Category: Foreign

THE Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Parliament has presented its 2022 draft budget with mechanisms to ensure peace and security, good governance and economic development as priority.

The draft budget of the Parliament was presented during its Second Extraordinary Session to consider and adopt the Parliament’s Draft 2022 budget, yesterday in Winneba, Ghana.

Dr. Sidie Tunis, Speaker of the ECOWAS Parliament, said the budget seeks to make provisions to address the fundamental challenges confronting the region.

“As you well know, the specific agenda of this session is to consider and adopt the Parliament’s Draft Budget for the year 2022.

“I wish to remind us, honourable members, that of significant importance to our efforts in addressing the monumental challenges at hand, is the fact that our region requires fundamental changes in every area.

“From civil liberties, the rule of law, accountability and transparent governance, peace and security, as well as economic development.

“That is why the draft estimates that will be presented place emphasis on supporting programmes that address these core areas.

“In line with the guidelines for the preparation of the 2022 budget for all ECOWAS Institutions, we have focused our priorities on high impact programmes that have long-lasting effects on the ECOWAS Member States.

“Taking into accounting the shocks that have been created because of the COVID-19 pandemic and prevailing security challenges.”

“Also, in line with the institutional reforms which are currently being undertaken by ECOWAS, we were very mindful of cost saving measures which are intended to direct resources to other sectors of the Community, notably the health sector.”

President Muhammadu Buhari has described former United States (U.S.) Secretary of State, General Colin Powell, as a great statesman and a global icon.

Powell  died yesterday of COVID-19 at 84.

The President eulogised Powell, who was the first U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, of African-American origin, while reacting to the news of his death yesterday.

In a statement by his Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, Mallam Garba Shehu, President Buhari expressed Nigeria’s condolences to President Joe Biden, the Powell family and the American people, noting that the departed was one of America’s pride.

“On behalf of all Nigerians, President Muhammadu Buhari offers deepest condolences to President Joe Biden, the government and the people of the United States, on the passing of the former Secretary of State, General Colin Powell,” he said.

“The President believes that as the first African American Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the highest military position in the U.S. Department of Defense as well as the first African American Secretary of State, Powell was a great statesman and a global icon in every sense of it.

“The Nigerian leader recounts that as U.S Secretary of State, Powell played a very important role in advancing his country’s foreign policy and national defense interests. He was also a great advocate of the eradication of Polio and in addressing the deadly spread of HIV/AIDS pandemic in Africa.

“President Buhari’s prayers and thoughts are with General Powell’s family and the people of the United States as they mourn the death of an exceptional leader and one of America’s greatest pride, who as a professional soldier, a distinguished public servant and an effective diplomat, gave his utmost for his country”, the statement said.

Powell was said to have died of COVID complications yesterday.

The deceased family confirmed his death via a Facebook post.

According to the family, the late Powell was fully vaccinated and was treated at Walter Reed National Military Medical Centre.

“General Colin L. Powell, former U.S. Secretary of State and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, passed away this morning due to complications from Covid-19,” the family said.

“He was fully vaccinated. We want to thank the medical staff at Walter Reed National Medical Center for their caring treatment.

“We have lost a remarkable and loving husband, father, grandfather and a great American.”

The deceased served as national security adviser to former President Ronald Reagan from 1987 to 1989 and was the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under ex-President George HW Bush in 1989. He was appointed as secretary of state in 2001 under the Bush administration, and he became the first black person in U.S. history to be so appointed.

 

No fewer than 200 naked people painted in white on Monday took part in an art installation at the Dead Sea to draw attention to the ongoing destruction of the world’s saltiest body of water.

U.S. photographer, Spencer Tunick, wanted to use his photo installation at the salty lake to support the establishment of the planned Dead Sea Museum in the Israeli city of Arad, the Times of Israel reported.

“The Dead Sea is disappearing,“ Tunick told the newspaper. “We need to find a way to sustain the level or to bring freshwater into the Dead Sea, but at the same time, keep all countries surrounding with water. Water is life.’’

READ ALSO: Eight famous sportsmen married to childhood sweethearts

The water level of the Dead Sea, which lies between Israel, the West Bank and Jordan, has been falling for years.

At the shore, the ground is sinking in places.

The lake is fed by the Jordan River and lies more than 400 meters below sea level.

The naked people were painted white in reference to the biblical story of Lot’s wife.

According to tradition, she became a pillar of salt at the Dead Sea because, in spite of a divine prohibition, she looked back at Sodom, a city destroyed by God for its wickedness

This is Tunick’s third installation at the Dead Sea with models.

(dpa/NAN)

AFRICAN Ministers of Aviation have described the much-touted proposal to impose vaccine passports for air travellers as unacceptable.

They said it is tantamount to discrimination against certain groups of population, especially on the African continent which still has considerable number of its citizens, who are yet to receive the vaccines.

They also described the proposal as going against the intent of the Chicago Convention on the need to preserve friendship and understanding, reduce threat to general security and establish international air transport based on equal opportunity, operated soundly and economically.

The ministers’ delegation’s position was made known yesterday in a presentation to the ongoing International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) High-Level Conference on COVID-19 by Nigeria’s Minister of Aviation, Senator Hadi Sirika.

Rather than imposing vaccine passports, the African delegation recommended that states’ parties to the convention on international civil aviation should continue to minimise the risks during travel by ensuring compliance with existing multinational treaties, international frameworks, guidelines and recommendations.

Sirika also recommended that human rights, regional/continental/global health security, economic growth, social cohesion and good international relations, and use of innovation and technology worldwide to harmonise requirements should be promoted, while transmission of critical information across borders related to public health issues such as COVID-19 and coordination among key players should also be considered.

He also stated that African nations frowned at states imposing unilateral measures of global nature related to public health and asked such states to refrain from such practices and instead take measures that would facilitate the reopening and reconnection of the world.

“There is a clear onus on both public and private stakeholders, to take full measure of the dire circumstances now facing the air transport sector, and to ensure sufficient operational sustainability. “These actions are critical to make sure that the world is adequately reconnected, as aviation plays a critical role in the global economic recovery and achieve the realisation of the goals of both AU Agenda 2063 and UN Agenda 2030 for sustainable development.”

On the general strategies for recovery, Sirika said: “The global distribution of emergency and humanitarian supplies, including the vaccines will no doubt depend on an economically viable aviation system. Aviation is also capable of stimulating recovery and growth of global economy by acting as an enabler and multiplier of economic activity.

“Considering that the global aviation industry operates as an interconnected ecosystem, it is therefore imperative that all the states of the world implement the ICAO Council Aviation Recovery Taskforce (CART) recommendations and guidance, which are based on the latest development of the COVID-19. ICAO, in collaboration with relevant stakeholders, is required to bring to maturity in short term a consensual modality for establishment and deployment of a global health passport as well as the specification of infrastructure (soft/hard) and training of professionals.”

He also disclosed that two continental joint meetings of African ministers responsible for health, ICT and transport have been so far organised, with the second joint meeting rolling out the African campaign Against COVID-19: Saving Lives, Economies and Livelihoods endorsed on 20 August 2020 by the Bureau of the Assembly of the African Union Heads of State and Government with chairpersons of the Regional Economic Communities of the African Union.

The meetings, according to him, charged African countries to work together towards harmonising travel entry and exit requirements, and to increase mutual recognition and cross-border information exchange for enhanced surveillance.

According to Sirika, the outcome of this high-level ministerial meeting in Nigeria, which also reassessed the role and contribution of civil aviation to the region’s economic growth, social progress, and integration, as well as the overall sustainable development, was the development of a Plan of Action.

He, therefor, called on ICAO to support the African region in the implementation of this Plan of Action.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

PRESIDENT Nana Akufo-Addo of Ghana and Speaker of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Parliament Dr. Sidie Tunis have appealed to the leaders in the sub-region not to overstay in office.

This, Akufo-Ado said, has been the major cause of political instability in the sub-region.

He spoke yesterday during the opening of the ECOWAS Parliament’s High-level Parliamentary Seminar in Winneba, Ghana, themed: “Two decades of democratic elections in ECOWAS member states: Achievements, challenges and the way forward”.

Akufo-Addo, who is also chairman of the Authority of ECOWAS Heads of State and Government, said the high-level meeting of the ECOWAS Parliament was coming at the right time following the political situation in Mali and Guinea.

He said: “Good governance should and must imperatively exclude political maneuvers to maintain power beyond constitutional requirements.

“Let us all be aware that beyond that, the marriage between the elected and the electorate becomes forced, the environment becomes toxic, the mandates become queried.”

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He, therefore, urged the ECOWAS Parliament to join the ECOWAS Commission to ensure the swift review of the ECOWAS protocol on democracy and good governance.

“It is for this reason that the ECOWAS Authority of Heads of State and Government and my chairmanship in its last extraordinary summit on 16 September 2021 in Accra on the Guinean and Malian situations authorised the ECOWAS Commission to take steps towards the urgent review of the ECOWAS Protocol on democracy and good governance to take accounts of contemporary developments.

“I also on the call to you members of Parliaments to contribute to the process of this review. I welcome this decision and hope that the review will be swift and pointed,” Akufo-Addo said.

Also, Speaker of the ECOWAS Parliament cautioned against tinkering with the constitutions at will, as this has become the latest trend in the sub-region.

“It is very important that we give serious attention to the new phenomenon of amending the constitution of a state before an election or before the expiration of the tenure of an incumbent President.

“Amending a constitution to conform to current realities is not in itself a problem.

“However, when the proposed amendments to the constitution protect the governing elites at the expense of citizens or will undermine the very nature of Constitutional democracy.

“Thereby granting the incumbent undue advantage to extend his mandate, then we have a problem.

“The truth is, this practice is eroding the gains we have made as a community, sinking the region into more chaos, and creating a serious reputational risk for ECOWAS as an institution.

“If we do not take firm and very decisive actions against this ugly trend, ECOWAS will not only be perceived as a body of failed states, but will indeed fail,” Tunis said.

 

President Muhammadu Buhari has congratulated the winner of the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize for Literature, Abdulrazak Gurnah, a Tanzanian and former lecturer at Bayero University, Kano.

Gurnah is the fourth Black person to win the literature prize coming after the first person, Prof. Wole Soyinka, who won in 1986; Derek Walcott of Saint Lucia (1992) and Toni Morrison, the first Black woman to win the prize in 1993.

In winning the prize, the Swedish Academy highlighted Gurnah’s “uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effect of colonialism and the fate of refugees in the gulf between cultures and continents”.

President Buhari’s congratulatory message is contained in a statement issued by Mr. Femi Adesina, his Special Adviser on Media and Publicity.

It stated that President Buhari believed that given the ignoble experiences of Africans and people of African descent in the past, all forms of race-related vices and injustices had no place in modern history.

He saluted the bold African voices using arts, music, literature and sports to stress that “our world is better when we treat one another with dignity and respect”.

Read Also: Why did Abdulrazak Gurnah win the Nobel Prize in Literature?

Gurnah writes in English; lives and works in the United Kingdom.

He was born in Zanzibar, the semi-autonomous island off the East African coast, and studied at Christchurch College, Canterbury in 1968.

Zanzibar and former Tangayika merged in April 1964 to form the current Tanzania.

In that year, Zanzibar underwent a revolution in which citizens of Arab origin were persecuted.

Gurnah was forced to flee the country when he was 18. He began to write in English as a 21-year-old refugee in England, although Kiswahili is his first language.

His first novel, titled: Memory of Departure, was published in 1987.

He has written numerous works that pose questions around ideas of belonging, colonialism, displacement, memory and migration.

His novel “Paradise,” set in colonial East Africa during World War I, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1994.

“Paradise” deploys multi-ethnicity and multiculturalism on the shores of the Indian Ocean from the perspective of the Swahili elite.

 

 

Agency Reporter

Pope Francis on Thursday received the outgoing German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, in the Vatican as she paid a farewell visit to Rome, which includes talks with Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi.

Merkel and her husband, Joachim Sauer, arrived at the Apostolic Palace, where they went into a private audience with the pope.

The visit was the fifth private meeting that Merkel, the daughter of a Protestant pastor and theologian, has held with Francis, who is said to have a high opinion of the German leader.

READ ALSO: Angela Merkel and the art of being ordinary

They were met on arrival by Monsignor Leonardo Sapienza, the prefect of the papal household, before entering the palace.

Merkel is to hold talks with Draghi later in the day.

The outgoing chancellor was then to speak at a peace event being held at the Colosseum. (dpa/NAN)

NATO has expelled eight members of Russia’s mission to the alliance who were “undeclared Russian intelligence officers,” a NATO official said yesterday.

The expulsion of the Russians was reported earlier by Sky News, which said Moscow’s mission to the alliance headquarters in Brussels would be halved “in response to suspected malign Russian activities, including killings and espionage.”

There was no immediate comment from the Kremlin or the Russian Foreign Ministry.

The West’s ties with Russia remain strained over everything from Ukraine to alleged Russian election meddling to the 2018 poisoning with a nerve agent in England of Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter.

The Interfax news agency cited Leonid Slutsky, head of the Russian lower house of parliament’s international affairs committee, as saying that Moscow would retaliate, but not necessarily in kind.

“We can confirm that we have withdrawn the accreditation of eight members of the Russian Mission to NATO, who were undeclared Russian intelligence officers,” the NATO official said, adding that the number of positions Moscow can accredit to NATO had been cut to 10.

“NATO’s policy towards Russia remains consistent. We have strengthened our deterrence and defence in response to Russia’s aggressive actions, while at the same time we remain open for meaningful dialogue,” the official added.

 

GERMAN police yesterday searched 80 properties in 25 cities in a large-scale raid against money laundering and organised crime gangs.

In the process, the police made 11 arrests and seized assets worth more than 2 million euros (2.3 million dollars).

More than 1,000 police officers were involved in the raids, which were directed against members of an international money laundering network.

The focus of the operations was the western German state of North Rhine Westphalia.

The office for the prosecution of organised crime at the Dusseldorf public prosecutor’s office is conducting the investigations, which are directed against members of a so-called Hawala network, according to a police statement.

Hawala banking, which is illegal in Germany, is an informal money transfer system that allows customers to transfer large sums of cash abroad which, if sent through the banking system, would require the approval of the banking supervisory authority.

The suspects are alleged to have laundered funds from criminal activity in Germany to Turkey and Syria.

According to preliminary estimates, the transaction volume amounted to around 140 million euros.

Violence, armed robbery and hostage-taking are also believed to have been common practices when the gang needed to collect money.

The suspects also stand accused of wrongfully receiving social benefits, tax evasion and not paying their social security contributions.

A 39-year-old Syrian man suspected of terrorist activity was also arrested in the raids.

Police believe that he is or was a member of the Islamist Al-Nusra Front and plan to prosecute him separately.

The suspected money launderers are believed to have transferred a total of more than 100 million euros from illegal businesses in Germany to Turkey and Syria.

The investigation began after a chance find by the police, when officers discovered 300,000 euros in cash hidden in a gym bag during a routine stop on a motorway.