Nigeria News
Fears mount for critically ill Mandela
JOHANNESBURG (AFP) – Nelson Mandela spent a second night in critical condition in hospital with his family members, compatriots and well-wishers worldwide fearing that the anti-apartheid icon is about to lose his final struggle.
A few vehicles were seen early Tuesday entering and exiting the Pretoria hospital where the former South African president is being treated, but otherwise the scene was quiet except for the now normal gaggle of journalists.
On Monday South African President Jacob Zuma, in a televised address to an anxious nation, said that “former president Mandela remains in a critical condition in hospital.”
“The doctors are doing everything possible to ensure his well-being and comfort,” Zuma added.
Mandela, the hero of black South Africans’ battle for freedom during 27 years in apartheid jails, was rushed to hospital on June 8 with a recurring lung infection.
Despite intensive treatment at Pretoria’s Mediclinic Heart Hospital, the 94-year-old’s condition appears to have suddenly and dramatically deteriorated in recent days.
Ex-wife Winnie Madikizela-Mandela — herself a figurehead of the anti-apartheid struggle — daughters Zindzi Mandela-Motlhajwa and Zenani Mandela-Dlamini and scores of officials flocked to the hospital on Monday.
The family visits, while common since Mandela was admitted 17 days ago, come amid heightened fears for the former statesman’s health.
Mandela’s eldest daughter Makaziwe has said her father appears to be at peace with himself.
“He has given so much to the world. I believe he is at peace.”
At the same time she complained about the “media frenzy” over her father’s condition.
“Whether these are the last moments with us, to be with our dad, or there is still a longer (time), but they (media) must back off,” she told CNN.
Zuma on Monday also hailed the life of a man seen as the father of the nation, whose citizens must accept his frailty.
“All of us in the country should accept that Madiba is now old,” Zuma said, using Mandela’s clan name.
“I think what we need to do as a country is to pray for him to be well and that the doctors do their work.”
On the world stage Mandela is seen as a moral beacon that continues to shine long after the Nobel Peace laureate retired from public life.
Swiss tennis great Roger Federer, playing at Wimbledon, was the latest to offer Mandela his best wishes, hailing him as “influential and amazing”.
Mandela was last seen in public in 2010 at the football World Cup finals in South Africa.
“He is the father of democracy and this is the man who fought and sacrificed his life,” said Zuma, who spent 10 years in jail on Robben Island at the same time as Mandela.
Mandela: anxiety aboy ill-health grows
The anti-apartheid hero went on to become South Africa’s first black president in 1994 after almost half a century of white minority rule.
– ‘Nothing we can do but to pray for him’ –
Mandela is due to celebrate his 95th birthday on July 18. He has been hospitalised four times since December, mostly for the pulmonary condition that has plagued him for years.
As the world looked on, South Africans appeared to be coming to terms with Mandela’s decline.
“Unfortunately, there is nothing we can do but to pray for him and the doctors that are helping him,” said Phathani Mbath outside the hospital, where flowers, cards and messages of support have piled up.
In Soweto, the township where Mandela lived for more than a decade, James Nhlapo said South Africa must accept Mandela will not live forever.
“There will soon come a time when all the medical help won’t work. We have to face that sad reality now,” he said as he served customers in his grocery store.
Well wishes have also come from abroad. In Washington the White House said its thoughts and prayers were with Mandela.
US President Barack Obama leaves Wednesday on a much-awaited tour of Africa that will take him to South Africa as well as Senegal and Tanzania.
The White House said it was monitoring Mandela’s condition and could not yet say whether his failing health would affect the visit.
Tennis star, Roger Federer, whose mother is South African said of Mandela: “He’s been very influential, an amazing personality, you know, believed in something, had to pay a big price for it,” Federer said of the former South African president, who spent 27 years in apartheid jails.
“Someone you can definitely look up to and that’s very important for me. Clearly there’s many that come and go, but he has been there for a very long time.
“And he’s very much respected and loved. So we hope he does well here now in this process.”
The Russian Maria Sharapova, world number 2 also had some sweet words for Madiba:
“For someone with such a big name, who has touched so many people in this world, I think it’s extremely sad to see him in that position,” Sharapova said.
“I think it should be a celebration of what he accomplished in his life than a sadness, even though many people around the world are sad about it.
“He’s extremely influential to so many people on a very positive level.
“I never had a chance in my life to meet him. But the people that have met him have said incredibly nice things about him,” she said.
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Upon his release from jail in 1990 in one of the defining moments of the 20th century, Mandela negotiated an end to apartheid and won the country’s first fully democratic elections.
As president he guided the country away from internecine racial and tribal violence.
It was 18 years ago to the day on Monday, in a deeply symbolic moment, Mandela handed the rugby world cup to a victorious Springboks captain Francois Pienaar.
The impact of a black president appearing at this, the most white of South African sporting occasions, still reverberates today.
“Mandela soared above the petty confines of party politics,” said political commentator Daniel Silke.
His extraordinary life story, quirky sense of humour and lack of bitterness to his former oppressors has ensured global appeal for the charismatic leader.
The South African government has been criticised amid revelations that the military ambulance that carried Mandela to hospital developed engine trouble, resulting in a 40-minute delay until a replacement vehicle arrived.
The presidency said Mandela suffered no harm during the wait for another ambulance to take him from his Johannesburg home to a specialist heart clinic in Pretoria 55 kilometres (30 miles) away.
“There were seven doctors in the convoy who were in full control of the situation throughout the period. He had expert medical care,” said Zuma.
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The Kano State Government on Saturday said it has transferred 1,098 ‘almajiris’ to different states of the country.
The commissioner for local government, Murtala Garo, disclosed this while presenting a report before the state’s task force on COVID-19 at the government house, Kano.
Almajiris are children who are supposed to be learning Islamic studies while living with their Islamic teachers. Majority of them, however, end up begging on the streets of Northern Nigeria. They constitute a large number of Nigeria’s over 10 million out-of-school children.
Mr Garo said the Kano government transported 419 almajiris to Katsina, 524 to Jigawa and 155 to Kaduna. He said all of them tested negative for coronavirus before leaving the Kano State.
Despite the coronavirus test done in Kano for the almajiris, the Jigawa government earlier said it would quarantine for two weeks all the almajiris that recently arrived from Kano.
Mr Garo said another 100 almajiris scheduled to be taken to Bauchi State also tested negative to COVID-19.
In a remark, Governor Abdullahi Ganduje said the COVID-19 situation in Kano was getting worse. He appealed for a collaborative effort to curtail the spread of the virus in the state.
Mr Ganduje, who commended residents for complying with the lockdown imposed in the state, said the decision was taken to halt the spread of the virus.
Kano State, as of Saturday night, has 77 coronavirus cases, according to the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control.
The decision to transfer the Kano almajiris is part of the agreement reached between Northern governors that almajiris in each state be transferred to their states of origin.
However, even before the latest agreement by the governors, the Kano government had been transferring almajiris to other states and neighbouring countries after it banned street begging in the state, most populous in Northern Nigeria.
Despite the transfers, however, no concrete step has been taken to ensure such children do not return to Kano streets as there is freedom of movement across Nigeria although interstate travel was recently banned to check the spread of the coronavirus.
Sourced From: Premium Times Nigeria
By Ugochukwu Alaribe
Operatives of the Abia State Vigilante Service, AVS, popularly known as ‘Bakassi Boys’ have arrested 24 market women hidden in a container truck, at Ekwereazu Ngwa, the boundary community between Abia and Akwa Ibom states.
The market women, said to be from Akwa Ibom State, were on their way to Aba, when they were arrested with the truck driver and two of his conductors for violating the lockdown order by the state government.
Driver of the truck, Moses Asuquo, claimed he was going to Aba to purchase stock fish, but decided to assist the market women, because they were stranded.
A vigilante source told Sunday Vanguard that the vehicle was impounded while the market women were sent back to Akwa Ibom State.
Commissioner for Home Land Security, Prince Dan Okoli, who confirmed the incident, said that smuggling of people into the state poses great threat to the state government’s efforts to contain the spread of COVID- 19.
Sourced From: Vanguard News
Operatives of the State Criminal Investigation and Intelligence Department (SCIID), Yaba of the Lagos State police command have arrested one Mrs Nene Steve for allegedly killing her maid, Joy Adole
The maid was allegedly beaten to death by Nene for requesting for her salary at their residence located at 18, Ogundola Street, Bariga area in Lagos.
Narrating the incident, Philips Ejeh, an elder brother to the deceased said that he was sad when they informed him that his sister was beaten to death.
He explained that the deceased was an indigene of Benue State brought to Lagos through an agent and started working with her as a maid in January 2020.
‘’She reported that her boss refused to pay her and anytime she asked for her salary she will start beating her.
She was making an attempt to leave the place but due to the total lockdown she remained there until Sunday when her boss said she caught her stealing noodles and this led to her serious beating and death,’’ Ejeh said.
He called on Lagos State Government and well- meaning people in the country to help them in getting justice for the victim.
The police spokesman, Bala Elkana, stated that the woman and her husband came to Bariga Police Station to a report that their house girl had committed suicide.
Detectives were said to have visited the house and suspected foul play with the position of the rope and bruises all over the body which confirmed that the girl had been tortured to death and the boss decided to hang up the girl to make it look like suicide.
He said: “The police moved on with their investigation and found a lot of sign of violence on her body that she has been tortured before a rope was put on her neck.’’
He added that the police removed the corpse and deposited it in the mortuary for autopsy to further ascertain the cause of the death.
Elkana said the matter has been transferred from Bariga police station to Panti for further investigation while the couple have been arrested and will be charged to court.
Ostensibly alarmed by the latest killings of dozens of soldiers by Boko Haram insurgents, President Muhammadu Buhari has summoned an urgent meeting of Service Chiefs to find ways to stop the trend.
He has also dispatched the Minister of Defence, Mansur Dan Ali, to the neighbouring Republic of Chad for an urgent meeting with President Idris Deby and his defence counterpart.
Knowledgeable sources said in Abuja on Friday that the president is worried by on the deterioration of security situation on the Nigeria – Chad Border that has led to the recently increased Boko Haram terrorism in the area.
The sources which did not want to be named in Abuja said: “Nigeria has a Chad problem in the Multi-National Joint Task Force (MNJTF) put together to secure the Lake Chad basin areas and repeal the Boko Haram terrorist attacks against all the countries neighbouring the Lake.”
The sources noted that Chad is believed to be having their own internal security challenges and this has reportedly led to their pulling away their own troops manning their own border around Lake Chad, saying: “That lacuna is being exploited by the Boko Haram terrorists, who go in and out of Nigeria, Niger and Cameroon to launch terrorist acts. This is a clear illustration of the fact that terrorism is beyond national borders.”
When contacted, the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, Garba Shehu, confirmed that the Defence Minister is going to Chad but said he is unaware of the purpose.
Meanwhile, the military authorities are said to be in the process of identifying the families of the latest victims with a view to making contact with them.
Credible sources revealed that it is the reason the president is yet to make any pronouncement on the matter.
“The President has called an urgent meeting with the Service Chiefs, as well as the fact that families of the latest victims of the Boko Haram are being identified and contacts made before a government pronouncement on the tragic attacks. This, it is understood, is the reason for the silence of the government over the incident,” the source said.
Sourced From: Tribune
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