News & Announcements

Infamous ivory, rhinoceros horn poacher and drug trafficker Abubakar Mansur Mohammed Surur alias Mansour were extradited from Kenya to New York over the weekend, coming just months after he was arrested at Moi International airport.

New York District Attorney Audrey Strauss revealed on Monday that Mansour is part of an international syndicate engaging in the illicit trade that has been evading law enforcement officers for years.

The suspect, according to the Nation, was arrested on July 29, 2020, by detectives from the Directorate of Criminal Investigation (DCI) immediately when he landed at the airport after a chartered flight from Yemen.

Mansour was taken to US for allegedly conspiring to sell 10 tonnes of elephant ivory and more than 181kg of rhinoceros horn across a seven-year period.  

The US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York has said the trafficker was part of a transnational criminal enterprise known as the “Enterprise” based in Uganda and surrounding countries.

Authorities believed Mansour and several others conspired to distribute, sell and smuggle the ivory and rhino horn between 2012 and 2019.

“…Surur is alleged to be a member of an international conspiracy to traffic in rhino horns, elephant ivory, and heroin. The enterprise is allegedly responsible for the illegal slaughter of dozens of rhinos and more than 100 elephants, both endangered species. The excellent work of the Fish and Wildlife Service and the DEA has put an end to this operation,” said the New York District attorney.

Investigators believe he is a member of the Kromah network, a smuggling organisation that trades in drugs and illegal wildlife products.

The network shipped its goods out of ports in Pemba, Mozambique, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Mombasa. 

In 2019, authorities in Uganda arrested the head of the network, Liberian national Moazu Kromah. In 2017, Kenyan police arrested two other key figures, brothers Ibrahim Akasha and Baktash Akasha. The brothers were extradited to the US, where they are now serving long-term jail sentences.

Abdi Hussein Ahmed, alias Abu Khadi, a citizen of Kenya, remains a fugitive.

The 60-year-old suspect is charged with one count of conspiracy to commit wildlife trafficking and two counts of wildlife trafficking, which each carry a maximum sentence of five years; one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years; and one count of conspiracy to distribute and possess with intent to distribute one kilogram or more of heroin, which carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment and a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years in prison. 

President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa on Tuesday urged wealthy countries to stop hoarding excess Covid-19 vaccines that they had ordered but did not immediately need, saying the world needed to act together to fight the pandemic.

“We need those who have hoarded the vaccines to release the vaccines so that other countries can have them,” Ramaphosa told a virtual meeting of the World Economic Forum.

“The rich countries of the world went out and acquired large doses of vaccines. … Some countries even acquired up to four times what their population needs … to the exclusion of other countries”.

Ramaphosa, who currently chairs the African Union, said African countries wanted access to vaccines as quickly as other nations.

South Africa’s Covid outbreak is the worst in Africa, and the continent as a whole is struggling to secure sufficient vaccines to start countrywide inoculation programmes for its 1.3 billion people.

“We are all not safe if some countries are vaccinating their people and other countries are not vaccinating,” Ramaphosa said. “We all must act together in combating the coronavirus.”

In what many Nigerians consider long overdue given their years of service and escalating insecurity in the country, President Muhammadu Buhari of Nigeria has sacked the country’s services chiefs.
The president, in a message through his spokesperson, Femi Adesina, immediately announced their replacements.
The service chiefs, it was gathered, were asked to resign their positions after mountain pressure from Nigerians for them to be replaced given their non-performance.
Adesina, in the statement in Abuja on Tuesday, said the president had accepted the immediate resignation of the service chiefs, and their retirement from service.
Those that retired are the Chief of Defence Staff, General Abayomi Olonisakin; Chief of Army Staff, Lt-Gen. Tukur Buratai; Chief of Naval Staff, Vice Admiral Ibok Ekwe Ibas; and Chief of Air Staff, Air Marshal Sadique Abubakar.
President Buhari thanked the outgoing service chiefs for what he called their “overwhelming achievements in efforts at bringing enduring peace to our dear country,” wishing them well in their future endeavours.
The new service chiefs are Major-General Leo Irabor, Chief of Defence Staff; Major-General I. Attahiru, Chief of Army Staff; Rear Admiral A.Z Gambo, Chief of Naval Staff; and Air-Vice Marshal I.O Amao, Chief of Air Staff.
The president congratulated the new service chiefs and urged them to be loyal and dedicated in the discharge of their responsibilities.

Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte submitted his resignation Tuesday to President Sergio Mattarella, in a bid to form a new, stronger government.

The president accepted the resignation and “reserves the right to decide (what to do next) and invited the government to stay in office in a caretaker capacity”, Mattarella’s office said.

Mattarella, the ultimate arbiter of Italian political crises, said he would start a round of discussions with party leaders on the way forward on Wednesday afternoon. Talks are expected to last until Thursday.

Conte is expected to seek a new mandate for what would be his third consecutive government in three years, but this depends on his ability to expand his parliamentary majority.

He can currently count on the populist Five Star Movement, the centre-left Democratic Party and the smaller leftist Free and Equals party.

Ex-premier Matteo Renzi’s Italia Viva, which pulled out of the coalition two weeks ago, as well as opposition centrists, are under pressure to switch sides and support a new government — but not necessarily with Conte at the helm.

Sibusiso Moyo, the foreign minister of Zimbabwe, has died of Covid-19, the government said on Wednesday.

Retired General Moyo, who was a prominent figure in the toppling of long term ruler, Robert Mugabe, in 2017 and later announced on state television that’s the late Mugabe was under house arrest, becomes the second minister to die of the respiratory disease in a week.

Ellen Gwaradzimba, a provincial affairs minister, succumbed to Covid-19 last week and will be buried on Thursday.

In a statement, Cabinet spokesperson George Charamba said: “President Emmerson Mnangagwa regrets to announce the passing on early this morning of Dr S B Moyo, our minister of Foreign Affairs and International Trade. The late minister succumbed to Covid-19 at a local hospital.”

The former army general had been battling a kidney ailment that had him in and out of hospital since he joined the government after the coup.

He tested positive for Covid-19 two days ago after spending several days in the hospital.

A veteran of Zimbabwe’s 1970s liberation war, Rtd Gen Moyo was being touted as one President Mnangagwa’s potential successors.

Another key player in the coup, Retired Air Marshall Perrance Shiri, became the first minister to die of Covid-19 in July last year.

Zimbabwe has been witnessing a spike in coronavirus cases since the beginning of the year, forcing authorities to reintroduce a strict lockdown to slow down infections.

On Tuesday, the country recorded 52 deaths and 783 new infections. The Covid-19 caseload increased to 28,675 and 825 deaths.

There are fears that Zimbabwe’s health delivery system that has been weakened by years of underfunding and a severe brain drain. 

A significant number of people are said to be dying in their homes as they cannot access health facilities.

Malian security forces used tear gas on Wednesday to disperse an unsanctioned protest in the capital Bamako against France’s military presence in the country, one of the rally’s organisers said.

France has more than 5 100 military personnel based in Mali and the West African Sahel region to help counter militants linked to al Qaeda and Islamic State, an involvement that is facing increased opposition at home and in Mali.

Malian authorities, who have denounced those opposed to the French military presence, Reuters writes, deployed police in riot gear to block around 1 000 protesters from gathering in Bamako’s Independence Square, said organiser Adama Diarra.

“We demand the departure of French forces. After eight years of intervention it’s been a total failure,” he said by phone.

France deployed troops to Mali in 2013 to help drive out Islamist militants who had occupied the north of the country after hijacking a Tuareg rebellion.

Though the fighters have been pushed from main towns, Mali has failed to stabilise while the militants have regrouped and have carried out attacks in a prolonged insurgency.

The violence has spread to neighbouring states, stoked ethnic and intercommunal tensions, and rendered large swathes of the country’s semi-arid north ungovernable.

On Tuesday, President Emmanuel Macron said France could adjust its military operations in the Sahel region. Diplomatic and military sources expect a partial French withdrawal to be announced by mid-February.

Interim Malian President Bah N’daw on Tuesday thanked foreign militaries, including France’s, for continued support.

Former Nigeria international goalkeeper and later an assistant coach to the Super Eagles, Joseph Eric, better known as Erico, is dead. He was nicknamed ‘Erico’ by ardent NEPA FC fans while he was the team’s goalkeeper.

According to a report by Sports Village Square, Erico died Wednesday morning as he did not wake up from his sleep the previous night.

Godwin Enakhena, popular sports journalist and convener of the Families United by Sports (FUBU) WhatsApp  platform, relayed the telephone conversation he had with the late football legend’s wife, Mosunmola runs thus:

“Mosunmola: He was ill for about three days and we took him to the hospital, he complained of body pain. He was okay and we came back home. But just yesterday night, he started doing somehow and he later slept. I tried to wake him up this morning but he was stone dead”.

With his passage, the trio of technical crew that guided Nigeria to qualify for the 2002 World Cup and the Mali 2002 Africa Cup of Nations has passed on. Both Stephen Keshi and Amodu Shaibu died two days apart in 2016.

Erico, an apostle of the Brazilian brand of football was popularly known as ‘Jogo Bonito’. He was in the Green Eagles team that placed third at the 1976 Africa Cup of Nations in Ethiopia.

The AFP reports that the Central African Republic on Thursday announced a 15-day emergency as armed groups tried to blockade the capital, Bangui, in a bid to topple newly re-elected President Faustin-Archange Touadera.

Thursday’s declaration came hours after the United Nations envoy to the country called on the Security Council to agree a “substantial increase” in the number of peacekeepers deployed there in response to deadly violence.

Rebels controlling about two-thirds of the perennially volatile nation launched an offensive a week before presidential elections on December 27, trying to blockade Bangui and carrying out several attacks on key national highways.

Now “the state of emergency has been proclaimed across the national territory for 15 days, starting from midnight (2300 GMT),” presidential spokesman Albert Yaloke Mokpeme said over national radio.

He told AFP the state of emergency would also allow authorities “to make arrests without going through national prosecutors”.

Touadera was declared re-elected by the constitutional court on Monday, though two voters out of three did not cast their ballot, mainly due to insecurity in a country caught up in the civil war for eight years.

Earlier Thursday, the UN envoy to Bangui, Mankeur Ndiaye, called on the global body’s Security Council to agree a “substantial increase” in peacekeeping operations.

UN troops also need “greater mobility”, he added, also highlighting serious desertion from the Central African security forces since December.

In short, “we need a strategy to adapt the mandate”, Ndiaye said during a videoconference of the Council organised by the African members after a request from the CAR government.

CAR foreign minister Sylvie Baipo-Temon asked the Security Council to lift an embargo on heavy weapons exports to the country.

China and Russia back the request, but western countries fear such weapons could fall into the wrong hands.

On January 13, the rebels launched two simultaneous attacks on Bangui but were rebuffed by the UN’s existing MINUSCA mission, which has been present in the country since 2014.

“Since the thwarted offensive of the 13th, there haven’t been any other attacks, just incidents linked to the curfew,” said lieutenant-colonel Abdoulaziz Fall, one of the MINUSCA spokesmen.

Ndiaye did not specify the number of additional peacekeepers wanted on top of the roughly 12,000 MINUSCA soldiers already present – one of the largest and most costly UN operations in the world.

A source familiar with the matter said MINUSCA would like 3,000 extra peacekeepers plus drones, attack helicopters and even special forces.

MINUSCA has lost seven peacekeepers – a very heavy toll – since the rebels stepped up attacks in December.

Attacks on supply convoys by militia groups and their political allies, including former president Francois Bozize, are risking supplies of food, medicine and resources for services such as hospitals, said Vladimir Monteiro, another MINUSCA spokesman.

The price of some basic commodities has increased by at least 50 percent in some places.

Touadera’s government controls only about one-third of the former French colony, with militia groups that emerged from a conflict in 2013 controlling the remainder of the territory.

CAR prosecutors have launched an investigation into former president Bozize, accused by the government of plotting a coup with the help of armed groups ahead of the elections.

“The perpetrators… of these unforgettable crimes against the people of CAR will be found, arrested and brought before the competent courts,” Touadera said on Monday in his first speech since his reelection, also calling for national reconciliation.

Bozize, who denies the allegations, came to power in a coup in 2003 before being overthrown in 2013, after which the country slid into sectarian conflict.

A special unit set up to probe deaths in care homes linked to Covid-19 is investigating 474 such places in Scotland, the BBC reported on Friday.

In a story on its website, the public broadcaster, Iol reports, said the unit, Crown Office, which was set up in May, had received a total of 1 905 death reports by the end of December, 1 553 of them relating to care homes.

After the investigation, prosecutors will eventually decide if the deaths should be the subject of a fatal accident inquiry or prosecution.

Donald Macaskill, the chief executive of Scottish Care which represents independent care homes, told the BBC that the timing of the probe was weighing on the sector.

“Frontline staff and managers are spending huge amounts of time providing data and information for these investigations,“ he said.“

This would be challenging at the best of times but in the middle of a pandemic and with dozens of care homes fighting active outbreaks this has added to a real sense of exhaustion, dismay and disappointment.”

Macaskill added that the investigations “are wholly disproportionate and are causing irreparable damage to the professional integrity of nurses and carers who are exhausted beyond measure in fighting the virus”.

According to the Guardian newspaper, in April, care homes for the elderly across much of Europe and North America were struggling to cope with the pandemic, prompting allegations of inhumane treatment and calls for high-level enquiries.

In Spain, the army reported finding dead and abandoned people in their beds after it was drafted in to help disinfect care centres.

In France almost a third of all coronavirus deaths have been of residents in a care home, news agency Reuters reported.

The Red Cross said across Germany, care homes were suffering from a lack of protective clothing and disinfectant, which was contributing to the spread of the virus.

Due to the escalating cases of coronavirus pandemic in the country, Nigeria expects to take delivery of its first coronavirus vaccine doses in February.

According to various media reports, health workers, top government officials and vulnerable people will be given priority.

Bloomberg reported on Thursday that the vaccines, which could be as many as 100 000 doses of Pfizer Inc.’s shot, would be procured through the Covax initiative backed by Gavi the Vaccine Alliance, the World Health Organisation and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations.

The first batch would be enough for a maximum of 50 000 people, equivalent to about 0.00025 percent of Nigeria’s population.

As of Thursday, Nigerian health authorities reported 116 655 Covid-19 cases to date in the West African country, with 93,646 people subsequently recovering while 1,485 have succumbed to the virus.

Stakeholders in Niger state have raised the alarm over the possibility of more Nigerians dying of hunger if the government at both local, state and federal levels hoards palliatives, the Daily Post reported.

The religious leaders, health workers, traditional rulers, market leaders and the media, among other groups, said the government must do its best to ensure that the second phase of the disease did not get out of hand.

Relief agencies have also warned that measures put in place to slow the spread of the coronavirus are pushing millions of people in Nigeria into severe hunger.

The director of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) John Nkengasong told a press conference on Thursday that the continent’s case fatality rate was now at 2.5 percent, above the global average of 2.2 percent, CGTN reported.

Africa has so far recorded around 3.3 million cases of Covid-19 and nearly 82 000 deaths, Africa CDC data shows.