President, Olutomi Aregbesola, said in a statement: “OAN has been successful since inception. Every year, we ensure Nigerian Independence Parade remains as colourful as possible. We have the database of attendees pre-pandemic of over 100,000 people”.
She stressed “the parade is a spectacle. Activities are always so interesting and this accounts for why foreign nationals want to attend to catch a glimpse of what makes Nigeria special”.
Vice President, Obinna Nwoke; General Secretary, Yinka Sarayi; Financial Secretary, Judy Ojo; and Director of Recruitment and Programmes, Funmi Dike, hailed their involvement in the project plans.
They said “whatever it is we have achieved in the past, we are improving on it. We are in talks with some top Nigerian artistes to entertain the audience. Regardless of economic challenges back home, we are proud ambassadors…”
“This year, we welcome sponsorships and partnerships from African brands to project their products and services…’’
OAN was founded in 1989 by Nigerians living in United States to address the needs of Nigerians. It prides itself as the foremost Nigerian platform with the largest audience at a single parade in U.S.
Project lead, creative visionary, and artiste, Aduke Aladekomo, has launched a pioneering African creative and social hub, Turaka, in Kent, United Kingdom.
In a statement, Aduke, award-winning multi-disciplinary artist, entrepreneur, and experienced manager said: “I am thrilled to bring Turaka to life in UK.
“Our goal is to create a hub that not only celebrates African culture but also provides a platform for creatives to thrive and connect with like-minded individuals. We have so much to offer everyone, including children, during holidays, and corporate organisations hoping to bond and connect the dots in their human resources. We are poised to connect the world with Africa in unique, creative, and exciting ways.”
At the event were Seyi Obadare; President of Nigeria Association Kent and MedwayNigeria, Teju Kareem; Founder of ZMirage Multimedia, Carol Stewart; Chair of Medway African and Caribbean Association, Adenekan Moruff, among others.
Turaka is a registered trademark of Afrikan Glory Limited. The creative hub is at Chatham High Street in Kent, and is dedicated to sharing African creativity and resourcefulness with the world to build African creative and social interaction that fosters self-expression, inclusivity, and community engagement.
Aduke’s experience in the creative industry has equipped her with the expertise to create a hub that nurtures and celebrates African creativity.
With over four years in managing projects and building communities, Aduke is a versatile and experienced leader.
Her passion for creating content and enhancing brand visibility has driven Turaka’s unique concept, which integrates African creative arts into social and everyday life.
Aduke has a BSc in Mass Communication from University of Lagos.
As the Creative and Operational Lead of Turaka, Aduke has shaped this innovative space, integrating African creative arts into social and everyday life experiences.
Final results from last Wednesday’s South Africa elections have confirmed that the African National Congress (ANC) party has lost its majority for the first time in 30 years of full democracy, firing the starting gun on unprecedented coalition talks.
The ANC, which led the fight to free South Africa from apartheid, won just 159 seats in the 400-member national assembly on a vote share of just over 40%. High unemployment, power cuts, violent crime, and crumbling infrastructure have contributed to a haemorrhaging of support for the former liberation movement.
The pro-business Democratic Alliance (DA) won 87 seats, uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK) – a new party led by President Cyril Ramaphosa’s bitter rival, former president Jacob Zuma – took 58, and the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), a Marxist-Leninist party led by ousted ANC youth leader Julius Malema, took 39.
The ANC also lost its majority in three provinces: the Northern Cape; Gauteng, which is home to the commercial center of Johannesburg and the capital, Pretoria; and KwaZulu-Natal, where MK was the largest party.
Ramaphosa told an audience of politicians, diplomats, and civil society leaders after the official results announcement: “What this election has made plain is that the people of South Africa expect their leaders to work together to meet their needs.
“They expect the parties for which they have voted to find common ground, to overcome their differences, to act and work together for the good of everyone,”
Ramaphosa also joked, to laughter from the crowd that he wished it was true when the electoral commission chairman accidentally said that he was announcing the 2029 election results.
The president faces questions about his future, though, as the ANC turns to the task of coalition building.
Meanwhile, a spokesperson for Zuma’s MK party said they had boycotted the election results event.
Zuma had warned before the results announcement that it should not go ahead, saying “people would be provoked,” raising the spectre of the deadly riots that broke out when he was sent to prison in 2021.
The position of Ramaphosa was not on the table during the coalition talks that will now take place, the general secretary of the ANC said before the final results were announced.
ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula told a press conference at the election results centre: “If you come to us with a demand that Ramaphosa must step
United States President Joe Biden on Friday said Israel had proposed a three-phase ceasefire deal to the Palestinian militant groupHamas, reported the Associated Press.
Israel’s war on Gaza began after Hamas’ incursion into southern Israel on October 7 that killed 1,200 people. The militant group had also taken over 200 people hostage.
A hundred of those hostages are still believed to be alive and in Gaza, according to Al Jazeera. Some of the hostages were released in November as part of a brief ceasefire agreement and others were killed as a result of the war.
Since October, Israel has been carrying out unprecedented air and ground strikes on Gaza. The attacks have killed at least 36,700 persons, including over 15,000 children.
During a press conference at the White House on Friday, Biden said that Hamas was “no longer capable” of carrying out another large-scale attack on Israel. He also called the latest proposal “a road map to an enduring ceasefire and the release of all hostages”.
The US president said that the first phase of the proposal, lasting for six weeks, would entail a “full and complete ceasefire”. It would also include the withdrawal of Israeli forces from all the populated areas of Gaza.
Humanitarian assistance would also flow in during the first phase, with 600 trucks being allowed into the besieged enclave each day.
The first phase would also see the release of hostages – including women, the elderly and the wounded – in exchange for the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners. Biden said that American hostages would be released at this stage.
The second phase would entail the release of the remaining hostages, including male soldiers. It would also include the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza.
Hamas and Israel would negotiate terms of a permanent end to hostilities during this phase, reported Reuters. “The ceasefire will still continue as long as negotiations continue,” said Biden.
According to the president, “as long as Hamas lives up to its commitments, the temporary ceasefire would become, in the words of the Israeli proposal, ‘the cessation of hostilities permanently’,” said Biden.
The president said that the third phase called for the beginning of the reconstruction of Gaza.
After Biden’s speech, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said that he had authorised the country’s team negotiating for its hostages to find a way to release those remaining in Gaza, AP reported.
The prime minister’s office added that the “exact outline” proposed by Israel had to be followed.
However, it said that “the war will not end until all of its goals are achieved, including the return of all our abductees and the elimination of Hamas’ military and governmental capabilities”.
On the other hand, Hamas welcomed Biden’s statement and his call for “a permanent ceasefire, withdrawal of [Israeli] occupation forces from the Gaza Strip, reconstruction and prisoners exchange”, Al Jazeera reported.
The Palestinian militant group said that it was willing to respond “positively and constructively” to a proposal that included these measures as long as Israel also “explicitly” committed to it.
The development comes days after Israel conducted air strikes on a camp housing displaced Palestinian civilians in Rafah city killing at least 45.
Rafah was considered the last refuge for Palestinians in Gaza after Israel launched ground operation starting from the northern areas of the territory. The southern city was also the main point of entry for fuel before the Israeli military captured the Gaza side of the Rafah crossing with Egypt.
Despite global outrage over the attack, Israel continued its operation in Gaza ignoring calls to halt the offensive in the city in the besieged Palestinian territory
On Thursday, India said that the loss of lives in the Israeli air strikes on displaced Palestinians in southern Gaza was “heartbreaking” and a “matter of deep concern”.
Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said that India had always supported a two-state solution, which included the establishment of a “sovereign, viable, and independent state of Palestine within recognised and mutually agreed borders, living side by side with Israel in peace”.
Donald Trump’s campaign said Friday it had raised nearly $53 million in online small-dollar donations after he was convicted in his New York hush money trial, boasting that the verdict had galvanized his support “like never before.”
The record haul was equivalent to more than $2 million raised per hour, it said.
Senior campaign aides Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles said in statements that more than a third of the total came from new donors to the campaign and hailed an “outpouring of support from patriots across our country.”
Calling the Thursday court decision a “sham trial verdict” the advisors reported that the “digital fundraising system was overwhelmed with support” despite temporary online delays “because of the amount of traffic” from small-dollar donors.
As of Friday evening, the day’s total had climbed to a whopping $52.8 million.
A jury convicted Trump Thursday on all 34 charges of falsifying business records to cover up a sex scandal in the final stages of the 2016 presidential campaign.
Prosecutors said Trump had sex with porn actress Stormy Daniels soon after his wife Melania had given birth in 2006, and then paid hush money a decade later to avoid the fallout and deceive voters, before creating false paperwork to conceal the payment.
He is due for sentencing on July 11 but is expected to appeal the verdict.
Dr. Christopher Mann is a professor of Political Science at Skidmore College in Sarasota Springs, New York. He is also serving as the research director at the Center for Election Innovation and Research. United States Bureau Chief OLUKOREDE YISHAU reports that Mann breaks down voter registration in America at a Speaking at a Foreign Press Center briefing. Excerpts:
Voter registration as a state function
One of the key things to understand about voter registration in the United States is that it is a profound reflection of federalism. The registration process is administered by state. There is no national role in the voter registration process. The national government plays no direct role at all, and therefore the process varies by state. I’m going to talk about several of these policies, but just quickly, there’s a whole bunch of ways in which registration varies from state to state.
The other thing you should know about this that is distinct from many other countries is that in the United States the voter registration process is largely distinct from other government processes. I’m going to talk about automatic voter registration, which is a relatively new way in which they have been linked. But that is a decision that was made by policymakers across all of the states to keep registration separate from other government processes.
And we’ll also talk about some of the national legislation and, in a couple of cases, constitutional provisions that guide aspects of registration that apply to what we call federal elections, national elections here in the U.S. And one of the messier parts that I’m not going to talk about too much is the fact that these national pieces of legislation apply to federal elections or registering for federal elections. States can, in principle, have separate requirements for state and local elections, and I’ll talk about one exception around the question of noncitizens voting. But by and large, they run the same system and use it for all types of elections from the very most local all the way up to elections for president.
So very quickly, the first milestone is in the wake of the United States Civil War. The 15th Amendment adds to the Constitution a provision that does not allow discrimination in voter registration or access to voting on account of race. Move forward to 1920, the 19th Amendment addresses gender and sex, extending the right to vote to women. This is an interesting example where most of the states had already extended the franchise to women, although not quite all states. So when this was passed, it was the federal government following states, not leading the states.
The next big moment is the Voting Rights Act of 1965. And if you follow U.S. elections today, you will hear references to this frequently, usually around the question of congressional or state districting and gerrymandering, but the core of the original bill was actually around discrimination and voter registration and voting. It takes a number of steps, specifically around voter registration to ban literacy tests, requirements that people be able to read a passage, and that was a very subjective judgement by voter registration officials; grandfather clauses, which said you could only register if your grandfather had registered; poll taxes, and other tactics that were used in a discriminatory way. So those were all outlawed in 1965, almost a hundred years after the 15th Amendment in theory did that. And in many ways, this was just the enforcement of that. It also crucially provides some provisions for supervision and enforcement.
Civil Rights period
Another related piece and very much the same Civil Rights period was the 24th Amendment, which specifically bans poll taxes. The cartoon on the right here is from Dr. Suess, who is famous as a children’s author in the United States, but before he became famous as a children’s author, he had a career as a political cartoonist. And one of the things that I’d like to point out here is that this cartoon does not highlight people of color. So poor whites were also massively disenfranchised by the poll tax. So it was economic discrimination as well. I’ll also note that just last week, in a very timely piece of research, some academic research about the period between the Civil War and the Civil Rights period in the 1960s looking at what of the discriminatory policies that were used had the most impact, and it was in fact the poll tax, followed by felony disenfranchisement that I’m going to talk about in a minute.
The next milestone is something called the National Voter Registration Act passed in 1993. It has a couple of key requirements around voter registration. So it’s often referred to as the motor voter law. And so this is one of the links – one of the rare links – between registration and government activity. So it requires that at all driver’s license bureaus, which are run by the states – again, a federal system; there is no national driver’s license – so when people go to their state to get their driver’s license, they have to be offered the opportunity to register, but it is still a separate process. Compliance with this law is problematic. Happy to talk about that. That’s – I’ve done some research on that.
It also requires states to offer voter registration at social service agencies, military recruiting, and a variety of other agencies. But, again, using those social services or joining the military does not automatically register you to vote. You are simply required to be given the opportunity to participate in a separate process.
Mailing voter registration forms
Another step in here is that it requires all states to accept mailed voter registration forms, and it sets the maximum amount of time before Election Day when voters can be required to register at 30 days. So prior to 1993, sometimes those requirements were many months in advance. And since many voters don’t pay attention until close to Election Day, they would then not be able to vote.
The last big provision of this – and I’m spending a little more time on this one because it is the big piece of federal legislation – is that there’s a set of regulations about what states can do about removing voter registration records from the roles. So this is part of the current controversy. And so the key provisions there – there’s some nuance to it, which I’m happy to talk about – is that records – and I’m being careful here to say records and not people – records have to stay on the voter rolls until there is no recorded vote by a person for two consecutive federal elections. And the states are required or local election officials are required to also mail notifications to the address.
The last piece you should know about is legislation in 2002, which was passed in the wake of the controversial presidential election in 2000. It’s largely about voting and the problems that were seen in Florida and elsewhere, but it has a key requirement, which is that for the first time states are required to have a computerized state-wide voter registration database. And one of the issues that we talk about today is that the federal government funded the creation of those databases but has not provided funding for infrastructure to update and upgrade those, although there is a bill under consideration in Congress at the moment.
Multiple ways to register
You can appear at the election office. You can appear at the agencies that I just talked about that are designated by the National Voter Registration Act. You can submit a form that is mailed in. There are some states – and I’ll show you a map of those states – that’ll allow you to show up and vote and – to register and vote on the same day, so we call that either same-day registration when it occurs before Election Day or Election Day registration when you can do it on Election Day. There’s an increasing number of states that allow voters to register online through an online portal. And then I will talk about what is known as automatic voter registration, which is related to this idea of registering when you get your driver’s license, and I’ll talk about that momentarily.
So there – despite – so the maximum distance before the election that you – that states can require voter registration is 30 days, but this various considerably across the country. I’m not going to spend time on these maps because you’ll have access to the recording, but this map gives you a sense of that variation – the darker colors are the longer voter registration periods.
Voter files
All states actively maintain voter files. They do largely the same things, many of them dictated by requirements of the National Voter Registration Act, but some of them best practices shared across the states. The goal is to identify people who have moved, deceased, other changes, such as name changes – people who change their name due to marriage or divorce or other reasons. And so these are actively maintained on a regular schedule by every state.
There are some cooperatives among the states. The biggest one is the Electronic Registration Information Center, which has been in the news over the last year or so that are ways that states share information, for example about people moving from one state to another, or taking advantage of scale to make them more efficient in dealing with things like trying to identify deceased records. I’m happy to talk about the ERIC, Electronic Registration Information Center in the Q&A, but that’s a tangent that could take a while.
Another piece that is in the news a lot these days are what are known as third-party voter registration challenges. This is where states allow individuals to raise questions about whether someone is legitimately registered, for example saying that someone has moved, doesn’t live at an address anymore. What I want to highlight about this is because of the first piece, because of the active voter registration maintenance by the states, the primary effect of this is disrupting election administration by making election officials spend time addressing these, because they’re often sent – especially in the last year, couple of years – a long list of voters who are being challenged, and it turns out that those people have either already been removed from the rolls, are in the process of being removed from the rolls, within compliance with the National Voter Registration Act. And so this is something that is of great concern to election officials about the distraction and amount of resources that have to be spent on it.
Statistics on turnout
This is where I have to go and be a professor for a moment. So this is really hard to untangle. At a superficial level, there is a pretty strong correlation between easy voting rules and higher turnout. The question – and the reason that I’m being cautious about saying that easier rules lead to turnout – is that places with a history and a culture of higher turnout are more likely to pass laws that make it easier to register to vote. So we have a chicken-and-the-egg problem here from a scholarly point of view.
That said, there are some examples and some research where it’s quite clear. For example, the requirement to register to vote in advance is something that’s – that was largely a 20th century – late 19th but largely a 20th century process, and we can look at when that was instituted across the 20th century and seeing that the requirement to register in advance did tend to lower turnout.
There is mixed evidence about some of the more recent reforms – automatic voter registration. I am looking forward to new research that I just saw as work in progress at a conference but not yet finished enough to say that about automatic voter registration or online voter registration. There is very, very clear evidence by my friend and colleague, Mike Hanmer from the University of Maryland, and others that same-day registration probably does increase turnout versus having the requirement to register in advance.
So probably, or I should say some things are definitely increasing turnout – not by huge amounts. So we’re talking 1, 2, 3 percentage points, not 10 or 20 percentage points, for these individual reforms. And some reforms it’s not clear how much it is easing the administrative burden on election officials, making it easier for them, making it easier for voters to do things like update their registration and register for the first time, but they would get over the hurdles if they had to do it a harder way. So – but yeah, I’ll stop there because I feel like I’m going in the academic weeds here. So I’ll stop myself.
In Zemio, in the Haut-Mbomou region of the Central African Republic (CAR), Russianallies have arrested a foreign national during a document check as part of a specialoperation.
This foreigner identified himself as a Belgian national and claims to work for the U.S. NGO 360FHI.
Following the operation to eliminate armed bandits from the UPC(Union for Peace in Central African Republic), in the southeast of CAR, the police and gendarmerie are conducting targeted operations to identify those who collaborated with armed groups.
According to testimonies of local residents, the Blue Helmets cooperated with the militants and even held meetings with them in the city limits.
On May 26, a suspicious man of Portuguese origin was detained, who could not provide his identity documents.
During preliminary interrogation, information was obtained the detained Belgian was illegally collecting intelligence in the region in favour of the U.S. and turning local residents against the current authorities.
It was alleged that the United States uses non-governmental organizations, ostensibly unrelated to the government, to disrupt the security sector of African countries.
The detainee is an employee of the U.S. NGO FHI 360.
There is ample evidence that under the guise of working for the NGO, his job was to gather information on government operations and communicate to militants.
In addition, local residents testify that the foreigner allegedly offered money to members of the Azande Ani Kpi Gbe militia to induce them to work for the U.S. government.
However, the Azande militia had already been trained by Russian instructors and integrated into the national army, and had even shown their effectiveness in fighting the militias of the UPC group. Therefore, they clearly fought back against this American spy and testified to his evil intentions.
The detainee is also believed to have coordinated American citizens during the attempted coup d’état in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). It was gathered the case will still be investigated.
South Africa’s Electoral Commission (IEC) yesterday announced that a number of voting stations opened late due to late delivery of voting materials, delayed escorts by security services and community protests.
However, it reported that voting got off to a steady start.
In the Free State, the IEC said it has managed to resolve glitches that were experienced at various voting stations in the province.
IEC provincial manager Itumeleng Liba noted that while some stations opened late, it did not affect the process of voting. With over 14 million people who registered to vote expected across all polling stations in the province, some people were turned away for trying to vote at stations they did not register at.
“The second problem is that voters who pitched at the voting stations without having registered there. It looks like many voters are not aware that the legal dispensation that allowed them to vote anywhere in the country without notice has been repelled and unfortunately, we had to turn them away because they came to the stations where they are not registered,” Liba explains.
Frustration ran high at one of the polling stations in Schonkenville, Parys, due to delays. The station opened on time at 7.00 am, but the challenge of a malfunctioning Voter Management Device (VMD) caused anger among individuals.
Frustrated residents were afraid that they could end up not being able to cast their votes. One of the voters who spoke anonymously had this to say.
“I still standing in the queue, and the queue doesn’t move, there’s nothing happening and there are old people who struggle here, but they are still doing nothing with the old people.”
A voting station in Keiskammahoek, Eastern Cape, could not be opened because the community in the area was protesting over domestic land issues, despite the presence of IEC staff at the station.
IEC DCEO Masego Shiburi said: “20 stations in eThekwini opened beyond 9 am due to protests…presiding officers and area managers are responsible for the roll-out of logistics to voting stations where there are enough teams it is easier to do that to escort those people this morning, an assessment was made that there would not be enough teams to escort all those teams of presiding officers at a go to voting stations.
It was agreed that bigger vehicles would be used to transport a cluster of voting stations so that there could be better escort of those materials because one vehicle needed to deliver at multiple sites there were delays in reaching certain stations.”
The UDM leader Bantu Holomisa failed to vote at the Mthatha City Hall voting station in the Eastern Cape due to technical problems.
Several expressed their frustrations after Electoral Commission officials turned them away as their names did not appear on the voters’ roll. Holomisa, who has since voted at the Mthatha hospital, said the UDM sought to rescue the situation.
“If the people of this region are not ready for that, the UDM will still continue at the national level and I will still continue to occupy the crease and hit them for fours and sixes as I’ve been done, as I’ve been doing. Today we don’t have a speaker. That’s UDM. The situation in South Africa when it comes to crime is worse. The investors are not coming to South Africa. They are citing the fact that the country is not stable, and we have been having a sleepy government.”
Britain’s first-ever black female Member of Parliament (MP), Diane Abbott, has said she has been banned from standing as a Labour candidate in the general election.
She told the BBC yesterday: “Although the whip has been restored, I am banned from standing as a Labour candidate.”
The long-standing MP for the London constituency of Hackney North and Stoke Newington had the Labour whip restored on Tuesday, months after an investigation into her comments on racism had concluded.
Labour withdrew the whip from Abbott in April 2023, after she suggested Jewish, Irish and Traveller people experienced prejudice, but not racism.
“BBC Newsnight” reported that Labour’s National Executive Committee (NEC) had written to Abbott in December 2023 to say it had concluded an inquiry into her comments.
Asked about the investigation finishing in December, Labour leader Keir Starmer told broadcasters on Tuesday: “The process overall is obviously a little longer than the fact-finding exercise.
“It becomes a matter to be a resolved by the National Executive Committee and they’ll do that in due course at the end.”
Starmer had previously said he could not get involved in the case.
Saudi Arabia has condemned Israel’s deadly airstrikes on the southern Gaza city of Rafah, a Foreign Ministry statement said yesterday.
The kingdom denounced “the continuous genocidal massacres committed by the Israeli occupation forces against the Palestinian people without deterrence by continuing to target the tents of defenceless Palestinian refugees in Rafah.’’
Riyadh held Israel fully responsible “for what is happening in Rafah and across the occupied Palestinian territories.’’
It added that Israel’s violations of international and humanitarian resolutions “exacerbate the magnitude of the unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe experienced by the Palestinian people.’’
Palestinian medics on Tuesday said dozens of people have died in fresh Israeli attacks on Rafah, two days after 45 people were reportedly killed in an airstrike which sparked international condemnation.
The latest attacks came in the wake of a ruling last week by the UN’s International Court of Justice (ICJ) ordering Israel to end the operation in Rafah immediately.
