Nigerian lawmakers approved a request from President Bola Tinubu to convert N7.5 trillion ($8.2 billion) in overdrafts from the central bank to longer-dated bonds that will be added to the country’s debt.

The senate granted approval at a sitting on Saturday during which they are also endorsed

a N28.77 trillion spending plan for 2024, higher than the 27.5 trillion naira figure proposed by Tinubu.

Tinubu said the conversion will reduce the cost of servicing the debt to 9% when compared to the monetary policy rate plus 3% that it currently attracts, and also improve the transparency of liabilities owed to the banking regulator.

Lawmakers in May approved the conversion of N22.7 trillion in loans from the central bank into bonds. The request was made by Tinubu’s predecessor, Muhammadu Buhari, under whose administration loans from the central bank rose by more than 3,000%. That helped increase Nigeria’s outstanding debt by more than 50%; total public debt was N87.9 trillion in September.

Bloomberg

Israeli strikes in central Gaza kill at least 35 as Netanyahu says war will continue for months

Israeli strikes in central Gaza killed at least 35 people Sunday, hospital officials said, as fighting raged across the tiny enclave a day after Israel’s prime minister said the war will continue for “many more months,” resisting international calls for a cease-fire.

The military said Israeli forces were operating in Gaza’s second-largest city, Khan Younis, and residents reported strikes in the central region, the latest focus of the nearly three-month air-and-ground war that has raised fears of a regional conflagration.

The U.S. military said its forces shot and killed several Iran-backed Houthi rebels when they tried to attack a cargo ship in the Red Sea, an escalation in a maritime conflict linked to the war. And an Israeli Cabinet minister suggested encouraging Gaza’s population to emigrate, remarks that could worsen tensions with Egypt and other friendly Arab states.

Israel says it wants to destroy Hamas’ governing and military capabilities in Gaza, from where it launched its Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel. The militants killed some 1,200 people after breaking through Israel’s extensive border defenses, shattering its sense of security. They also captured around 240 hostages, nearly half of whom were released during a temporary cease-fire agreement in November.

Just after midnight on New Year’s Day, Hamas militants fired a barrage of rockets, setting off air raid sirens in southern and central Israel. No injuries were reported.

Displaced Palestinians found little to celebrate on New Year’s Eve in Muwasi, a makeshift camp in a mostly undeveloped area of southern Gaza’s Mediterranean coast designated by Israel as a safe zone.

“From the intensity of the pain we live, we do not feel that there is a new year,” said Kamal al-Zeinaty, huddled with his family around a fire inside a tent. “All the days are the same.”

Another relative, Zeyad al-Zeinaty, who fled with the family from the Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza, said his wife, brother and grandchildren are among many relatives he has lost in the war.

Israel’s unprecedented air and ground offensive has killed more than 21,800 Palestinians and wounded more than 56,000 others, according to the Health Ministry in Hamas-ruled Gaza, which does not distinguish between civilian and combatant deaths.

The war has sparked a humanitarian crisis, with a quarter of Gaza residents facing starvation, according to the United Nations. Israel’s bombardments have leveled vast swaths of the territory, displacing some 85% of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents.

THE OFFENSIVE GRINDS ON

Israel expanded its offensive to central Gaza this week, targeting a belt of densely built-up communities that house refugees from the 1948 war surrounding Israel’s creation and their descendants.

In Zweida, an Israeli airstrike killed at least 13 people and wounded dozens of others, according to witnesses. The bodies were draped in white plastic and laid out in front of a hospital, where prayers were held before burial.

“They were innocent people,” said Hussein Siam, whose relatives were among the dead. “Israeli warplanes bombarded the whole family.”

Officials from Al-Aqsa Hospital in central Deir al-Balah said the 13 were among 35 bodies received on Sunday.

The Israeli military said it was battling militants in Khan Younis, where Israel believes Hamas leaders are hiding. It also said its forces operating in the Shati refugee camp, in northern Gaza, found a bomb in a kindergarten and defused it. Hamas continued to launch rockets toward southern Israel.

Israel has faced stiff resistance from Hamas since it began its ground offensive in late October, and the military says 172 soldiers have been killed during that time.

Daniel Hagari, the chief military spokesman, said Sunday that Israel was withdrawing some forces from Gaza as part of its “smart management” of the war. He did not say how many, and held out the possibility they would return at a later point in the war.

Israeli media said up to five brigades, numbering thousands of soldiers, would be withdrawn, but it was not immediately clear if it represented a normal troop rotation or a new phase in the fighting. Hagari also said some reservists would return to civilian life to bolster Israel’s wartime economy.

The fighting has pushed much of Gaza’s population south, where people have flooded shelters and tent camps near the border with Egypt. Hundreds of thousands have sought shelter in the central town of Deir al-Balah. Israel has continued to carry out strikes in both areas.

Eman al-Masri, who gave birth to quadruplets a week ago at a hospital in Deir al-Balah, is now sheltering with them in a room with 50 other people at a school-turned-shelter. “There is a shortage of diapers, they are not available, and no milk,” she said.

ISRAELI MINISTER URGES MASS MIGRATION FROM GAZA

The scale of the destruction and the exodus to the south has raised fears among Palestinians and Arab countries that Israel plans to drive Gaza’s population out and prevent it from returning.

On Sunday, Israel’s far-right finance minister said it should “encourage migration” from Gaza and re-establish Jewish settlements in the territory, where it withdrew settlers and soldiers in 2005.

“If in Gaza there were only 100,000 or 200,000 Arabs and not 2 million, the entire discussion about ‘the day after’ would be completely different,” Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich told Army Radio.

Smotrich has been largely sidelined by a war Cabinet that does not include him. But his comments risked worsening tensions with neighboring Egypt, which is deeply concerned about a possible mass influx of Palestinian refugees, along with other friendly Arab countries.

Later Sunday, an official in the prime minister’s office said Israel does not want to resettle Palestinians.

“Contrary to false allegations, Israel does not seek to displace the population in Gaza,” the official said in a statement to The Associated Press. “Subject to security checks, Israel’s policy is to enable those individuals who wish to leave to do so.” The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter with the media.

Israel is also at odds with the United States, which has provided crucial military aid for the offensive, over Gaza’s future.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said Israel must maintain open-ended security control over the Gaza Strip. At a news conference Saturday, he said the war would continue for “many more months” and that Israel would assume control of the Gaza side of the border with Egypt.

Israel says Hamas has smuggled weapons from Egypt, but Egypt is likely to oppose any Israeli military presence there.

Netanyahu has also said he won’t allow the internationally-backed Palestinian Authority, which administers some parts of the occupied West Bank, to expand its limited rule to Gaza, where Hamas drove its forces out in 2007.

The U.S. wants a unified Palestinian government to run both Gaza and parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank as a precursor to eventual statehood. The last Israeli-Palestinian peace talks broke down over a decade ago, and Israeli governments since have been staunchly opposed to Palestinian statehood.

AP

WESTERN PERSPECTIVE

Kharkiv strikes were retaliation for Belgorod attack, Russia says

Russia on Sunday said it attacked military facilities in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv overnight, including a hotel housing military commanders and "foreign mercenaries", in response to Ukraine's strikes on Belgorod the previous day.

Kharkiv officials had said that at least six missiles hit Ukraine's second city, injuring at least 28 people and damaging residential buildings, hotels and medical facilities, followed by waves of drone attacks on housing blocks.

Russia's statement said its attack hit the former Kharkiv Palace hotel and the headquarters of the Ukrainian Security Service for the Kharkiv region.

It said military and intelligence officers involved in Ukraine's attack on Belgorod had been among those killed, along with "foreign mercenaries and militants" preparing to carry out cross-border raids.

Ukraine military intelligence spokesman Andriy Yusov told local media that no military objects had been targeted in Russia's attack on Kharkiv and that no one from his agency was harmed.

Vyacheslav Gladkov, governor of the Belgorod region adjoining northern Ukraine, said the death toll from Saturday's Ukrainian rocket attack on the regional capital had risen to 24.

In a posting on Telegram he said there were also 108 wounded and that 37 apartment buildings had been damaged.

There was no official comment from Kyiv in the hours after the attack on Belgorod and Reuters was unable to independently verify the Russian reports.

Like other Russian border zones, Belgorod has suffered shelling and drone attacks all year, which authorities have blamed on Ukraine, though none have previously been on such a scale.

Both sides deny targeting civilians in a war that Russia launched against its neighbour in February 2022. The United Nations says that more than 10,000 civilians have been killed in Ukraine and nearly 60 people inside Russia.

Ukrainian news outlet RBC-Ukraine on Saturday quoted unidentified sources as saying that Ukrainian forces had directed fire at military targets in Belgorod in response to the massive Russian bombardment of cities and infrastructure across Ukraine the previous day.

Russian newspaper Kommersant reported that Ukraine had fired its missiles from the Kharkiv region across the border.

RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE

Russia explains retaliation for Ukrainian ‘terror attack’

Russia’s military has conducted a string of high-precision missile strikes targeting Ukrainian military facilities and officials in response to the Ukrainian strike on Belgorod on Saturday that left more than 20 civilians dead, the Defense Ministry has said. 

In a statement on Sunday, the ministry said that Moscow’s forces had struck decision-making centers and other military targets in the city of Kharkov, not far from the border between the two countries. 

It noted that a high-precision missile strike on the building formerly housing the Kharkov Palace Hotel eliminated “representatives of the Main Intelligence Directorate and the Armed Forces of Ukraine, who were directly involved in the planning and execution of the terrorist attack in Belgorod.”

The building also housed up to 200 foreign mercenaries who were gearing up for “terrorist raids” into Russian territory, officials added.

Other strikes hit the building of Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) and a temporary deployment area of Ukrainian nationalists. “Representatives of the SBU leadership, foreign mercenaries and fighters of the Kraken unit, who were directly preparing sabotage on Russian territory, have been taken out,” officials said. 

In addition to this, an attack was carried out on a branch of the national space control center in western Ukraine, which had been used by Kiev for reconnaissance. Fuel depots in Kharkov and the Kiev-controlled part of Russia’s Zaporozhye Region were also destroyed, according to the statement. At the same time, the ministry stressed that the Russian military “only strikes military targets and infrastructure directly associated with them.” 

Ukrainian officials in Kharkov have confirmed the barrage, saying that there had been six strikes that damaged “civilian infrastructure,” with 28 injured.

The new attack comes in response to a Ukrainian bombardment of Belgorod that killed at least 24 people, including four children, with 108 injured. Moscow has said that the barrage used both cluster munitions, as well as Czech-made projectiles. On Saturday, Vassily Nebenzia, Russia’s envoy to the UN, accused Western countries of complicity in the attack, warning that those who orchestrated it would be “punished.”

Reuters/RT

An Igbo adage says that when an anomaly persists for one year, it becomes the norm. So slowly, steadily but surely, it is becoming a norm, an accepted aberration, for a president in Nigeria to appoint himself as a minister. It is like saying in a country of 200 million-plus, there is no one good or capable enough to hold that particular office except the man entrusted with the running of the nation.

It was President Olusegun Obasanjo that started it. Nicknamed the “Trinity President” in some quarters, for six out of his eight years in office, i.e., from 1999 to 2005, Obasanjo was president, petroleum minister and minister of state for petroleum.

It was only in 2003, the last year of his first term that he appointed Edmund Daukoru, the current traditional ruler of Nembe Kingdom in Bayelsa State, as special adviser on petroleum and energy and then minister of state in 2007.

I think Muhammadu Buhari got so fascinated by this “Trinity” arrangement that he saw Obasanjo run that he too made himself the Czar of Nigeria’s petroleum sector by appointing himself into the same offices.

One curious observation is that they both chose to head the petroleum ministry despite their shallow knowledge of the sector. Both presidents were soldiers who rose to become generals. Nigerians would expect them, especially Buhari, to head the defence ministry if they must be ministers. But the Ministry of Petroleum holds an enticing attraction to them. Can it be because Nigeria’s crude oil is called “sweet”?

Addressing some select reporters at a Global Leaders’ Summit on Countering ISIL and Violent Extremism, in London, Buhari said: “I will remain minister of petroleum. I will appoint a minister of state for petroleum.”

And that was even before he had taken the names of his prospective ministers to the Senate. Unlike Obasanjo, he had once served as oil minister and, unlike him again, he appointed a minister of state earlier.

When the news broke that he was going to announce himself as petroleum minister, Vanguard newspaper published an editorial advising against such a move.

“The nation is still at sea over how Obasanjo handled the same job for six years from 1999 when he assumed power. Several turnaround maintenance projects were undertaken and billions of naira sunk and yet the refineries remained comatose,” the article read.

But how did Nigeria’s oil sector with its “sweet crude” fare under the two former generals-turned-civilian presidents?

Reports have it that Obasanjo’s leadership at the petroleum ministry was characterised by lots of opacity and breach of due process. The seeds of the controversial Malabu oil deal were planted in that period.

The Guardian, on January 13, 2008, wrote, “Under Obasanjo, the government was not run based on budget and he did not consider himself bound by the budget. He was the budget. He provided figures and allocations and spent money as he liked without any evidential accountability to the National Assembly. Nobody knew what the revenue was. The National Assembly didn’t know; he was not revealing anything. How much came into the government coffers from the oil sales? Nobody knew except himself. He was the sole minister of petroleum.”

And because of this, in December 2007, seven months after he handed over power to Umar Yar’Adua, the Conference of Nigerian Political Parties (CNPP) petitioned the anti-graft agency he set up, the EFCC, demanding that Obasanjo be probed as he no longer enjoyed constitutional immunity.

The petition read in part: “Let us start by stating that Obasanjo, during his tenure, illegally appointed himself the minister of petroleum resources, contrary to section 147 of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

“Secondly, his activities in the oil industry were shrouded in secrecy, as he never rendered proper accounts of the oil revenue to relevant agencies like the Revenue Mobilisation, Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC).

“Thirdly, it is also on record that neither the Federal Executive Council nor the National Assembly was ever presented memoranda or budgets of the oil industry.”

Buhari’s case was almost similar. Probably no other leader in Nigeria’s history has had the swell of goodwill to tap into as him when he took over in 2015, but he sadly turned such enthusiasm into grave disappointment, his regime falling from what many, rightly or wrongly, had high hopes on, to one that the nation couldn’t wait to see the back of.

According to Buhari, the reason he wanted to be the minister was to right the wrongs in the oil industry, which was plagued by corruption, massive fraud, and crude oil theft.

But in his “determination to sanitise Nigeria’s oil industry and free it from corruption and shady deals,” he spent over N11 trillion on “subsidies” and over $19 billion on the maintenance of refineries that did not refine even a single litre of petrol throughout his eight years.

The Constitution of Nigeria that authorised the president to appoint ministers also gave the power of their vetting and confirmation to the Senate of the Federal Republic. Specifically, section 147 of the Nigerian constitution provides that: “(1) There shall be such offices of Ministers of the Government of the Federation as may be established by the President. (2) Any appointment to the office of Minister of the Government of the Federation shall, if the nomination of any person to such office is confirmed by the Senate, be made by the President.

Neither of the presidents presented himself to the Senate for vetting and clearance as enshrined in the Constitution. And all of them shunned defence, their field and what needed professional supervision for sweet crude. This made some people think that if Emefiele became president as he wanted, he may also make himself minister of petroleum as well as CBN governor.

But when this trend first reared its ugly head, some conscientious Nigerians did not take it lying down. A group called the Niger Delta Democratic Union went to a Federal High Court, asking it to issue “an order directing Obasanjo to appoint a Minister of Petroleum Resources under the mandatory provisions of the Petroleum Act Cap 350 Laws of the Federation of Nigeria, 1990 as amended.”

Filed by Austin Ayowe and Dafe Chuks on behalf of the NDDU, the plaintiffs also sought “an order restraining President Obasanjo and the Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Authority (PPRA) from further exercising any function or powers of a minister of petroleum resources.”

Even though the suit was struck out on 15 September 2004 by Stephen Adah, the presiding judge, who held that the applicants had no locus standi to file the suit, perhaps that case forced Obasanjo to appoint Daukoru as minister of state the next year.

However, in November 2018, a Federal High Court in Abuja declared that Buhari cannot legally double as the minister of petroleum resources.

The court made the declaration while giving judgment in a suit filed in 2017 by the former president of the Nigerian Bar Association, Olisa Agbakoba, who urged it to restrain Buhari from continuing to hold the office of the minister of petroleum resources, contending that Section 138 of the 1999 Constitution forbids the president from “holding any other executive office or paid employment.”

We are quick to shout that Nigeria borrowed its system of governance from America, but tell me which American president was a secretary (minister) at the same time.

Unfortunately for our nation, our leaders pick and choose according to what suits their purpose from the American system. The United States enacted the 1967 Anti-Nepotism law which forbids federal officials from employing family members into certain governmental positions and the cabinet. Can anyone mention that to recent Nigerian public officeholders? We have recently been regaled by stories of how even in the temple of justice, some senior judiciary figures make way for their children, wives and mistresses to become judges. It is the same in practically every segment of public service.

We still have a long, long way to go before we can get it right. But the worrying question is: are we even willing to try?

** Hassan Gimba is the Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Neptune Prime.

Clare Coffey

Gone are the days when stopping by a certain kind of bar pretty much guaranteed some human contact. These days, bars can feel like the loneliest places on the planet.

When the first wave of lockdown regulations ended, back in 2020, I can still remember what I was most excited for. Going to bars again. Perhaps, during a moment of such gravity, this excitement may seem trivial, or even louche. But I love bars, and always have. I love the opportunities (increasingly rare) that they present for just quietly sitting and thinking, for luxuriating in a small pleasure. I love the way they mark the end of the work-day or the work-week and the entry into leisure. I love the way that you can walk into a town as a stranger, and leave knowing a fair cross-section of its dynamics and characters simply by spending a few hours sitting at its bar. I love the space they open up to talk to strangers, or merely observe them. I love that you never know exactly what you’ll get.

I was excited to go back to the bars again, but when I did, something felt different–something felt off. Everything felt a bit smaller, a bit faded. I don’t think anything had actually changed that much from a few months of closure. But I do think that my anticipatory excitement, coupled with a period of forced separation, made me notice something that before had slipped past my consciousness as, over a decade, it slowly became the new normal.

It was the creeping spread of the lonely corner.

The Lonely Corner

As long as I can remember, a certain kind of un-fancy, middle-of-the-road bar has had what I call “the lonely corner.” Someone is always huddled over the glowing pay-to-play machines mounted on the bar, sometimes gambling, sometimes playing simple touchscreen games. They’ll order beer after beer, barely looking up as they while away one, two, five hours.

I always thought these machines were predatory, luring the exhausted or emotionally dysregulated or unhappily solitary into one of the saddest possible ways to drink: alone in a crowd, without alcohol’s social boost, without much apparent joy in the drink, as part of a compulsive routine.

But the lonely corner used to at least be a corner. Now, those same bars often host an eerie vision: a row of barstools filled with people downing their beers and hunched over their hands, scrolling their feeds, never taking an eye off their screens. The lonely corner is everywhere.

Smartphones make bars worse places. In an ideal scenario they wouldn’t. In an ideal scenario the most disciplined smartphone user would be the model smartphone user. The little pocket computer would come out to answer a message, look up a piece of trivia to settle an argument, or take a picture, and then go back in the pocket. But in real life, what you largely get is the doomscroll. And the doomscroll destroys what is most wonderful about bars. The quiet moments of reflection, the silences and pauses that become opportunities to chat with your neighbor, the way the whole bar can become participants in the banter between a bartender and a patron–these are all casualties. Scrolling on your phone is an obvious defense against the awkwardness of sitting silent and alone in a place built for social encounter–you feel like you’re doing something, you look like you’re doing something. But in providing an easy out from those awkward moments, scrolling also removes the openings that allow awkwardness to blossom into conviviality. And each time you take the easy out, I have found, the psychic cost of sitting through the awkwardness or boredom becomes higher.

Doomscrolling is the gateway to doomdrinking

If smartphones diminish what is best about bars, they also enhance their worst possibilities. The doomscroll is a self-soothing mechanism that accelerates and distracts from the passage of time. Alcohol, in certain quiet, ugly moments, can be a much more potent and dangerous version of the same. There’s great pleasure in a mindless beer, staring off into space, content in the moment–but add the scroll and you’re likely to get a mutually reinforcing compulsive cycle. Drinking takes on the logic of the infinite feed: endless, mindless, appetite without the possibility of satiety. I don’t like the way I drink when I have my phone in my hand. These days, I pretty much only stop by the bar if I’ve left it at home. It’s not, by any stretch of the imagination, a convenient arrangement. And for a more disciplined person it’s probably an unnecessary one. But then again, a more disciplined person is probably already at home doing pilates. Drinking in bars is life’s gift to the undisciplined–unproductive, pointless, lounging fun–and I’m not about to let my smartphone take it away from me.

I am not suggesting that all bars have always been, or must be, non-stop festivals of spontaneous joviality. People have always gone to sports bars to watch TV; plenty of people go to bars to read a book or a paper, catch up on mindless paperwork, jot things down in little notebooks. I’ve done all the above, and it’s very pleasant and cozy to do these solitary activities in the company of others and with a drink in your hand. But there are important differences.

Watching sports is already a shared activity; people do it in bars to react with others, to share their pleasure and their pain. The others are discrete tasks, with natural bounds and breaks built in. They are different types of human activity that take place within their real physical context, visible to others and enriching the shared space as objects of conversation or curiosity. The scroll is different. It fills up any and all empty moments. It offers no obvious conversational ingress. Mentally, it takes you into the alternate virtual world of the screen and out of your physical context, and it creates no silent, enriching presence. To the outside world, whatever you are doing on a phone looks like the same thing: being on your phone.

Doing a crossword puzzle at a bar makes a solitary activity social. Smartphones at a bar make social experiences solitary.

Decades ago, we realized that some technologies were too powerful to be safely combined with the effects of alcohol. “Friends don’t let friends drink and drive” was painstakingly hammered from a mere slogan into a social norm. It may be time to consider a similar norm (though without, of course, the legal prohibition) for a technology whose dangers are chronic and diffuse rather than acute and concentrated. There is a growing awareness of the way smartphones can hinder serious pursuits: distracting children at school, reducing the capacity for sustained attention at work. But I think it is worth guarding our unserious pursuits, our inattention, our trivialities, from their depredations as well.  Friends don’t let friends drink and scroll.

Fast Company

Residents of Lagos Island and traders at the popular Idumota market have decried the increasing hunger and desperation inflicted on them by the President Bola Tinubu-led administration.

The residents were seen in a trending video telling President Tinubu in Yoruba language that they are hungry - “Ebi npa wa oo”.

Filed on both sides of the road as seen in the video as the president’s long convoy passed through the ever-busy market, the traders didn't hail him.

They instead kept talking of their pains, which they accused his administration of inflicting on them by bad policies that didn't factor the poor and working class in the country.

The complaining voices in the video were heard saying the presidency had known the plans of the people which was the reason for the heavy security. However, the alleged initial plan was not made known.

Sahara Reporters

Nigerian lawmakers approved a N28.77 trillion ($34 billion) budget for 2024 on Saturday, accepting a funding increase which the government had sought due to higher revenue forecasts and a weaker currency.

President Bola Tinubu had initially presented a N27.5 trillion budget to lawmakers, projecting a deficit of 3.9% of gross domestic product (GDP) and assuming an average exchange rate of N750 per dollar.

But at a special sitting on Saturday, the Senate and House of Representatives separately debated the budget and resolved to adopt it with the changes sought by the government.

The government said it expected more revenue from government-owned enterprises and now expected an average exchange rate of N800 to the dollar, which would boost export income. Economic growth is forecast at 3.88%.

Tinubu campaigned on a promise to revive the country's struggling economy but Nigerians have endured increased hardships this year after the president removed a decades-old petrol subsidy and scrapped currency controls, helping to push inflation to its highest level in two decades.

The budget will be sent to Tinubu on Monday to be signed into law.

Nigeria has struggled with high deficits over the years due to low tax revenue and falling production of oil, its biggest export, forcing the government to borrow more.

Africa's biggest economy is also in the grips of widespread insecurity, which has worsened in some places since Tinubu came to office. He is yet to spell out how to tackle the problem.

The lawmakers separately debated last week's attacks by suspected herdsmen in central Plateau state, which left at least 140 people dead and resolved to invite security chiefs to explain the circumstances around the incident.

Reuters

Nigerian Catholic couple Jane and Lucy have little hope their local parish church will bless their same-sex union anytime soon, as conservative priests across Africa choose to ignore a landmark Vatican ruling allowing such blessings.

Conservative Catholics have condemned the Vatican's declaration two weeks ago, which was approved by Pope Francis, that will allow blessings for same-sex couples, as long as they are not part of the regular Church rituals or liturgies.

The pope has hit back against the criticism and what he called inflexible ideological positions that hinder the Church from moving forward.

But in many African countries, such as the continent's most populous one, Nigeria, even having a same-sex relationship is outlawed and often punishable by long jail terms.

Little wonder that 39-year-old Jane, who has been living with her partner for six years, does not feel the Vatican's declaration will change much.

"Maybe in the next 20 years (or) next 30 years but right now it will be difficult for them (Bishops) to just accept this," Jane told Reuters inside her room in north central Benue state.

In the Anglican church, the issue has caused deep divisions for more than two decades, most recently following Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby's proposal earlier this year to allow priests to bless same-sex unions, bringing the faith close to splitting point.

The Catholic Church has so far sought to avoid the impression of conflict.

Catholic bishops from Angola, Kenya, Nigeria, Malawi to Sao Tome and Principe, Uganda and Zimbabwe are among clerics who have said they will not bless same-sex couples, but have argued that the Pope's decree can be interpreted as optional.

Father Patrick Alumunku of St Louis Catholic Church Mbora parish in the capital Abuja said the Vatican declaration was unsettling for many followers but should be viewed as a move towards inclusiveness for all God's children.

He denied that this was an incremental step to eventually accept same-sex unions in the church.

"There are laws that have been made by God and by the church in 2000 years which cannot change," said Alumunku.

For activist and poultry farmer Jane, the fact that the issue is being discussed openly is reason enough to consider eventually approaching her priest for a blessing, if her partner agrees.

"I think he (Pope Francis) tried to understand the feelings of people who tend to be born different or people who basically are now becoming like the outcasts of this society," she said.

"We are getting there, a moment of self expression and acceptance is coming."

Reuters

Netanyahu says Gaza war on Hamas will go on for 'many more months,' thanks US for new weapons sales

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Saturday that Israel’s war on Hamas in Gaza will continue for “many more months,” pushing back against persistent international cease-fire calls after mounting civilian deaths, hunger and mass displacement in the besieged enclave.

Netanyahu thanked the Biden administration for its continued backing, including approval for a new emergency weapons sale, the second this month, and prevention of a U.N. Security Council resolution seeking an immediate cease-fire. Israel argues that ending the war now would mean victory for Hamas, a stance shared by the Biden administration, which at the same time urged Israel to do more to avoid harm to Palestinian civilians.

In new fighting, Israeli warplanes struck the urban refugee camps of Nuseirat and Bureij in the center of the territory Saturday as ground forces pushed deeper into the southern city of Khan Younis.

The Health Ministry in Gaza said Saturday that more than 21,600 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s unprecedented air and ground offensive since the deadly Oct. 7 Hamas attack on southern Israel. The ministry, which does not distinguish between the deaths of civilians and combatants, said 165 Palestinians were killed over the past 24 hours. It has said about 70% of those killed have been women and children.

The number of Israeli soldiers killed in Gaza combat rose to 170, after the military announced two more deaths Saturday.

The war has displaced some 85% of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents, sending swells of people seeking shelter in Israeli-designated safe areas that the military has nevertheless bombed. Palestinians are left with a sense that nowhere is safe in the tiny enclave.

With Israeli forces expanding their ground offensive this week, tens of thousands more Palestinians streamed into the already crowded city of Rafah at the southernmost end of Gaza.

Thousands of tents and makeshift shacks have sprung up on Rafah’s outskirts next to U.N. warehouses. Displaced people arrived in Rafah on foot or on trucks and carts piled high with mattresses. Those who did not find space in overwhelmed shelters pitched tents on roadsides.

“We don’t have water. We don’t have enough food,” Nour Daher, a displaced woman, said Saturday from the sprawling tent camp. “The kids wake up in the morning wanting to eat, wanting to drink. It took us one hour to find water for them. We couldn’t bring them flour. Even when we wanted to take them to toilets, it took us one hour to walk.”

In the Nuseirat camp, resident Mustafa Abu Wawee said a strike hit the home of one of his relatives, killing two people.

“The (Israeli) occupation is doing everything to force people to leave,” he said over the phone while helping to search for four people missing under the rubble. “They want to break our spirit and will, but they will fail. We are here to stay.”

MORE U.S. WEAPONS FOR ISRAEL

The State Department said Friday that Secretary of State Antony Blinken told Congress he approved a $147.5 million sale for equipment, including fuses, charges and primers, that is needed for 155 mm shells Israel bought previously.

It marked the second time this month that the Biden administration is bypassing Congress to approve an emergency weapons sale to Israel. Blinken made a similar decision on Dec. 9 to approve the sale to Israel of nearly 14,000 rounds of tank ammunition worth more than $106 million.

Both moves have come as President Joe Biden’s request for a nearly $106 billion aid package for Ukraine, Israel and other national security needs remains stalled in Congress, caught up in a debate over U.S. immigration policy and border security. Some Democratic lawmakers have spoken of making the proposed $14.3 billion in American assistance to its Mideast ally contingent on concrete steps by Netanyahu’s government to reduce civilian casualties in Gaza during the war with Hamas.

THE WAR’S TIMELINE

Blinken, who has repeatedly traveled to the Middle East during the war, was expected back in Israel and other countries in the region in January. U.S. officials have urged Israel to start shifting from high intensity combat to more targeted operations, but said they were not imposing a deadline.

Netanyahu said Israel needs more time.

“As the chief of staff said this week, the war will continue many more months,” he told a televised news conference Saturday. “My policy is clear. We will continue to fight until we have achieved all the objectives of the war, first and foremost the annihilation of Hamas and the release of all the hostages.”

More than 120 hostages remain in Gaza, after militants seized more than 240 in the Oct. 7 assault that also killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians.

Netanyahu is also at odds with the Biden administration over who should run Gaza after the war. He has rejected the U.S.-backed idea that a unified Palestinian government should run both Gaza and parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank as a precursor to eventual statehood. Instead, he has insisted on open-ended Israeli security control in Gaza, without saying what would come next.

TRADING FOR HOSTAGES

Families of hostages and their supporters have demanded that the government prioritize hostage releases over other war objectives, and have staged large protests every weekend, including Saturday.

Egypt, one of the mediators between Israel and Hamas, has proposed a multistage plan that would kick off with a swap of hostages for prisoners, accompanied by a temporary cease-fire — along the lines of an exchange during a weeklong truce in November.

Hamas insists the war must end before it will discuss hostage releases. Osama Hamdan, a senior Hamas official in Beirut, reiterated that position Saturday, but also told The Associated Press that “we have not given any final answer so far” to the Egyptian proposal.

Asked about reports of possible progress toward a deal, Netanyahu said Saturday that “we see a possibility, maybe, for movement” but that he did not want to raise “exaggerated expectations.”

DIFFICULTIES IN DELIVERING AID

More than a week after a U.N. Security Council resolution called for the unhindered delivery of aid at scale across besieged Gaza, conditions have only worsened, U.N. agencies warned.

Aid officials said the aid entering Gaza remains woefully inadequate. Distributing goods is hampered by long delays at two border crossings, ongoing fighting, Israeli airstrikes, repeated cuts in internet and phone services and a breakdown of law and order that makes it difficult to secure aid convoys, they said.

Nearly the entire population is fully dependent on outside humanitarian aid, said Philippe Lazzarini, head of UNRWA, the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees. A quarter of the population is starving because too few trucks enter with food, medicine, fuel and other supplies — sometimes fewer than 100 trucks a day, according to U.N. daily reports.

AP

WESTERN PERSPECTIVE

Russian air assaults target Kyiv and Kharkiv, Ukraine says

Russia launched a fresh bombardment of Ukraine in the hours leading into New Year's Eve, Ukrainian officials said, targeting Kyiv and inflicting damage on residential areas of the country's second largest city of Kharkiv.

Ukraine's air defence systems in the region surrounding Kyiv were engaged late on Saturday to repel Russia's drone attack, the military administration of the region said on its Telegram messaging channel.

The scale of the attack and any damage were not immediately clear.

In Kharkiv, in Ukraine's northeast, a fresh drone attack in several waves hit residential buildings in the city centre, spouting fires, Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov said on Telegram. Twin missile strikes by Russia on Saturday hit the city and injured at least 21 people.

"On the eve of the New Year, the Russians want to intimidate our city, but we are not scared - we are unbreakable and invincible!" Terekhov said.

"Information about potential casualties is being clarified."

He posted several photos showing windows blown out of residential buildings and fire fighters putting out a fire at what seemed like a store.

The last week of 2023 has seen increased attacks by both sides, with Russia killing at least 31 civilians in its biggest air assault of the war on Ukraine on Friday, and 20 people killed in a Ukrainian attack on the Russian provincial capital of Belgorod on Saturday.

U.S. President Joe Biden, asked if he'll speak to Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy after Russia's latest attacks in Ukraine, said: "I speak to him regularly."

RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE

Kiev used banned weapons in attack on Russian city – Defense Ministry

Kiev employed rockets carrying cluster bomb warheads in its strike against the Russian border city of Belgorod, the Russian Defense Ministry stated on Saturday, labeling the attack a ”crime.” This weapon type has been banned by more than 110 nations under a UN convention dating back to 2008, due to the extreme danger it poses to civilians. Its use in densely populated areas can lead to devastating consequences.

The “Kiev regime” used several multiple rocket launchers to hit the city earlier on Saturday, the ministry said in a statement on Telegram. One was a Ukrainian Olkha system, which is capable of firing 12 guided rockets in one volley, hitting targets at a maximum range of 70 to 130 kilometers, depending on the type of system. The Olkha rockets were equipped with cluster bomb warheads, the ministry claimed.

A Czech-made RM-70 Vampire – an upgraded heavier version of the Soviet BM-21 Grad multiple rocket launcher – was also used, according to the Russian military.

Russian air defenses intercepted most of the incoming projectiles, but several hit the city, the ministry said. It added that “in case of a direct hit by Olkha missiles equipped with cluster munitions… the consequences would be immeasurably more severe.”

Earlier, the Russian Emergencies Ministry said that the strike claimed the lives of 14 people, including two children, and left 108 people, among them 15 children, injured.

The Russian military accused Kiev of seeking to draw public attention away from its failures on the front line, as well as provoking Moscow into retaliatory strikes of a similar nature. The ministry maintained that Russia only strikes military targets and infrastructure that is directly relevant to these military facilities.

“This crime will not go unpunished,” the military said.

Cluster munitions are highly controversial due to their design. They comprise dozens of small submunitions that can be scattered over a large area by an initial detonation, which can then also explode, causing a large number of smaller secondary blasts. Some, however, typically fail to detonate and remain a hazard for years or even decades.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said in July that the use of cluster bombs should be regarded as a war crime. At the time, Washington had announced that it would supply Kiev with cluster bombs out of its Cold War-era stockpiles, justifying its decision by claiming that Ukraine had pledged not to use them in populated areas.

The US government also claimed that both Russia and Ukraine had been using their own cluster munitions throughout the conflict. Nevertheless, the move sparked widespread criticism even among America’s allies, including Canada, Germany, and the UK.

Putin said at the time that Moscow reserved the right to use its own cluster munitions in response. He added that Russia had previously refrained from using the weapons even when there was a shortage of other types of munitions.

Reuters/RT