News & Announcements

Reactions have continued to trail the victories of Nigerian music stars, Burna Boy and Wizkid, at the 2021 edition of the Recording Academy Awards, otherwise called Grammys.

This time, the duo’s Nigerian contemporary, Davido, reacted to the victories through his Twitter handle.

The 28-year-old singer reacted to Burna Boy and Wizkid wins hours after the 63rd edition of the awards ceremony hosted by Trevor Noah on Sunday, March 14, in the United States of America.

“Whichever way you look at it, this is a victory for Nigeria for the culture and for my people! Congrats to our winners! Tule Naija!” Davido tweeted.

Burna Boy broke the Nigerian music record at the 63rd Grammy Awards by winning a Grammy award for his album, ‘Twice As Tall.”

On the same night, Ayo ‘Wizkid’ Balogun won his first-ever Grammy Award after two nominations.

The win came through his duet with Beyonce on the song, ‘Brown Skin Girl’ off the 2019 album, ‘The Lion King.’

Sikiru Adepoju is the first Nigerian to win a Grammy for his performance in an album jointly produced.

Burna Boy remains the first Nigeria-based, solo artiste to win the Grammys.

The United Nations Security Council has called for the withdrawal of all foreign forces and mercenaries from Libya “without further delay” in a unanimously approved declaration.

It also welcomed the Libyan parliament’s approval of a new unified government on Wednesday, which is set to lead the North African country to December elections after a decade of conflict following the removal of dictator Muammar Gaddafi.

“The Security Council calls on all parties to implement the ceasefire agreement in full and urges member states to respect and support the full implementation of the agreement,” the statement on Friday approved by all 15 council members said.

According to the global body, about 20,000 foreign troops and mercenaries remained in Libya at the end of 2020, and no withdrawals have been observed since.

“The Security Council calls for full compliance with the UN arms embargo by all member states, in line with the relevant Security Council resolutions,” the text said. Experts say the embargo has been repeatedly violated.

Libya, a major oil producer, has been mired in conflict since the 2011 NATO-backed uprising against Gaddafi.

The sometimes chaotic war has drawn in several outside powers and a floor of foreign arms and mercenaries.

Since 2015, the country has been split between the UN-recognised Government of National Accord (GNA) in Tripoli and a rival administration in the east, allied to renegade military commander Khalifa Haftar.

In April 2019, Haftar and his self-styled Libyan National Army (LNA), backed by Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Russia launched an offensive to try and capture Tripoli.

His campaign collapsed after Turkey stepped up its military support for the GNA, with hundreds of troops and thousands of mercenaries arriving from Syria.

A ceasefire agreement reached in October called for the withdrawal of all foreign forces and mercenaries in three months and adherence to a UN arms embargo, provisions which have not been met.

In January, the United States called on Russia, Turkey and the UAE to immediately halt their military interventions. Russia’s UN Mission said at the time that it did not have any military personnel “on Libyan soil” but did not exclude the possibility of mercenaries.

Last year, UN experts said the Wagner Group, a private Russian security company, had provided between 800 and 1,200 mercenaries to Haftar. There are thousands of mercenaries in Libya also from Syria, Sudan and Chad, according to Security Council diplomats.

A UN advance team is in Libya as a first step to sending international monitors under a UN umbrella to observe the ceasefire. It is expected to return next week.

The Security Council underlined “the importance of a credible and effective Libyan-led Ceasefire Monitoring Mechanism under UN auspices”. Council members said they look forward to receiving proposals from Secretary-General Antonio Guterres after the advance team returns on its “tasks and scale”.

The council statement called on the interim government to make preparations for December’s presidential and parliamentary elections “including arrangements to ensure the full, equal and meaningful participation of women”.

It also called on the interim government to prioritise implementation of the October ceasefire agreement, improve the delivery of services to the Libyan people, launch a comprehensive national reconciliation process, and adhere to international humanitarian law including the protection of civilians.

Looking ahead, the council said plans are needed “for the disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration of armed groups, security sector reform and to establish an inclusive, civilian-led security architecture for Libya as a whole”.

Six miners have been killed in a blast at a coal mine in southwestern Pakistan near the border with Afghanistan, officials said on Friday.

They were among eight miners trapped about 1,000 feet underground when accumulating methane gas exploded at the coalfield in Marwar in the province of Balochistan, the officials said.

“Six bodies have been retrieved by the rescue team from the affected mine this morning,” a senior official of the directorate of mines said.

“(The) mine has been closed and an inquiry has been ordered by the Chief Inspector of Mines into the incident.”

A heavy boulder had fallen on eight miners on Thursday afternoon, local rescue official Imdad Khan said.

Two injured workers were extracted from the mine after several hours of rescue operations.

In the past year, 102 coal miners have been killed in Balochistan in 72 different incidents, Sultan Muhammad Lala, president of the Balochistan Coal Mines Workers Federation, told Reuters.

Lala said the government and mine owners were not ensuring safe working conditions at the sites.

Mining is thought to be one of the most dangerous jobs in Pakistan due to low safety standards and bad working conditions.

An explosion caused by methane gas at another coal mine in Marwar of May 2018 killed 20 workers.

In August that year, another methane-fuelled explosion in the city of Quetta killed seven.

In 2011, 45 coal miners were killed by a methane gas explosion, also in Balochistan.

Sparsely populated and impoverished Balochistan is home to large deposits of coal, natural gas, copper and gold, many of which are being extracted by Chinese-backed operations.

Baloch separatist fighters often target workers and security forces.

Gunmen in northwest Nigeria kidnapped about 30 students from a forestry college near a military academy, in the fourth mass school abduction since December, authorities said.

The latest abduction took place around 11:30 pm on Thursday at the Federal College of Forestry Mechanization, Afaka, in the Igabi local government area of Kaduna state, police said.

“About 30 students, a mix of males and females, are yet to be accounted for,” the state’s commissioner for International Security and Home Affairs, Samuel Aruwan, said in a statement on Friday. Most staff of the school was also kidnapped, he added.

The college sits on the outskirts of Kaduna city, capital of Kaduna state, in a region roamed by armed gangs, who often travel on motorcycles.

“This is the first time that a mass abduction of girls is happening in a higher institution of learning,” Fidelis Mbah, a journalist based in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, told Al Jazeera.

“The armed men have always targeted secondary schools where younger students attended. This is a new development from their usual mode of operation.”

Mbah said that authorities have yet to comment on which group is behind the kidnapping.

On Friday morning, relatives of students gathered at the gates of the college, which was surrounded by about 20 army trucks.

Resident Haruna Salisu, speaking by phone, told Reuters news agency he had heard sporadic gunshots at about 11:30 pm local time.

“We were not panicking, thinking that it was a normal military exercise being conducted at the Nigerian Defence Academy,” he said.

“We came out for dawn prayers, at 5:20 am, and saw some of the students, teachers and security personnel all over the school premises. They told us that gunmen raided the school and abducted some of the students.”

Salisu said he had seen military personnel taking the remaining students into the academy.

Heavily armed criminal gangs in northwestern and central Nigeria have stepped up attacks in recent years, kidnapping for ransom, raping and pillaging.

The Nigerian military deployed to the area in 2016 and a peace deal with bandits was signed in 2019 but attacks have continued.

Within the last few weeks, 279 schoolgirls were freed after being abducted from their boarding school at Jangebe in northwest Nigeria’s Zamfara state, and 27 teenage boys were released after being kidnapped from their school in the north-central state of Niger, along with three staff and 12 family members. One student was shot dead in that attack.

Before that, in December, more than 300 boys were kidnapped from a school in Kankara, in President Muhammadu Buhari’s home state of Katsina, while the president was visiting the region.

The boys were later released but the incident triggered outrage and memories of the kidnappings of at least 276 schoolgirls by the Boko Haram armed group in Chibok in 2014 that shocked the world. Many of those girls are still missing.

Kidnapping for ransom in Africa’s most populous country is a widespread national problem, with businessmen, officials and citizens snatched from the streets by criminals looking for money.

At least $11m was paid to kidnappers between January 2016 and March 2020, according to SB Morgen, a Lagos-based geopolitical research consultancy.

In late February, Buhari urged state governments to “review their policy of rewarding bandits with money and vehicles, warning that the policy might boomerang disastrously”.

The unrest has become a political problem for Buhari, a retired general and former military ruler who has faced mounting criticism over the rise in violent crime and replaced his longstanding military chiefs in February.

Mauritius on Wednesday went into a two-week nationwide lockdown, the second time the Indian Ocean archipelago nation has imposed such a restriction since the coronavirus pandemic began a year ago.

“We had no other choice but total containment in order to prevent the spread of the virus and protect the population,” Prime Minister Pravind Kumar Jugnauth announced Tuesday evening in a televised address.

“This containment became necessary after the appearance of four new local positive cases of Covid-19, bringing to 14 the number of local positive cases registered since March 5.”

Only essential services will be operational from Wednesday, including the port, airport, hospital services and emergency relief.

As of Thursday, supermarkets, bakeries, petrol stations and pharmacies will be accessible on an alphabetical rotation basis.

“I am sure we will be able to resume our activities as soon as possible,” Jugnauth said.

The latest lockdown follows one imposed in March 2020 in the island nation of 1.3 million.

Opposition leaders blamed the government for incompetence but Deputy Prime Minister Steven Obeegadoo said they had “rigorously implemented the health protocols”.

“Mauritius had no choice but to impose this containment in order to break the chain of transmission of the virus,” he said.

Nation.Africa reports that as of March 7, Mauritius had registered a total of 641 cases since the beginning of the pandemic, including 10 deaths and 40 active cases.

Kenya on Wednesday recorded 713 new Covid-19 cases, the highest number in a 24-hour period since last year, Health Cabinet Secretary Mutahi Kagwe has announced.

The new infections are from 5,230 samples tested over the period, raising the total confirmed cases in Kenya to 110,356.

While making the announcement, nation. Africa quoted Mr. Kagwe as saying that the new infections translate to a positivity rate of 14 per cent, the highest since November 2020.

At the same time, the Health CS said 12 more patients succumbed to Covid-19 over the last 24 hours, raising total fatalities in Kenya to 1,898.

Another 167 patients recovered from the virus over the same period, raising total recoveries in Kenya to 87,903. Mr Kagwe said that Kenya’s recovery rate stands at 80 per cent.

Mr Kagwe called for heightened vigilance among Kenyans, saying the country is already in the third wave of the pandemic with the number of patients in hospitals being on the rise.

The CS also announced that 563 patients are currently admitted to various hospitals across the country while 1,588 patients are in home-based care. 

The United States on Monday revoked a sanctions waiver for Israeli mining magnate Dan Gertler that was issued in the last days of the Trump administration.

The Treasury Department said exempting Gertler from sanctions was “inconsistent with America’s strong foreign policy interests in combating corruption around the world,” specifically in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

The action came after Congolese and international human rights groups and several US legislators last month called on the Biden administration to reverse a last-minute move by Biden’s Republican predecessor, Donald Trump.

The Treasury imposed the sanctions in December 2017 and June 2018, accusing Gertler of using his friendship with the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s former president, Joseph Kabila, to win sweetheart mining deals worth more than a billion dollars.

The Trump administration, Aljazeera recalled, eased the sanctions in a secret action in its last week in office in January, a licence granted by the Treasury Department showed.

While the licence did not remove Gertler, an associate and more than 30 of his companies from the sanctions list, it authorised, until January 31, 2022, “all transactions and activities” otherwise prohibited by sanctions against them.

The original designation of Gertler under the Magnitsky Sanctions programme made clear “Mr Gertler engaged in extensive public corruption,” the Treasury said in a statement on Monday.

The sanctions had prohibited Gertler from doing business with US citizens, companies or banks, effectively barring him from doing transactions in dollars.

Gertler has denied wrongdoing and argued that his investments in the DRC bolstered the country’s development.

Democratic Senator Ben Cardin, the lead author of the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act, said Gertler should not have been granted “an eleventh-hour permit” to do business with US banks and companies.

“If well-connected international billionaires like Gertler think there is a chance they can get away with their corrupt actions, then they will not be deterred,” Cardin said.

The African Bar Association (AfBA) has asked Cape Verde Island to immediately release Ambassador Alex Saab, an accredited Venezuela special envoy and alternate permanent representative to the African Union.

The AfBA on Monday appealed to African heads of State and government to rise as a body and persuade Cape Verde Island to rescue itself from the diplomatic mud involving Venezuela and the US.

AfBA President Hannibal Uwaifo expressed the association’s concerns at the World Press Conference in Lagos, Nigeria, condemning Ambassador Saab’s detention since June 2020 for possible extradition to the United States.

He said the action violated global diplomatic virtues and statutes, as contained in the Vienna Convention.

Cape Verde’s action, according to investigations by the Human Rights Committee and a review by the AfBA Executive Committee, was found below the accepted international rules of engagements.

The AfBA president described the detention of the envoy as unsanitary and unsalutary to Africa’s collective diplomatic decency and stature.

“We demand that Alex Saab be released immediately and that his persecution and chastisement in custody illegally in Cape Verde, merely to satisfy the whims of a superpower, be brought to an end immediately as ordered by the binding unanimous Ecowas court ruling on December 2, 2020.”

“We acted on the petition of Ambassador Saab’s wife, which revealed that besides her husband being a known cancer patient, he is denied his drugs and access to family and defense attorneys, and stripped of his diplomatic privileges against the Ecowas court injunction.

“Saab is viciously and frantically being packaged for delivery to the US by the Cape Verde government, facilitated by enormous pressure through a contrived extradition procurement, with unimaginable damage to our civility and civilisation, if ever allowed to stand on any African soil”.

This handout picture released by the Venezuelan Presidency shows President Nicolas Maduro speaking during a televised address at the Miraflores Presidential Palace in Caracas on May 9, 2020.

Mr. Uwaifo noted that the AfBA is dedicated to the primacy of the rule of law, as the most disruptive evolution for human governance.

“Our moral and professional duty is relentless and persistent to see it respected, preserved and improved on, not liberally pissed upon as the case under reference by President Jorge Carlos Fonseca and Prime Minister Ulisses Correia Silva of Cape Verde”.

“It is more pathetic that the choice for this scheme of intransigence is in Africa, by a sovereign African nation, a participatory signatory to the AU Charter on Human and Peoples Rights and Ecowas protocols, on a documented diplomatic citizen with no known crime and offence in the land of his capture, detention and incarceration.”

He said the action is an abuse of basic principles of the rule of law and “an aggravating circumstance for the intentional culpability by Cape Verde”.

The association said Ambassador Saab was detained while travelling from Caracas to Teheran on June 12, 2020. It said his plane had made a technical refuelling stop on the Cape Verdean Island of Sal when he was detained unlawfully.

On January 22, Venezuela’s Foreign minister advised Saab, a businessman close to President Nicolas Maduro, not to cooperate with US authorities.

The envoy is a Colombian national but has Venezuelan and Antiguan citizenship. He is accused by US prosecutors of money laundering in connection to an allegedly corrupt deal to obtain supplies for Maduro’s government-run food subsidy programme.

At the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida, Ambassador Saab’s lawyers argued that he should not be considered a fugitive fleeing from justice in the US because Venezuela’s government named him a “special envoy” in 2018.

President Maduro’s administration maintained that the special envoy is in “violation of international law and norms.”

His legal team, led by Nigerian lawyer Femi Falana, approached the Ecowas Community Court in Abuja and asked it to stop the US extradition request.

The court, in its ECW/CCJ/RUL/07/2020 ruling, affirmed Mr Saab’s diplomatic status and ordered his immediate release from prison and his transfer to permanent home detention.

It also ordered the suspension of “the extradition proceedings, pending a hearing on the substantive issues concerning his detention, which was scheduled for February 4.

But the Cabo Verde authorities are yet to obey the order as Mr Saab has remained in custody.

Meanwhile, reports indicate that Venezuelan citizens embarked on massive street protests against the envoy’s detention.

The protesters, numbering over 200,000 on February 3 hit the streets, accusing Cape Verde of committing illegalities by not respecting the ambassador’s immunity.

Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad and his wife, Asma, have tested positive for COVID-19 after showing minor symptoms, according to a statement by the presidential office.

The couple were in good health and would continue to work while in isolation at home for a period of two to three weeks, it said on Monday.

War-torn Syria has seen a sharp rise in COVID-19 infections since mid-February but lockdown options remain limited due to the country’s dire economic situation, a member of the country’s coronavirus advisory committee said last week.

Al-Assad’s government started administering COVID-19 vaccinations to front-line healthcare workers on March 1.

Syria has officially recorded a total of 15,981 cases and 1,063 deaths since the start of the pandemic. However, actual numbers are believed to be much higher owing to the government’s limited testing capability.

With a collapsed healthcare system, battered economy and a severe lack of doctors and nurses due to medical providers fleeing Syria’s brutal war, authorities face an uphill battle to control the spread of COVID-19.

The government, according to Aljazeera, the law imposed a nationwide curfew when the pandemic first hit last year but restaurants, shops and schools reopened as the lockdown was gradually eased starting from May.

Mask wearing is required in government offices and on crowded public transport.

Syria’s devastating conflict began in 2011 as a mass uprising against al-Assad’s rule but quickly morphed into a full-fledged war that has killed hundreds of thousands of people, displaced millions and drawn in foreign powers.

There have been no significant health issues recently reported about al-Assad.

In August, the 55-year-old trained ophthalmologist halted a speech in Parliament, telling legislators he needed to “sit down for a minute” after suffering a drop in blood pressure.

In 2018, Asma al-Assad, 45, underwent treatment for breast cancer, which the president said had been detected early. A year later, she said she recovered fully.

The anti-economic crisis protest has entered the seventh day in Lebanon as protesters blocked roads with burning tyres all over the country for the seventh consecutive day, demanding an end to the economic crisis that has prevailed for more than a year and a half of political paralysis.

Three main roads leading south into the capital Beirut from Zouk, Jal al-Dib and al-Dawra were blocked on Monday while in Beirut itself, protesters briefly blocked the road in front of the central bank.

“We have said several times that there will be an escalation because the state isn’t doing anything,” said Pascale Nohra, a protester in Jal al-Dib.

In Tyre, a man tried to burn himself by pouring petrol on his body but civil defence stopped him in time, the state news agency said.

Lebanon’s financial crisis, which erupted in 2019, has driven nearly half of the population of six million into poverty, wiped out jobs and savings and slashed consumer purchasing power.

Protesters have been blocking roads daily since the collapse of the Lebanese pound, which fell to 10,000 to the dollar on Tuesday, slashing about 85 percent of its value in a country relying heavily on imports.

It was the last straw for many who have seen prices of consumer goods nearly tripled since the crisis erupted.

The country has been rudderless since August last year when caretaker Prime Minister Hassan Diab’s cabinet resigned on the back of the Beirut port explosion that devastated swaths of the capital.

Prime Minister-designate Saad al-Hariri was nominated in October but has failed to form a new cabinet due to the political deadlock with President Michel Aoun.

A new cabinet is necessary to implement reforms needed to trigger billions of dollars of international aid to fix the economy.

On Saturday, Diab threatened to quit to raise the pressure on those blocking the formation of a new government.

State news agency reported that Diab is scheduled to meet Aoun, several caretaker ministers, the central bank chief and financial and security officials on Monday.