems to be very interesting projects going on. He said they will very much like to discuss further with the government about how to cooperate in the energy sector.

As to the time frame of investing in Cameroon, the Director of the German Energy Company that has a capital of eight billion Euros (about FCFA 52,00 billion), said its was difficult to make a clear statement. He said they need to do some work after meeting Cameroon government officials about what to do next and will come back not before too long to have tangible discussions.

• Seven Chinese nationals kidnapped off Cameroon…………….H7

YAOUNDE (AFP) - Seven Chinese nationals working for a private fishing company have been kidnapped off the Bakassi peninsula in southwest Cameroon, Cameroonian and Chinese sources said on Saturday.

A Cameroonian source close to the investigation and rebel movements told AFP the seven were kidnapped on Friday "in international waters off Bakassi".

A source close to Chinese diplomats confirmed the abduction of the seven and their nationality.

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Officials from the two countries "are working jointly to secure their release," the source said, adding the kidnapped Chinese were on a trawler at the time of the incident.

Chinese state news agency Xinhua quoted the Chinese embassy as saying their lives were not in danger and the kidnappers had provided them with food and water.

The embassy said that two fishing vessels belonging to the Dalian Beihai Fishing Company had been attacked in the incident in the early hours of Friday.

The vessels had returned to the port of Limbe with two sailors slightly injured.

The resource-rich Bakassi peninsula has been at the centre of a territorial dispute between Nigeria and Cameroon for 15 years. It was handed back to Cameroon in August 2008 after the International Court of Justice ruled in Cameroon's favour.

The marshy coastal region, potentially rich in oil and gas, has recently witnessed a spike in rebel attacks. Ten oil sector workers including seven French were kidnapped there in late 2008 by a group calling itself the Bakassi Freedom Fighters. Cape Verde: Chad: • Security Council Extends UN Force for Two Months, as Talks with Country Continue…………………………..H1

The Security Council today extended the mandate of the UN peacekeeping mission in the Central African Republic and Chad until 15 May, as discussions continue on the future of the operation.

The two-month technical roll-over of the mission (MINURCAT), set up in 2007 to ensure the security of hundreds of thousands of refugees from Darfur, other displaced persons and humanitarian workers, comes after recent discussions between the world body and Chadian authorities.

The Government of Chad had called for the withdrawal of the military component of MINURCAT, stating that it had served its purpose and that it was better for Chadian forces to take over security responsibilities.

Last week UN peacekeeping chief Alain Le Roy told reporters that a two-month extension, which was agreed with the Chadian Government, would "give some time to try to find agreement with the Chadian authorities on the future of MINURCAT in Chad."

Mr. Le Roy, who was recently in Chad to discuss the issue with the country's leaders, added that many Council members have stressed the importance of keeping the mission on the ground.

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The 15-member body adopted today's resolution unanimously.

• PM resigns from office……………………..H1

Chad's prime minister, whose government has been rocked by a series of embezzlement scandals, has stepped down and been replaced by a former oil minister.

A statement from the office of Idriss Deby, the president, on Friday said that Youssouf Saleh Abbas had resigned, but gave no further details.

Emmanuel Nadingar, who once held the oil portfolio and who under Saleh Abbas had been Chad's decentralisation minister, was named as the new head of government.

The speed of Nadingar's appointment was a surprise, although several observers said they had been expecting Saleh Abbas's resignation for several weeks.

Several ministers in Saleh Abbas's government have been accused of embezzlement in a scandal related to the purchase of school textbooks.

Ministers suspended

Four ministers have been suspended in recent months on allegations of embezzlement of about $5m of public funds.

Saleh Abbas's popularity has also suffered from the rising cost of living in Chad, one of the poorest countries in the world.

No cabinet meetings have been held since December and political differences have become apparent between President Deby and Saleh Abbas, a former opposition figure who took office in 2008.

Nadingar is the leader of a party which strongly supports Deby.

The prime minister runs the day-to-day running of government in Chad but the president retains a tight grip on decision-making in the West African nation.

Chad is due to hold legislative elections by the end of the year.

Cote d’Ivoire: Gambia: • Gambia row over wave of arrests………….H1

An opposition leader has criticised a wave of arrests in The Gambia, saying detainees - including a former minister - do not know why they are being held.

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Halifa Sallah told the BBC that those arrested have been denied visits from lawyers and family members.

High-ranking military and police officials are reportedly among those detained, and last week ex-fisheries minister Antouman Saho was jailed.

President Yahya Jammeh is frequently criticised by rights groups.

In recent years, he has publicly threatened to kill gay people and rights workers.

Last month the government of Mr Jammeh, who took power in a bloodless coup in 1994, expelled the envoy of the UN's children charity, Unicef.

No reasons given

Mr Saho, who served in Mr Jammeh's government from 1994 until he was sacked last month, was taken from his home on Friday night.

Police said he was wanted for questioning by intelligence officials.

His family has not been able to contact him since and no official reason has been given for his arrest.

"According to our constitution, within three hours of an arrest the person should be told why he or she has been arrested," Mr Sallah told the BBC's Network Africa programme.

He said relatives of people arrested as far back as October had told him they had not been able to contact their detained family members.

He said those arrested in the more recent wave of arrests were in the same situation.

"We've still been unable to establish why they've been arrested, and as it stands there is only speculation," he added.

Mr Sallah, of the National Alliance for Democracy, has himself been arrested several times in recent years.

• I Won’t Defend Drug Traffickers,’ Says Gambian Opposition Leader ………H7

The leader of Gambia’s main opposition United Democratic Party (UDP) says security agencies are ill-equipped to deal decisively with an escalating “drug menace”.

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Ousainou Darboe, who is also an attorney, says he will continue refusing to defend accused drug traffickers.

“I have for the past 18 or 20 years declined to defend anybody who is charged with any offence connected with drug trafficking. Because of my abhorrence for those who are involved in drug trafficking, my abhorrence for those who use drugs. And I think it’s a menace to society and we should do everything possible to get the Gambian society rid of these anti-social people,” he said.

Political observers have often accused top officials of Gambia’s National Drug Enforcement Agency (NDEA) of failing to tackle the drug problem. They accused the officials of being too “cosy” with alleged drug traffickers.

Attorney Darboe urged Gambians to join the fight against drug trafficking.

“Every Gambian should really give a helping hand in ensuring that those who use the Gambia as a conduit pass for their drug trafficking to Europe and other parts of West Africa are kept out of this country. And that will really sanitize our image to make sure that nobody uses this place as a transit point for their illegal drug trafficking,” Darboe said.

Gambia’s media reports that international drug cartels often use the country as a drug transit point with the help of local drug lords.

President Jammeh vowed Monday to clamp down on drug trafficking, saying he would rather die than allow some “misguided elements” to use the Gambia as a drug zone.

President Jammeh also fired three top NDEA officials as well as the Inspector General of Police over alleged corruption and conspiracy.

Attorney Darboe urged political parties to educate Gambians about the threats of drug trafficking.

“I believe all political parties should engage in a mass education of the Gambians to make them aware of the dangers of drug trafficking (and) all the vices about drug trafficking. I think that we should all make it our duty so that we fight the menace of this terrible thing that is happening to our country,” Darboe said.

He called on the international community to help Gambia’s efforts to deal with the drug trafficking problem.

Guinea- Conakry: • Guinea sets presidential poll date……….H1

Guinea's rulers have said they country will hold a presidential election on June 27, the first since a military coup in December last year.

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The main electoral commission proposed the date last month and the decree was signed by General Sekouba Konate, the country's interim leader on Sunday.

"The transition president, [the] interim president of the republic, sets the date of the first round of the presidential election for June 27," the decree said.

The commission said a second round should be held on July 18 if no candidate got an absolute majority.

It also proposed that campaigning run from May 17 to June 26.

Military coup

The interim government was established with the help of international mediators in the wake of an assassination attempt on Captain Moussa Dadis Camara, the then-leader of the country's military government.

Camara, who was shot in the head by an aide, is recuperating in neighbouring Burkina Faso.

Ahead of the assassination attempt Guinea had been thrown into political turmoil when a security force crackdown on September 28 saw the massacre of 156 protesters.

A United Nations report released in December blamed Camara for the massacre.

The killings occurred as opposition supporters staged a rally amid concerns that Camara - who seized power in 2008 after the death of Lansana Conte, Guinea's long-time ruler - was planning to renege on a pledge to hold civilian elections.

Besides scores who died after soldiers opened fire in the city's main sports stadium, more than 100 women were reportedly raped during the incident.

Guinea- Bissau: Liberia: • President Sirleaf Not Bound by Timeline on TRC Report, Says Minister………H1

The act creating the TRC calls for the president to report to the legislature 90 days after the commission has submitted its report

Tuesday this week marked 90 days since Liberia’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) submitted its final edited reported to President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.

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Under Article 10, Section 48 of the TRC act, the president is to report to the national legislature within three months after receiving the TRC report and on a quarterly basis after the implementation of the commission’s recommendations.

Information minister Cletus Sieh said while President Sirleaf is concerned about the report being implemented, she is not bound by some timeline.

“All we are saying is that the TRC has submitted her report and let’s forget about timeline. Those recommendations that are implementable will be implemented; those of course that have constitutional implications, definitely the courts or whatever institutions available will be the ones to make such a determination,” he said.

Sieh said President Sirleaf has taken some steps towards implementing the TRC report, including the appointment of a Human Rights Commission.

But Sieh said the Liberian legislature has yet to approve members of that commission.

He also said members of the Liberian legislature have been hearing from their constituencies on the way forward about the TRC report.

“Town hall meetings had been held by members of the legislature; the reaction has been mixed but we think overwhelmingly from most quarters they are saying that they prefer restorative justice and the maintenance of peace,” he said.

Sieh said President Sirleaf would not be in violation of Liberian laws if she fails to implement the TRC report.

“Our constitution says any law that contravenes the constitution of the Republic of Liberia such laws are none and void. Our supreme law of the land is the constitution of the Republic of Liberia. So any law or act passed by the legislature that seems to contravene the constitution, the constitution will be maintained,” Sieh said.

He said President Sirleaf is not invoking technicalities as a means to avoid implementing the TRC report.

Instead Sieh said some of the Truth Commission’s recommendations are unconstitutional.

“It’s not a matter of technicality. It’s a matter of doing what is proper under our constitution. For example, if the TRC is calling for people to be banned for 30 years, our constitution says the only penalty or crime that carries banning from public office is treason. And it calls for five years. So there’s no where in our laws that calls for 30 years. So you see clearly this is in contravention of our constitution,” Sieh said.

Newly elected Senator Geraldine Doe-Sheriff of George Weah’s Congress for Democratic Change said President Sirleaf is under obligation to inform the national legislature about her plans to implement the TRC report.

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“As far as we are concerned the TRC act which said that within 90 days after the final draft has been done with and presented to the president within 90 days the president shall report to plenary. I think the three months are enough and it’s incumbent on the President in this month of March to make a presentation to the plenary. We hope she will do that within the shortest possible time before the month ends,” Doe-Sheriff said.

She said the Liberian Senate passed a resolution calling on the President to begin implementing the TRC report.

But Doe-Sheriff said a member of the senate has filed a motion for reconciliation which she said is holding up the process.

• Wife of war crimes suspect Charles Taylor gives birth…..H7

The wife of Liberia's ex-President Charles Taylor - on trial in The Hague for war crimes - has had a baby girl, his family spokesman says.

Sando Johnson told the BBC Victoria Addison-Taylor would soon take her back to Monrovia to meet the family.

"Mr Taylor is overjoyed with the birth of his daughter," said his lawyer.

Mr Taylor denies backing rebels who committed widespread atrocities throughout the 1990s in Liberia's neighbour Sierra Leone.

He already has two girls with his current wife, who moved to the Netherlands for the duration of the trial.

The baby was born in February but her birth has only just been made public.

The spokesman said he did not know how many children Mr Taylor had altogether.

He married Victoria shortly before stepping down as president and going into exile in Nigeria in 2003.

His first son, McArthur "Chuckie" Taylor, a US citizen, was sentenced in January to 97 years in prison in the US after he was convicted of torture and war crimes during Liberia's civil war. Mali: Niger:

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More Than 60 Percent of Niger Facing Food Insecurity

Niger says it needs $123 million of international assistance to make up for food shortages this year. Poor rains across Africa's Sahelian region have brought below- average harvests in Niger, northern Nigeria, central Chad and northeastern Mali and Burkina Faso.

Prime Minister Mahamadou Danda says Niger needs a huge commitment of international support to deal with its immediate food crisis and restructure agricultural production to become more self-sufficient.

The prime minister says there is critical food insecurity in all of Niger that requires action to solve such a huge crisis.

Mr. Danda was named prime minister by military rulers who took power in a coup last month. Addressing so publicly the country's immediate food needs is a considerable change from the approach of former president Mamadou Tandja.

Prime Minister Danda says a survey of food vulnerability shows that more than two-and- a-half million people in Niger, representing more than 380,000 families, are severely food insecure, meaning they have less than ten days of food stocks.

The prime minister says moderate food insecurity also affects nearly 40 percent of the population. That is a big jump from the 15 percent of people who were moderately food insecure in 2008. So overall, six out of ten families in Niger are either severely or moderately food insecure.

The United Nations estimates that at least 200,000 children face severe malnutrition in Niger this year.

Millet prices in the capital, Niamey, are 42 percent higher than 2007. Severe pest infestation and poor rains have led to a 34 percent drop in cowpeas, which are the main source of income for small-scale farmers.

Shorter-than-usual rains in September and October of last year have also hurt cattle.

Prime Minister Danda says Niger's 2009 livestock production was down 16 million tons from the previous year because of a shortage of grazing, with cereal production for animals down 13 percent from 2008.

Across the Sahel, the United Nations estimates that the need for food assistance will be higher than usual at least through June. Poor farmers in Niger, Chad, and northeastern Mali will likely need food aid until the early harvests of August.

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• Aid Agencies Launch Hunger Appeal for Niger

Niger is grappling with an acute food crisis and nearly a million children in the country are malnourished of which at least 200,000 are on the brink of starvation.

Aid agencies say Niger is facing a hunger and malnutrition crisis and UK-based groups such as Oxfam and Action Against Hunger are calling on the international community to step up efforts to raise the over $100 million in assistance funding needed by Niger.

Etienne Du Vachat from Oxfam spoke to VOA from Niger; he says inadequate or delayed funding could have dire consequences.

"The international donors, they should really commit and quickly disburse, this quick disbursement will be key in the capacity of the world humanitarian community to respond to the needs which are huge and our partners on the field are very very concerned," said Du Vachat.

Vachat says aid groups in Niger have been issuing warnings for months.

Guido Borghese is an aid worker in Niger with the United Nations Children's Fund, UNICEF. He says the situation is particularly grave for the children.

"From now to the end of 2010 at least 200,000 cases of acute severe children malnutrition," said Borghese. "It means that the children are sick because of lack of food or also because of other diseases. And these children need to be treated and if they are not treated correctly, then their life will be in danger."

Niger is one of Africa's poorest nations, ranking at the bottom of the United Nation's Human Development Index. And situated in the Sahel region, Niger is constantly under threat from drought conditions.

Borghese says severe drought conditions over the past years have only exacerbated the situation.

"Droughts during the previous rainy season .. resulted in the problems in [not having sufficient] grass for animals," Borghese adds. "That is one of the main resources for the people in rural areas and for this reason people are suffering for lack of food. This is also linked to the poverty of the people in this area."

Aid workers agree drought and poverty have proved a vicious circle.

Etienne Du Vachat from Oxfam says that there is almost a two-thirds deficit in the amount of food needed for livestock. As a result, he says, many farmers are being forced to leave their homes and move to towns in search of work and money to survive.

"In some villages, up to 30 percent of the population was forced to leave their villages,

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their home, not only men, but also the entire families, to go to either neighbor countries like Nigeria or the urban center in Niger to search for jobs, a daily work," Vachat said.

The British government's aid and development agency, DFID, has earmarked almost $30 million to mitigate the hunger crisis in Niger and neighboring Chad. Aid groups have also launched emergency responses. They say they are advising farmers on how to cope with dwindling food for their livestock, running cash for work programs, helping build cereal banks and distributing seeds and food to the poorest.

• Eight Killed in Attacks on Niger-Mali Border……H8

Niger's government has confirmed that unidentified gunmen killed five military personnel in an attack Monday along the country's border with Mali.

Government spokesman Laouali DanDah said five members of Niger's military and three attackers were killed in the Monday ambush.

DabDah says the government is conducting an investigation to identify the attackers and to allow it to not only take appropriate measures to guarantee the security of people living in these areas, but also to prevent future attacks, like this one that have disrupted the region for some time.

He says the investigation will allow them to determine the full extent of the attack and bring those implicated in it to justice.

DanDah pointed to widespread insecurity in the region.

Tuareg rebel groups and militants associated with al-Qaeda are both reported to be active in the border region between Niger and Mali. The region has been plagued by reports of attacks and kidnappings in the past year.

Some security sources say members of the terrorist group al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb were behind Monday's attack, while others point to local armed bandits and traffickers.

Senegal:

8 Villagers Fight the Rural Exodus in Senegal…..H5

A small group of villages in Senegal is slowly reversing the migration of workers to urban areas by creating community-driven employment opportunities at home.

In 1988, Yanhobah Sy did the opposite of what hundreds of thousands of other Senegalese were doing.

He left his job working at a newspaper printing shop in Dakar and moved out to a tiny, 125

remote village in one of the hottest and driest parts of the country.

Sy says he was fighting against the rural exodus. People were leaving for Dakar, but not everyone can get a job in the city. The 52-year old father of six moved to the village of Ndem, in the Diourbel region of Senegal.

Diourbel is an area known as much for its harsh living conditions as for its deep religious and historic significance. Over a hundred years ago, it was the birthplace of the founder of the Baye Fall Islamic group - a sect that descends from the Mourides, which is one of the largest Islamic Brotherhoods in Senegal.

When Sy arrived at Ndem there were barely any trees. Crops had long since dried up and almost no one was around.

Sy says he came to Ndem to be close to his spiritual leader, or Marabout. He started out as a volunteer at the local school and then at the small health clinic.

Severe droughts during the 70s and 80s forced most of the men and young people to leave communities like Ndem and head for urban centers looking for better paying work. In most villages in this part of the country, the women and elderly were left behind.

Sy says he came to Ndem to work, to be an example of how he could fight against the rural exodus by making an income and staying close to his family.

Sixty years ago just under 15 percent of the population lived in Senegal's urban centers. Today, nearly one in every two people live in cities. The National Habitat Committee says Senegal has one of the highest rates of urbanization in Africa. And that has consequences for both village and city life.

Amadou Daouda Dia coordinates programs at Senegal's Ministry of Agriculture.

Dia says in countries like Senegal, rural exodus is a result of how little money can be made from agriculture. Just under 60 percent of villagers live off their crops, but with climate changes this is becoming more difficult.

The irony, says Dia, is that the cities don't often have viable work alternatives for these migrants. People try to work in small informal businesses, in transport or artisan. But these jobs offer no benefits. They don't make a lot of money, and they aren't highly skilled jobs.

Sy was able to continue living at Ndem because he could eventually earn an income and learn a business trade.

His Marabout, Babacar Mbow and his French wife Aicha, were making clothes with a single sewing machine and strips of recycled fabric. Over the decades this hobby blossomed into an international Fairtrade company and a non-governmental organization

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called Maam Samba.

Today the artisan company includes 12 workshops that specialize in metal works, home decor, organic clothing and fabric dyeing and basket weaving. The NGO works on various social and environmental projects. They have developed environmentally friendly combustible balls made of peanut shells and clay, started a drip-irrigation system for an organic garden and planted aloe vera fields for medicinal and beauty purposes.

The entire Maam Samba organization employs over 300 residents from 13 local villages. They are all trained by international experts in the areas of craftsmanship, agriculture, health and education.

Sy heads the main office for Maam Samba finished artisan products. From here their goods are sent to Dakar and then shipped to stores around the world, including Japan, France, Belgium and the US.

The ripple effects from the economic downturn of 2009 were felt in Ndem. Falling product orders at Maam Samba meant salaries, like Sy's, were reduced. His pay went from $185 a month down to just over a $100.

But Sy remains certain that Ndem is still a much better option than living in the city.

In Dakar he says life is very difficult. But he says at least here you can live in your own house and not pay high rent. You pay less electricity and water is cheaper. He says when you go to Dakar you are obliged to pay for a lot. He says in the village we live as a community. Everything is shared. However, he says, in Dakar you have to buy your own food, your family is not with you, but you must still pay to feed them. Here you're family is right in front of you.

Docey Lewis is a design consultant with the U.S.-based nonprofit Aid to Artisans. She teaches new weaving and knitting techniques in Ndem.

"The cotton's grown here, it's spun, carted, woven and dyed here, so you do everything on site and part of what's happening in other villages around the world, but most villages have a hard part with one part or the other. They either can't grow it or can't color it. There are too many problems. So to be able to do it all makes it workable," Lewis said.

Sy says the village of Ndem has been transformed over the last 25 years, revitalizing both the area's natural environment and its sense of community with men and young people returning home and families reunited.

• Senegalese Children Vaccinated Against Polio….H6

Senegalese children were among the 85 million African children vaccinated against polio this week, as part of an international campaign to halt an ongoing wave of the

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disease in West and Central Africa.

Health workers went door-to-door this week in Joal, Senegal, about 100 kilometers outside the capital, Dakar. They used droppers to give free oral polio vaccine to all children under five years old.

The campaign in Joal was part of a countrywide campaign to vaccinate the more than two million children under five in Senegal. It is a campaign aimed at raising immunity as well as awareness.

Ibrahima Sakho and his wife had never heard of polio before their two-year-old son, Mamadou, was stricken with the life-threatening disease in early January. Their son was the second case of polio reported in Senegal this year.

Sakho says he was in the Gambia working when his wife told him his son was scratching his back and was bedridden with a fever. He says Mamadou was taken to a health center in Joal then transferred to a hospital in Dakar. He says the first time he saw his son, Mamadou's arms and legs were paralyzed. He says he was very worried because he did not know a disease could do that.

Two-months later, Mamadou can now slightly move his right leg and left arm. His father says he has since learned how polio is spread and is urging other parents to vaccinate their children.

Senegal is one of nine West and Central African countries that have had polio outbreaks within the past six months.

This most recent polio threat can be traced to a 2008 outbreak in northern Nigeria that is moving westward. Many of the affected countries, which had been polio free, became re- infected.

In a mass immunization campaign launched this week, the United Nations and international aid agencies aimed to vaccinate more than 85-million children under five against the polio virus in 19 countries across West and Central Africa.

UNICEF's Regional Communication Officer, Gaëlle Bausson, said this synchronized, multi-national campaign is just the first step eradicating polio.

"The second level of action is strengthening the health system so that every child gets systematically immunized when he has access to health care," said Gaëlle Bausson. "It is a much more complicated issue because you need to improve access to health care. You need to improve health-care education so that people know that they should get their kid to vaccination as a preventative measure not as a curative or an emergency measure to stop an outbreak."

Bausson said that education is key because, in the absence of an outbreak, people tend to

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forget about the disease and not immunize their children.

"For example, there has not been a case in Senegal for more than 20 years, so the level of information was quite low" said Bausson. "The population did not realize that it was still an issue and that it could hit anywhere at any point."

The Global Polio Eradication Campaign is spearheaded by national governments, UNICEF, the World Health Organization, Rotary International, and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The aid agencies plan a follow-up campaign in the same 19 countries on April 24. Sierra Leone: Togo: • Togo opposition attacked with water cannon……H1

LOME, Togo - Riot police used a water cannon and tear gas to attack the headquarters of the main opposition party Tuesday as its leaders huddled inside following a disputed presidential election, police and opposition leaders said.

Earlier security forces had blocked leading opposition candidate Jean-Pierre Fabre from reaching a demonstration he had planned to lead in the fourth day of rising tension since the son of the country's former dictator was declared winner of the presidential vote.

Hundreds of protesters had gathered on one side of the boulevard in a downtrodden neighborhood to wait for Fabre. He had vowed to lead a protest every day demanding a review of the results of last week's election that handed victory once more to the same family that has ruled Togo for the past 43 years.

Fabre said his car was pelted with tear gas grenades as he approached a column of anti- riot police that blocked his path with fiberglass shields. On the other side of the column, his supporters clashed with police throwing rocks and setting a car on fire. Huge orange flames licked out of its sides.

Shortly after when he had returned to the party's headquarters, police surrounded the headquarters and attacked with a water cannon and tear gas.

Abalo Issah, spokesman for a special election commando unit, said the police took the measures because the opposition was intent on going ahead with a march that the government had banned. He denied that security forces had come to destroy evidence of alleged election rigging.

Fabre claimed that security forces on Tuesday burst into the office where the party was compiling election results and preparing evidence to back up its allegations the vote was rigged. The country's constitutional court is due to review the results later this week.

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"We were ahead in the polls. It's for this reason that they went and seized our proof ... because they know very well that the results they proclaimed were fraudulent," Fabre said.

Eric Dupuy, an opposition spokesman, said that 12 supporters were arrested.

Saturday's provisional results showed Fabre lost to incumbent President Faure Gnassingbe, who won 60.9 percent of the vote. Thursday's election was only the second since the death of Gnassingbe's father, who seized power in a 1967 coup and ruled the country for 38 years only for his son to grab control upon the father's death in 2005.

"Togo is not a kingdom," said 27-year-old mechanic Late Lawson, who had come out to march on Tuesday. "They do not own this country. And we are not the renters of this nation, we own it too. We are going to take it back."

The opposition has attempted to hold daily demonstrations since Saturday, but have been pushed back by riot police each time.

The elder Gnassingbe came to power after leading the clique of soldiers that killed Togo's first president, Sylvanus Olympio. Gnassingbe held on decade after decade, surviving numerous attempted coups and assassination attempts including one by a member of his own guard who shot at him from point-blank range, piercing the notebook he was carrying.

Fabre's party is led by Gilchrist Olympio, son of the slain president who was disqualified from running in last week's vote after the government alleged he had improperly filled in his health certificate.

Fabre, whose family had served in the first president's government, was chosen as Olympio's stand-in just weeks before the vote, amid confusion inside the party.

The European Union's observation mission in Togo did not mention evidence of ballot stuffing or vote rigging — as the opposition alleges — in a preliminary report released over the weekend.

But the EU mission did say there is evidence the ruling party may have tried to buy off voters by handing out rice to the country's deeply impoverished people. District-by- district results showed that in the regions where EU observers saw the rice being handed out, voters overwhelmingly voted for Gnassingbe.

• Togo’s tension: democracy vs. stability…………H1

Maybe it was too early in the morning. Or perhaps their hearts just weren’t in it.

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Whatever the case, a rally called by Togo ’s opposition leaders for early Tuesday — meant to voice full-throated outrage over the March 4 election they say was rigged to favour the incumbent — was a near no-show.

Not even the opposition leaders turned up.

“It was a thousand or so youths, they burned a couple of tires and the police dispersed them,” said a Reuters witness. “The opposition leaders did not even come.”

Unclear if this was a good thing.

Togo’s March 4 election was seen as a test for democracy in Africa, a continent notorious for coups and flawed polls that have undermined efforts toward civilian rule. International observers have said the poll appeared fair.

But it was also seen as a test for Togo’s own ability to come through a presidential vote without bloodshed.

It was only five years ago, after all, that Togolese security forces killed hundreds in the violence that brought President Faure Gnassingbe to power for his first term, triggering a refugee crisis in Ghana and Benin .

This morning’s rally had the potential to be another flashpoint, but turned out to be a damp squib. This comes, perhaps, much to the relief of the international community which has tended to favour stability over flawless democratic process in a region that is drawing increased investment in mining and energy.

Case in point: Uranium-producer Niger, home of the “democratic coup” where a military junta last month toppled a power-hungry president to the cheers of the local population.

France has skipped the usual condemnation of a putsch in its former colonies, while the United States has declined to use the word “coup” at all.

To be sure, more tests for African democracy lie on the horizon. Central African Republic holds a vote in April, Guinea in June, Niger and Ivory Coast … to be determined.

If the majority gets its way in any of these countries, chalk one up for democracy. But the real show may be the degree to which democracy is compromised for the sake of a peaceful outcome.

• Fabre barred from protest………………………...H1

Lome, Togo - Riot police blocked the top opposition leader from reaching a demonstration he wanted to lead on Tuesday, the fourth day of rising tension since

131 the son of the country's former dictator was declared winner of a disputed presidential ballot.

More than 1 000 protesters had gathered to wait for Jean-Pierre Fabre on a downtown boulevard where a march was supposed to take place.

The opposition is demanding a review of election results, which once again handed victory to the family that has ruled Togo for the past 43 years.

"I was prevented from reaching," said Fabre, who was reached on his cell phone inside his car minutes after being pelted with tear gas.

"They threw tear gas at my car."

Tuesday's march was banned by the government but Fabre has vowed to march everyday to protest what he says was a fraudulent election.

The angry protesters gathered on one side of a boulevard and stood face-to-face with riot police.

The demonstrators hurled insults as helmet-clad security forces pushed them back, ducking behind fiberglass shields. They threw tear gas bombs after the mob began pelting them with rocks. On a side street, demonstrators set fire to a car. Huge orange flames licked out of its sides.

"Togo is not a kingdom," said 27-year-old mechanic Late Lawson, who had come out to march. "They do not own this country. And we are not the renters of this nation, we own it too. We are going to take it back."

The opposition has attempted to hold daily demonstrations since Saturday, but have been pushed back by riot police each time including on Sunday when a tear gas grenade exploded at Fabre's feet, spraying his face. On Monday, security forces cordoned off the headquarters of Fabre's party, preventing him from entering for more than an hour in a tense standoff.

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Fabre, whose family had served in the first president's government, was chosen as Olympio's stand-in just weeks before the vote, amid confusion inside the party.

The European Union's observation mission in Togo did not mention evidence of ballot stuffing or vote rigging - as the opposition alleges - in a preliminary report released over the weekend.

But the EU mission did say there is evidence the ruling party may have tried to buy off voters by handing out rice to the country's deeply impoverished people. District by district results showed that in the regions where EU observers saw the rice being handed out, voters overwhelmingly voted for Gnassingbe. - Sapa-AP

• Competing Political Rallies in Togo………..H1

Togo's two largest political parties held separate marches in the capital Saturday. Ruling party supporters are celebrating the re-election of the president. The main opposition party is protesting results from this month's election that it says are unfair.

Opposition supporters in yellow t-shirts marched through the streets of Lome denouncing electoral results that indicate President Faure Gnassingbe won re-election with more than 60 percent of the vote.

Opposition candidate Jean-Pierre Fabre's Union of Forces for Change is challenging those results in court saying the ruling party stuffed ballot boxes and inflated vote totals submitted to the electoral commission.

Ruling party supporters in white t-shirts marched separately through the capital celebrating their win and another five years for President Gnassingbe, who first took power in 2005 following the death of his father Gnassingbe Eyadema who ruled Togo for more than 38 years.

Security forces say the routes of the two marches do not intersect and the rival supporters will be kept apart to prevent violence.

Riot police broke up an opposition protest with tear gas Tuesday. Security forces then arrested several members of Fabre's party inside party headquarters where Fabre said they seized materials that were part of the opposition's legal challenge to President Gnassingbe's re-election.

Observers from the Economic Community of West African States say they believe the vote itself was fair but they're expressing concern about hte reliability of vote totals

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reported to the electoral commission after the breakdown of a satellite system meant to transmit results from polling stations.

African Union observers led by former Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo say that they believe that the poll was conducted in a generally free and transparent manner though they too heard complaints about the collection of results by members of the electoral commission.

• Togo's Opposition Leader: Police Seize Vote Fraud Evidence………H1

Togo's opposition leader claims security forces have seized materials his party intended to use to challenge the results of the country's presidential election. Riot police blocked a march to protest official election returns indicating the president's re-election.

Hundreds of demonstrators clashed with riot police near the Lome headquarters of the opposition Union of Forces for Change party.

Police fired tear-gas to break up the protest and prevented party candidate Jean-Pierre Fabre from meeting up with supporters for a demonstration against results that indicate President Faure Gnassingbe won last Thursday's vote.

Fabre says military police entered party headquarters and searched facilities that opposition supporters are using to analyze official electoral results to prepare a legal challenge that he says will show that he won the vote. Fabre says gendarmes removed computers and arrested party members. He denounced what he called this "repressive operation" and said such harassment can not go on.

Riot police dispersed protesters with tear-gas Sunday following the electoral commission's declaration that President Gnassingbe won just over 60 percent of the vote. The commission says Fabre won more than one-third of the vote and former prime minister Yawovi Agboyibo finished third with less than three percent of ballots cast.

The opposition has eight days to convince Togo's constitutional court that President Gnassingbe's re-election was illegal. Fabre claims to have won more than 70 percent of the vote, despite what he says was electoral fraud that included stuffed ballot boxes and the inflation of ruling-party vote totals reported to the electoral commission.

Fabre says Togo's ruling party is mistaken if it thinks the opposition will give in to intimidation. He says his party and its opposition allies will keep going until he is declared the winner.

Regional electoral observers believe the voting itself was fair, but they are concerned about the reliability of totals reported to the electoral commission after a breakdown in the satellite system meant to transmit returns from polling stations.

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The hope now is resolving this dispute peacefully to prevent the violence that followed Togo's 2005 vote, which the United Nations says killed more than 400 people and sent thousands of refugees into Ghana and Benin.

President Gnassingbe won that vote following the death of his father, Gnassignbe Eyadema, who ruled Togo for more than 38 years.

• Togo Government Confident President's Win Will Stand Up to Challenge………H1

Togo's government says it is confident the president's re-election will withstand a legal challenge by political opponents.

Togo's government says it is unconcerned by the opposition's planned legal challenge to electoral results that indicate President Faure Gnassingbe won re-election with more than 60 percent of the vote.

President Gnassingbe's spokesman, Pascal Bodjona, says the ruling party's opponents are poor losers.

"There are difficulties in all countries," he says. "But after a transparent, open, and democratic election, I can not accept that the opposition is refusing to accept their failure. The opposition are not playing fair and that is sad for democracy."

Riot police broke up a demonstration against those results Tuesday. Opposition candidate Jean-Pierre Fabre says security forces seized materials that party members were preparing as part of their legal challenge to the president's announced re-election.

"There was no justification for this police action. It is illegal," Fabre says. "How can you prevent a political party from counting its votes?"

Commandant Damhane Yark heads a special protection force established for this election.

"Some people from outside the country came to Togo to make trouble during the election," says Commandant Damhane Yark who heads a special protection force established for this election. "And, they were paid by one of the country's opposition parties. My force arrested several members of Fabre's party because they threatened violence if their candidate was not declared the winner."

Presidential spokesman Bodjona says all Togolese have the constitutional right to demonstrate peacefully, but security forces also have the obligation to maintain order.

"Verbal violence brings physical violence," Bodjona says. "In Togo, everyone knows that personal liberty is respected and press freedom is recognized. Security forces must react to attacks, but this does not mean they are obstructing freedom because Togo

135 respects democratic values and political liberties."

Opposition leaders have one week to convince Togo's constitutional court that President Gnassingbe's re-election was illegal.

"It is the ruling party that has announced these election results, so everyone knows that is not the number of votes he really won, especially in his home district," Agbeyome says. "Everyone in Togo wants a change of government."

The electoral commission says opposition candidate Nicolas Lawson finished last.

"Overall I do not know who won or who lost," Lawson says. "But I know that results reported in at least three prefectures were one-tenth of what was announced at the polling station. The vote was so expertly stolen by the ruling party that electoral observers will never understand what really happened."

Regional electoral observers say they believe the voting itself was fair, but they are concerned about the reliability of totals reported to the electoral commission after a breakdown in the satellite system that was to transmit returns from polling stations.

• Togo Opposition: Election Rigged, Promises Protests

Togo's main opposition party says it will contest results announced by the electoral commission that indicate the country's president has won re-election.

According to provisional results announced late Saturday by the electoral commission, President Faure Gnassingbe won more than 60 percent of Thursday's ballots, securing his re-election with more than 1.2 million votes.

A presidential supporter in the capital, Lome, says they are celebrating the re-election of Mr. Gnassingbe, who he says is their king and their leader. He says there will be no more need for elections in Togo.

But not everyone in Togo is celebrating.

The opposition says it will challenge the provisional election results within the next week when they are transmitted to Togo's constitutional court.

An opposition supporter says they disagree with the released results, which he says were false. He says they cannot be sure as to where or who those results came from. He says the opposition is demanding the real results of the election.

Main opposition candidate, Jean-Pierre Fabre of the Union of Forces for Change Party, led several-hundred opposition demonstrators into the capital's main square Saturday. Riot police broke up that protest, and one on Sunday, with tear-gas and set up barricades

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at strategic positions.

Fabre, who had also claimed victory in the poll Friday, says there were voting irregularities, including stuffed ballot boxes.

Fabre says he does not at all recognize Mr. Gnassingbe's claims to victory. He says, of course the opposition is going to protest, but those protests will be peaceful. He says he has not asked for government permission to protest because he says the constitution guarantees him the right to demonstrate.

Results announced by the electoral commission Saturday indicate Fabre came in second with nearly 700,000 votes or just more than a third of the ballots. Former prime minister Yawovi Agboyibo finished third with less than three percent of the vote.

The poll was widely seen as a test of the democratic process in the West African country. Its last presidential election in 2005 was marked by violence and accusations of fraud. President Gnassingbe won that 2005 vote following the death of his father, Gnassingbe Eyadema, who ruled Togo for more than 38 years.

Union of Forces for Change Party (UFC) vice president Patrick Lawson told VOA Sunday the opposition would continue to fight to reclaim what it says is its victory.

Lawson says we cannot let our victory be stolen again and that is why people have urged us to protest. He said Sunday that you can still hear tear gas being launched at the UFC headquarters in Lome, but he says we are still here and we will continue to resist.

An opposition member of the electoral commission resigned Saturday to protest what he called fraud, saying the results had not been verified and should not have been released.

Observers from the Economic Community of West African States say they believe the vote was fair, but they are expressing concern about the reliability of totals reported to the electoral commission after a breakdown in the satellite system that was to transmit returns from polling stations.

European Union observers said they did not find evidence of vote tampering.

But the EU team cited certain concerns, such as a lack of permanent ink in some polling places to mark voters' fingers after they had cast their ballots and the possibility that military members may have voted in both the military poll March 1 and the general poll March 4.

Regional military observers and several-thousand special Togolese forces were deployed to maintain calm during this vote, but there were no reports of violence. According to U.N. estimates, post-electoral violence in 2005 killed more than 400 people and sent thousands of refugees into Ghana and Benin.

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Though the opposition has planned continued demonstrations outside the UFC headquarters in Lome, witnesses say the headquarters is surrounded by security forces and inaccessible to protesters.

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