Cease-fire talks with Israel and Hamas are expected to resume on Sunday in Qatar

Stalled talks aimed at securing a cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war are expected to resume in earnest in Qatar as soon as Sunday, according to Egyptian officials.

The talks would mark the first time both Israeli officials and Hamas leaders join the indirect negotiations since the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. International mediators had hoped to secure a six-week truce before Ramadan started earlier this week, but Hamas refused any deal that wouldn’t lead to a permanent cease-fire in Gaza, a demand Israel rejected.

But both sides have made moves in recent days aimed at getting the talks, which never fully broke off, back on track.

Hamas gave mediators a new proposal for a three-stage plan that would end the fighting, according to two Egyptian officials, one who is involved in the talks and a second who was briefed on them. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to reveal the contents of the sensitive discussions.

The first stage would be a six-week cease-fire that would see the release of 35 hostages — women, those who are ill and older people — held by militants in Gaza in exchange for 350 Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.

Hamas would also release at least five female soldiers in exchange for 50 prisoners, including some serving long sentences on terror charges, for each soldier. Israeli forces would withdraw from two main roads in Gaza, let displaced Palestinians return to northern Gaza, which has been devastated by the fighting, and allow the free flow of aid to the area, the officials said.

Nearly one in three children under 2 years old in the isolated north have acute malnutrition, the U.N. children’s agency said Friday.

In the second phase, the two sides would declare a permanent cease-fire and Hamas would free the remaining Israeli soldiers held hostage in exchange for more prisoners, the officials said.

In the third phase, Hamas would hand over the bodies it’s holding in exchange for Israel lifting the blockade of Gaza and allowing reconstruction to start, the officials said.

Talks were expected to resume Sunday afternoon, though they could get pushed to Monday, the Egyptian officials said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the proposal “unrealistic” but agreed to send Israeli negotiators to Qatar. His government has rejected calls for a permanent cease-fire, insisting it must first fulfill its stated goal of “annihilating Hamas.”

Thousands of people demonstrated Saturday night in Tel Aviv to show their impatience with Netanyahu’s government and demand a deal to free hostages. Some expressed support for U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s sharp criticism of Netanyahu’s handling of the war and his call for a new election.

“I think that we are in a situation where they are completely right, that we have a war that is continuing well beyond what is necessary,” protester Yehuda Halper said.

Netanyahu’s office said Friday he approved military plans to attack Rafah, the southernmost town in Gaza where about 1.4 million displaced Palestinians — more than half the enclave’s population — are sheltering. Israel wants to target Hamas battalions stationed there.

Many fled to Rafah when Israel attacked Gaza following the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on southern Israel that killed 1,200 people and left another 250 hostage.

The United States and other countries have warned that a military operation in Rafah could be disastrous.

Netanyahu’s office didn’t give details or a timetable for the Rafah operation, but said that it would involve the evacuation of the civilian population. The military has said it planned to direct civilians to “humanitarian islands”in central Gaza.

“Many people are too fragile, hungry and sick to be moved again,” World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on social media, adding that there are no fully functional, safe health centers they can reach elsewhere in Gaza. “In the name of humanity, we appeal to Israel not to proceed.”

The Gaza Health Ministry said at least 31,553 Palestinians have been killed in the war. The ministry doesn’t differentiate between civilians and combatants in its count, but says women and children make up two-thirds of the dead.

An Israeli strike early Saturday flattened a house in the urban Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, killing at least 19 people, including nine children, according to records at the al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital. An Associated Press journalist there saw the bodies.

Israel’s offensive has driven most of Gaza’s 2.3 million people from their homes. A quarter of Gaza’s population is starving, according to the U.N.

As part of efforts to deliver desperately needed aid, a ship inaugurated a sea route from Cyprus on Friday and offloaded 200 tons of humanitarian supplies sent by the aid group World Central Kitchen destined for people in northern Gaza.

The group said it was preparing another vessel in Cyprus with hundreds of tons of aid.

Also on Saturday, Germany joined a group of countries, including the U.S. and Jordan, in conducting airdrops of aid over Gaza. The U.S. also has announced separate plans to construct a pierto get aid in.

Displaced Palestinians living in tents along the Mediterranean coast remained hungry and bleak.

“The situation is so bad that no one can imagine it, and the ship, even if it helps, will be a drop in the ocean,” said Zahr Saqr in Muwasi. “We run like dogs behind air drops.”

AP

WESTERN PERSPECTIVE

Putin vows to punish Ukraine for attacks as Russians vote

Vladimir Putin accused Ukraine on Friday of trying to disrupt a Russian presidential election that is virtually certain to hand him six more years in the Kremlin, and said Moscow would punish Kyiv for its latest attacks.

The first of three days of voting was marked by disruptions including dye being poured into ballot boxes, a Molotov cocktail thrown at a polling station in Putin's home town, and reported cyber attacks.

Millions of Russians cast their ballots across the country's 11 time zones, with officials putting turnout on day one at more than 35%.

The Ukraine war cast a shadow over voting, with what Putin said was repeated shelling of Russia's western regions and an attempt by 2,500 Ukrainian proxies to cross into two Russian regions with tanks.

"These enemy strikes will not remain unpunished," a visibly angry Putin said at a meeting of Russia's Security Council.

Ukrainian officials said the attacks were carried out by Russian armed groups based in Ukraine who are opposed to the Kremlin.

A Russian ballistic missile attack hit a residential area in Ukraine's Black Sea port city of Odesa, killing at least 20 people and wounding more than 70, in Moscow's deadliest attack in weeks, Ukrainian officials said. President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Russia would receive a "fair response" for what he said was a "vile" strike.

Amid the Ukraine war, the deadliest conflict in Europe since World War Two, Putin, 71, dominates Russia's political landscape and none of the other three candidates on the ballot paper presents any credible challenge.

More than 114 million Russians are eligible to vote, including in what Moscow calls its "new territories" - four regions of Ukraine that its forces only partly control, but which it has claimed as part of Russia. Ukraine says the staging of elections there is illegal and void.

Video released by the Kremlin showed Putin casting his own vote online and waving briefly to the camera. Russians in about a third of the country are able to vote electronically for the first time in a presidential election - something critics say is impervious to scrutiny and open to abuse.

"These are the most closed, most secret elections in Russian history," Stanislav Andreichuk, co-chairman of the Golos vote-monitoring group that the state has branded a "foreign agent", told Reuters in a telephone interview.

DYE, CYBER ATTACKS

Dye was poured into ballot boxes in Moscow, Russian-annexed Crimea, and the Caucasus region of Karachayevo-Cherkessia, according to Russian media, in apparent anti-Kremlin protests.

CCTV footage of one dye-pouring incident showed a young woman depositing her voting slip before calmly pouring a green liquid into the ballot box. A policeman was seen detaining her immediately afterwards.

A Molotov cocktail was thrown at a polling station in St Petersburg, and a 21-year-old woman arrested, the Fontanka news site reported. Arson attempts were recorded at polling stations in Moscow and Siberia.

Russia's electoral commission chief, Ella Pamfilova, said perpetrators of such acts faced up to five years in prison, and suggested they had been paid for by those seeking to disrupt the vote.

"Listen carefully everyone," Pamfilova said, before setting out the article in the Criminal Code that addresses disrupting the work of electoral commissions.

The Kremlin says Putin, in power as president or prime minister since the last day of 1999, will win as he commands broad support for rescuing Russia from post-Soviet chaos and standing up to what it calls an arrogant, hostile West.

VETERAN RULER

Putin ordered a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 after eight years of conflict in eastern Ukraine between Kyiv's forces on one side and pro-Russian Ukrainians and Russian proxies on the other.

If Putin completes a new six-year term, he will overtake Soviet dictator Josef Stalin to become Russia's longest-serving ruler since Empress Catherine the Great in the 18th century.

The West views Putin as an autocrat and a war criminal. U.S. President Joe Biden has called him a killer and a "crazy SOB".

But in Russia the war has helped Putin tighten his grip on power and boost his popularity with Russians, according to polls and interviews with senior Russian sources.

Russia's best known opposition politician, Alexei Navalny, died suddenly in an Arctic penal colony last month and other Kremlin critics are exiled or in jail.

The opposition says the vote is a sham and have called on people across Russia to protest by turning out to vote all at the same time on Sunday, at noon in each of the country's 11 time zones.

** Russia accuses Kyiv of election sabotage, Medvedev warns 'traitors'

Russia accused Ukraine on Saturday of using "terrorist activities" to try to disrupt its presidential election and former President Dmitry Medvedev decried as "traitors" the scattered protesters who have tried to set fire to voting booths and pour dye into ballot boxes.

The Ukraine war has cast a shadow over voting in the election, which is all but certain to hand President Vladimir Putin six more years in the Kremlin but has been marked by sporadic acts of protest.

On the second of three days of voting, the Russian foreign ministry said Kyiv had "intensified its terrorist activities" in connection with the election "to demonstrate its activity to its Western handlers and to beg for even more financial assistance and lethal weapons".

It said that in one such incident, a Ukrainian drone had dropped a shell on a voting station in a Russian-controlled part of Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia region.

The state-run TASS news agency quoted a local election official as reporting no damage nor injuries when the explosive device landed five or six metres (yards) from a building housing a polling station before it had opened in a village about 20 km (12 miles) east of the city of Enerhodar.

Reuters could not independently verify the incident.

There was no immediate comment from officials in Ukraine, which regards the election taking place in parts of its territory controlled by Russia as illegal and void.

Meanwhile the head of the electoral commission, Ella Pamfilova, said that in the first two days of voting there had been 20 incidents of people trying to destroy voting sheets by pouring various liquids into ballot boxes, as well as eight cases of attempted arson and a smoke bomb.

Commenting on the incidents, Medvedev said those responsible could face treason sentences of 20 years.

"This is direct assistance to those degenerates who are shelling our cities today," he posted on social media, referring to Ukrainian attacks.

On Sunday's final day of voting, supporters of late opposition leader Alexei Navalny have called on people to turn out en masse at noon in a rolling protest against Putin in each of the country's 11 time zones.

UKRAINIAN ATTACKS

Russian media quoted Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov as saying Putin had been receiving military reports in recent days of attempted attacks by saboteurs in the border regions of Belgorod and Kursk, including several incursion attempts overnight, all of which he was quoted as saying were thwarted.

A senior Ukrainian intelligence official said on Thursday that armed groups he described as Russians opposed to the Kremlin had turned the regions into "active combat zones".

On Saturday, Kyrylo Budanov, head of Ukraine's military intelligence directorate, said the groups, the Freedom of Russia Legion, the Siberian Battalion and the Russian Volunteer Corps, were "becoming a force" with unified principles.

The groups were fighting "quite well" and were not going to stop any time soon, he said in a Ukrainian television interview, adding, "We will try to help them to the best of our ability."

In the Belgorod region where cross-border attacks from Ukraine have become part of daily life, Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov reported the deaths of a man and a woman in a missile attack, and later in the day, one injury, after he said Russian defences shot down 15 rockets approaching the regional capital.

Video obtained by Reuters showed fires ablaze and air raid sirens sounding on the empty streets of Belgorod city.

Dmitry Azarov, governor of the Samara region 850 km (530 miles) southeast of Moscow, said the Syzran refinery was on fire following a drone attack but an attack on a second refinery had been thwarted.

The fire was later brought under control, officials said, but the incidents highlighted Ukraine's ability to strike hundreds of miles (km) inside Russia to target its energy industry. Two other big refineries were set on fire this week.

In his nightly video address, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said it had become clear in recent weeks that Ukraine could use its weapons to exploit what he called vulnerabilities in the "Russian war machine."

Russia mounted its deadliest attack in weeks on Friday when its missiles hit a residential area in Ukraine's Black Sea port city of Odesa, killing at least 21 people and wounding more than 70.

PUTIN'S DOMINANCE

Putin's hold on power is not under threat in the election. Aged 71 and in office as president or prime minister since the last day of 1999, he dominates Russia's political landscape.

None of the other three candidates on the ballot paper - veteran Communist Nikolai Kharitonov, nationalist Leonid Slutsky or Vladislav Davankov, deputy chairman of the lower house of parliament - has mounted any credible challenge.

Overall turnout - an important indicator for Putin as he attempts to demonstrate the whole country is behind him - rose above 58% on the second day of voting.

The rate in Belgorod region was over 76%. Turnout was also high in Russian-controlled regions of Ukraine.

Russia's governing party, United Russia, said it was facing a widespread denial of service attack - a form of cyberattack aimed at paralysing web traffic - and had suspended non-essential services to repel it.

State news agency RIA quoted a senior telecoms official as blaming the cyberattacks on Ukraine and Western countries.

RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE

NATO troops in Ukraine could trigger WWIII – Italy

Deploying troops of the US-led NATO bloc to battlefields in Ukraine might result in an all-out global conflict, effectively a Third World War, Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani has said. He has ruled out any possibility that his country’s forces will somehow end up deployed to support Kiev’s fight.

The minister made the remarks on Friday during an interview on the sidelines of the LetExpo show in Verona. Asked about the prospect of NATO troops ending up in such a deployment, Tajani spoke out against the idea.

“I think that NATO shouldn’t enter Ukraine. It would be a mistake. We need to help Ukraine defend itself, but entering the country to wage war against Russia means risking World War Three,” the diplomat stated.

Tajani ruled out any possibility of Italy’s own troops ending up in Ukraine. Asked about other NATO nations sending their troops to prop up Kiev in its fight against Moscow, particularly France, the minister said he hoped “it doesn’t happen.”

The statements from Tajani come after French President Emmanuel Macron again brought up the topic of sending Western soldiers to Ukraine, in a fresh interview with broadcasters TF2 and France 2.

Macron bluntly described Russia as France’s “adversary,” insisting, at the same time, that Paris has not been “waging war on Russia” but merely “supporting” Kiev in the conflict. Regarding the potential troop deployment, he refused to say anything concrete, insisting he wanted to maintain a “strategic ambiguity” and that he had his own “reasons not to be precise.”

The prospect of sending Western troops into Ukraine was first mulled by the French president in late February, when he said the idea could not be “excluded” entirely. The remarks prompted a wave of denials from fellow members of the US-led bloc, with its major participants repeatedly rejecting the idea. Minor states of the alliance, however, including new member Finland, backed Macron’s take on the issue.

Reuters/RT

Talented filmmaker, Tunde Kelani, recalibrated a popular Yoruba folklore in his famous Agogo Ewo (the forbidden gong) movie. A supremacy battle ensued between Eledumare – God, and Land. The two earthly ancient principalities had gone hunting and jointly killed an Emo rat. When it was time for sharing of the game, both got locked in a duel on who was the eldest and thus should take the chunkiest part of the animal. Armistice could not be found. In unspeakable display of greed, Land eloped with the totality of the ground game. Furious at this despicable treatment, Eledumare relocated from the earth to the firmament. From then onwards, like the proverbial bitter yam whose excesses made it a pariah and ineligible for a pounded yam meal, Land’s excesses led to its total rejection. In sympathetic protest against Land, all that Eledumare created withdrew their bestowals upon the earth. Rain, for instance, sheathed its downpour and plants adamantly refused to sprout, leading to massive hunger in the land. Weeping and wailing sundered the earth, so much that the mammary glands in maidens’ breasts withered unceremoniously. Abiodun, wife of highly respected and one of the best known, critically acclaimed Yoruba dramatists to have emerged from postcolonial Africa, Duro Ladipo, also known as Moremi or Oya, was the narrator of the folklore. She leads the chorus of the Yoruba incantatory song, Olunrete and her children listeners spice it with the backup, Aja nrete ja. Then, Duro-Ladipo delves into an epic poem of the evil machination of a selfish combine of leaders in an imaginary country named Jogbo. These leaders, she narrates, are locked in a conspiratorial gang-up to castrate the land.

It is important to quote the epic poem verbatim for its relevance in today’s Nigeria: “You form yourselves into parties to selfishly deceive us that you would reform Jogbo. In utter contravention of the spirit of your advertised intention, our collective game which we jointly killed has become the booty you share among yourselves. You are embezzlers (egbe apapin) who shave and beautify one part of the head, wickedly leaving the other half unattended. You indulge in splendor but forget the masses of our country.” The epic ends with the narrator enjoining the masses of Jogbo country to be watchful and vigilant.

Last Tuesday, a roiling crisis struck the Nigerian senate like lightning. When it subsided, it revealed the Nigerian parliament’s sinkhole appetite for filthy lucre. Storm petrel and unapologetic northern Nigerian senator, Abdul Ningi, representing Bauchi Central Senatorial District, had stirred his usual hornet’s nest. The recently passed Nigeria’s 2024 budget had undergone serious disparaging from Ningi who claimed it was padded with the sum of N3.7 trillion. As usual, he also attempted to weaponize and whip up Nigeria’s fragile ethnicity sentiment

What Ningi did was to pelt the naked parliament with reeking faeces. The whitewash crew of Solomon Adeola (Chairman, Senate Committee on Appropriation, representing Ogun West) Michael Opeyemi Bamidele of Ekiti Central and Jimoh Ibrahim (Ondo South) immediately sprung up to rescue their pot of soup. As they attempted to dress the parliament in borrowed robes of righteousness, it boomeranged. All that the people saw was naked sanctimony. Unfortunately, their glib talks could not remove the stench from the senate. Rather, they succeeded in making a hero of Ningi, a staunch member of the Apapin Jogbo leaders who, for 17 years, had been part of the rot.

Adeola mellifluously defended the budget. Bamidele delivered one of the most self-serving speeches ever. He went on a binge of ethnicizing a fraternal, group sharing of Nigeria’s budget. He cited the history of gang-ups in the National Assembly and how the senators had been collaborating to undermine the Nigerian people. He then, metaphorically, concluded that it was time for the south under Akpabio to take ownership of the buccaneer sharing of national patrimony that has been going on in the parliament since 1999. Jimoh Ibrahim wanted the police IG to arrest Ningi. He sounded like one suddenly seized by an undertaker mentality. Revelations after the stormy session have shown that, rather than Ningi alone, all the senators who authored that leaflet’s padding should be in the slammer. The deodorants were either too little or too late.   

You would imagine that you were listening to Shakespeare’s Mark Antony. Suave, sweet but poisoned chalice. The senators’ speeches were another “friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears; I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.” Like a whirlwind, they aimed to blurry the vision of Nigerians from seeing the maggots wriggling inside the 2024 Appropriation Act. Adeola was at his glibbest best. Bamidele descended into the primordial. Jimoh Ibrahim spoke like a butcher in the abattoir, seeking companionship in the cadences of disorder and violence. Ningi must be arrested for treason, he sermonized ad-nauseam. The senators later came across as shrouds deliberately spread to cover the over-two-decades pastime of huge sleazes that have become the way of Nigeria’s parliament. You could compare them to well-fed maggots wriggling out of carrion; maggots whitish in colour but enveloped by dark rots. Senate President Godswill Akpabio was also at hand to wield the gavel. That gavel has given vent to vultures’ feast on Nigeria’s resources in the last 24 years of the Fourth Republic.

After suspending Ningi, the triumvirates must have clinked glasses of celebration. They had succeeded in stoning Ningi, the bird which alerted a flock of vultures to their chunky game. The initiate of the fraternity who betrayed the cult by his unholy disclosure on BBC Hausa Service radio had been handed his just recompense. The senators had hardly dropped their wine glasses when, in the manner of a broken water tap, revelations began to burst out with the fury of Anthony Joshua’s punches. Nigerians began to push back with revelations from the budget. Today, Ningi’s allegation of N3.7 trillion padding is proving to be icing on the cake of a massive heist gone burst. As such, the analogy of Jogbo is proving to be the most fitting explanation of the shameful revelations.

The Apapin concept, whose explanation can be found in a hunter’s forest, I explain underleaf: Apapin is a Yoruba hunters’ lingo. It speaks to the earlier Duro-Ladipo narrative of theft and embezzlement. I once espoused, in Hunting buffalo in presidential jet, (October 15, 2023) that dialogues in the forest can explain the unequal nature of our human society, especially between those who are in government, their families and the governed. It can also explain the inequality in the economic systems of the world, capitalism and socialism and the divide between leaders and their followers. In hunting expeditions, the first thing hunters do is to identify what particular forest to go. When they have done this, judging by prior knowledge of the forest or tales told about them, they then identify the particular game that makes that forest its habitat. This could range from antelopes, porcupines, buffalo, fox, to leopards, etc. When a hunting crew embarks on this journey, it divides itself into two. The first set of hunters is one that holds dane guns; they are often about two or three persons. The other crew, usually many, as many as ten, is called the “forest encircling hunting group.” The job of this group is to envelope the identified forest. With sticks, stones and any other objects, they make sufficient noise and discomforting howls to unsettle the animals from their holes. The aim is to get the animals suddenly fleeing and scampering to other parts of the forest. In the process, the animals run into the crew of about three whose guns are readied to fire. Then the escaping animal gets pounded by a fiery volley of bullets which immobilizes it and prepares it as a fitting gourmet for dinner.

Game successfully hunted, with blood dripping from it, the hunters then heave the animal, depending on its weight, on their shoulders, on a journey back to the village. It is time for sharing of the meat, the spoil of the hunting expedition; what is called Apapin – literally, kill and share. The crew that encircles the forest, which disrupts the animal from its hole, is decidedly and actually, the one that does the most herculean of the task. It is comparatively less armed and harm could easily come its way on the expedition. It also exerts the greatest energy, having to walk inside thorns, briers and thistles to get the animal scramble off its comfort zone. The other crew merely holds the gun and shoots when the animal attempts to escape. But, in the sharing of the now dismembered animal, the formula does not follow this pattern of contribution to the hunting. The shooting crew gets the meatiest part, ranging from the thighs, the neck to even the torso while the “encircling crew” is given less.

What has been happening in Nigeria’s parliament – Senate and House of Representatives – in the last 24 years can be easily explained by the above long narrative of hunters and apapin. Nigerians and the parliamentarians jointly hunted game. Nigerians were the bush encircling crew. The parliamentarians held the gun, the Appropriation Act. At each budget cycle, when it is time for sharing of our collective game, the parliament deploys licit and illicit tricks to swindle Nigerians. It then goes home with the chunkiest meat of the game, leaving miserable bones behind. One top senator in the 8th Assembly was reputed to always send his foot soldiers to “nondescript” federal commissions, agencies and parastatals to solicit their DGs to ask senate to vote funds for their infrastructural projects. The senator would then fight for the projects’ inclusion in the budget. Immediately after budget is passed, he would send his contractors to execute them. Many of the senators have become stupendously wealthy through this trickster gambit. Yet, the game is our collective patrimony. We are hungry, even lean as skeletons, while Nigerian parliamentarians grow rotund cheeks.

Make no mistake about it: Nigeria’s parliament is a fraternity. A coven of witches. Since the revelations of gross trickery in this year’s budget, how many senators of Peter Obi’s Labour Party, PDP of APGA has resigned their positions, or spoken against the padding menace? None. This is because, in fraternities, it is about group interest and nothing else. While the coven/fraternity is cobbled together by secrecy and blood oaths, the Nigerian parliament may, in reality, not be ruled by blood oaths. However, its own oath is mutual sucking of the blood of Nigeria’s collective heritage. For instance, just as it is done in Nigeria’s parliament, a significant portion of Ogboni fraternity operations are deliberately shielded off non-members. Like it, too, the yearly federal budget rituals are deliberately hidden from ordinary eyes. At the death of Ogboni lords, their corpses are (allegedly) requested by living initiates, allegedly with the brief to sever the hearts off the cavity. Such, many times, brings the dead initiates’ families in conflict with the Ogboni elders, most of whom are always in the dark about the card-carrying membership of their departed ones.

In 1960, Peter Morton-Williams did a locus-classicus on the opacity of Yoruba fraternity and cult organizations in his The Yoruba Ogboni Cult, published in Africa: Journal of the International African Institute, Vol. 30, No. 4, pp. 362-374. An earlier work on this cult which Yoruba call “secret society” was carried out in 1910 by self-taught German ethnologist and archaeologist, Leo Frobenius, whose works influenced Aime Cesaire and Leopold Sedar Senghor’s Negritude. Frobenius discovered the controlling importance of cults in Yoruba religious organizations and promptly became initiated into the Ibadan Ogboni cult. Subsequent similar scholarly works emerged dwelling on what actually interested the Yoruba in esotericism. One of such was Babatunde Lawal’s A Ya gbo, A Ya To: New Perspective on Edan Ogboni, published in African Arts, vol. 28, no. 1, 1995, pp. 36-49, 98-100, Lawal B.’s Ejiwapo: The dialectics of Twoness in Yoruba Art and Culture, African Arts, Spring, 2008, and Hans Witte’s Earth and the Ancestors: Ogboni Iconography. The books written by Susanne Wenger, a longstanding German devotee of classical Yoruba spirituality and art, known as Adunni Olorisa, who publicly claimed to have been a member of the Ogboni society, are also strong indicators of this. Wenger’s works, like A Life with the Gods and The Return of the Gods:The Sacred Art of Susanne Wenger, where a picture of hers with Ogboni elders is attached, most likely after her initiation rituals, made direct reference to the inaccessible operations of Ogboni cult, its beliefs and symbolism.

When a group of people are united by a common goal, common purpose and mutual financial aspiration, especially when such aspiration is illegal, they become a fraternity. They then sacrifice everything, anything within their powers for the sustenance of that common purpose. King Sunny Ade, famous Juju maestro, dwelled tangentially on the nocturnal minds of fraternities and witchcrafts in one of his albums in the 1970s. He sang that the witch who got drenched by a previous night rainfall will suffer the tyranny of non-disclosure. Where does she tell neigbours she was coming from when the downpour occurred? On an Arise television programme last week, when confronted with details of the opaque nature of Ningi’s suspension from the parliament, Enyinaya Abaribe latched on to an Igbo aphorism for explanation. The palmwine tapper does not say everything he sees on top of the tree. The palmwine tapper’s non-disclosure is against the spirit of a democratic open society. It is regrettably the code of operation in the Nigerian parliament.

As antithetical to modernity as it may sound, the logic of fraternities can be grounded in and corroborated by the history of blood oaths in Africa. Our forefathers’ scamper to seek existential explanations from Ogboni, witches, wizards’ cults and fraternities are poignant reminders of the existence of the sustenance of group interests. This is done through the Aboriginal Ogboni Fraternity or the Reformed Ogboni Fraternity, with their esoteric orders. In this same vein, the Nigerian parliament has proven to be a reincarnate of those sacred groves of fraternities. It holds the executive by the jugular as the constitution empowers it to do. It can castrate and relieve the executive of its office. Since the executive too has dinosaur-sized skeletons in its cupboard, it easily becomes a marionette in the hands of this fraternity. What transpired before, during and after the Tuesday stormy session leading to the suspension of Senator Ningi is a testament to this.

Abdul Ningi violated one of the sacred codes of fraternities and he had to be disciplined by the chief priests of the fraternity. In covens, public disclosure of sacred tenets is equal to treason. Where we copied this democratic system from, Akpabio and all the dramatis personae of this evil attempt to filch Nigeria’s collective wealth would tender their letters of resignation. And walk out of the Three Arms Zone, shamefaced and straight to a jailhouse. Those who scooped maggots into the 2024 Appropriation Act should face the music. The wind has blown. And we have seen the rump of self-centered buccaneers.

So I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood up upon their feet, an exceeding great army ~ Ezekiel 37:10.

Introduction:

True to life, certain unpleasant scenarios occasionally occur on the path of our journeys of destiny. Times come when we are fully pregnant with royal ideas and highly expectant of full expressions, yet the power to deliver does not show up.

At such times, we feel that we've reached the limits of our strength, and yet a demand is made for more steam to go forward. The glories within our reach and the incredible capabilities inherent in our destinies tantalize us, yet the barriers to them look quite thick and insurmountable.

Troubles now seem to have become real troubles, appearing cut and dried. Something must be done very urgently, yet there’s nothing else that we can do!

However, I am quite sure that even in such desolate and despicable circumstances, there’s still a gospel hope, so long as we live in the atmosphere of the infinite power of the Holy Spirit. There is a certain hope in our future (Job 14:7)!

In the vision of Prophet Ezekiel, in Ezekiel 37:1-12, the situation was quite hopeless for the people of Israel at that time. Nevertheless, their “dry bones” were gathered together at last by the energy of God’s Spirit, and made whole again.

Yes, this appalling condition depicts the then wretched state of the Jews, but it’s also a fitting emblem of many men and women wriggling helplessly in sin, sickness, poverty, confusion, insecurity, oppression, and family troubles in our world today.

Moreover, the vision equally serves as an encouragement to all people everywhere who are feeling the sting of hopelessness one way or the other, prophesying their recovery from whatever constitutes theirlong-continued predicament (v11).

Ezekiel was made to look “round about” several times, so that he could take an exact notice of the gravity of the simultaneous liquidation: the number of people involved, and their present condition (v2). His discovery was very awry: “there were very many in the open valley … and they were very dry”.

In other words, their flesh was wholly consumed, and their marrow had dried up; yet, they were still exposed to continuous degradation. They were entirely lifeless, helpless, and hopeless with no strength to regenerate themselves.

In fact, their condition was so bad that they had no sense of danger! Even then, the Almighty God still performed for them, bringing them an incredible restoration by the power of the Holy Ghost.

Friends, destiny recovery is a constant possibility when God is in the picture! And, undoubtedly, there is more than enough power available to turn around the most hopeless situations when the Holy Ghost is involved.

Even in our sad and dangerous moments of spiritual declension and physical deterioration, we can be revived again.However, we must look up to Him who canopen up our graves and bring us forth to a brand new life in Him, through faith (v12).

To the glory of God, we have repeatedly witnessed in our ministry what only the Holy Ghost can perform for humanity: lives dramatically changed by the power of the gospel, twisted jawbones reset, the paralyzed healed, the barren give birth to twins, etcetera! He never fails, but we must choose to live by His guidance!

Engaging Holy Ghost Power In Our Dry Bone Experiences

Dry bones are relics of death’s irreversible devastation. No created power could restore human bones to life; God alone could perform such an incredible feat.Albeit, here He still wanted to see how the prophet would relate with Him in such circumstances, asking: “son of man, can these bones live” (v3)? Can anything or anyone cause these bones to live?

Happily, Ezekiel possessed a great deal of spiritual intelligence. He didn’t pronounce that it was impossible, even though there was no hope, humanly speaking, of their being quickened. He rather wisely referred the situation to the Omniscient and Omnipotent God: “And I answered, O Lord God, thou knowest”.

Basically, our faith in God’s unfailing ability is very crucial to the outcome we will see in any unpalatable circumstance we may find ourselves in, any day!

Jesus Christ asked the two blind men who were crying to Him for mercy, “Believe ye that I am able to do this”? They answered in the affirmative, and He touched their eyes, saying, “According to your faith be it unto you”. Of course, their eyes were opened immediately (Matthew 9:27-29).

We must, in real faith, leave the questions of possibility with God. Nothing is impossible with Him (Deuteronomy 32:39).Thereafter, we can expect that He will lead us into the path of daring possibilities.

Furthermore, we must receive courage to speak God’s Word over our “dry bone” experiences: “prophesy upon these bones”. That is, foretell clearly, loudly and publicly that they shall live (v4-5). We must talk to “the mountain” that we expect to move!

As Ezekiel prophesied, there was a noiseand a shaking, signifying a mutual collision as the bones came together, and a rattling among them to get to their proper locations (v7).

Today, as we speak God’s quickening Word unto the “dry bones” in the power of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit enters into them to give effect to the Word spoken (Jeremiah 1:10; Ezekiel 2:2). The testimony of Jesus Christ is the spirit of prophecy (Revelation 19:10)!

The Almighty God, who breathed life into Adam and he became a living soul, could do it again whenever His Word is spoken by faith (John 6:63). Such divine honourrests on God’s Word, even in the human mouth. However, he who is of God must always be mindful to speak God’s Word (John 3:34).

Please note here that God is very systematic and orderly! He first laid sinews to join the bones together. Thereafter, He put the flesh in place to cover the bones, and to make themcapable of motion (v6-8).

Meanwhile, though they were now looking like proper men, they were still mere ceramics, earthly and breathless, just like Adam was before God breathed life into him. The Holy Ghost must also be fully involved for us to experience complete and durable miracles.

The Holy Spirit represents God’squickening power! Until He fills a man, hemay assume all the semblances ofspiritual life, yet he remains a mere religious bigot: lifeless, godless and hopeless!

Whenever His breath is wanting in any situation, every change remains only cosmetic. Without the Holy Ghost, our wounds cannot be truly healed, neither can we escape from the dangers of our open-valley experiences: “O breath and breathe upon these slain, that they may live” (v9).

The slaying referred to here is not with a physical sword. Many people are slainspiritually by sin, sicknesses, poverty, loneliness, afflictions and oppression. They’re slain in their career development, family life and even in their walk with God. Only the Holy Spirit can restore life to them.

When the Spirit of God comes, men live by faith in Christ, and "they stand upon their feet" as an exceeding great army for God  (v10). They stand in His grace, and in His house. They also stand firm against all their enemies: sin, Satan, and theworld.

Brethren, we are more than conquerors! It’s our turn to stand firm as soldiers of the Cross in our generation, and engage the power of the Holy Ghost to turn hopelessness around in our lives and in our communities. You won’t miss out in Jesus name. Happy Sunday!

____________________

Bishop Taiwo Akinola,

Rhema Christian Church,

Otta, Ogun State, Nigeria.

Connect with Bishop Akinola via these channels:

Facebook: www.facebook.com/bishopakinola

SMS/WhatsApp: +234 802 318 4987

Jesus met a man who had been sick for 38 years and asked him a strange question:

“Do you want to be healed?” (John 5:6).

“What kind of question is that?” I asked the Lord. “How can You ask a man who has been sick for that long if he would like to be healed?”

The Lord replied: “Femi, I asked him that because sickness was his life.”

 I was a bit slow on the uptake.

“What does that mean?”

The Lord said emphatically: “I said sickness was his life. He had known nothing but sickness. To save him, I had to deliver him from the only life he knew, which was a life of sickness. He did not know what it means to be well.” 

“But how can You save a man from life? I thought men were saved from death.”

“No Femi, the Lord replied again. “I save from life. That is why I kill before I make alive. I kill the lives of men to give them the life of God.”

Dying to Live

This makes true Christianity a death sentence. The psalmist laments to God:  

“We face death all day for you. We are like sheep on their way to be slaughtered.” (Psalm 44:22).

A believer dies to live. Paul says:

“We had the sentence of death in ourselves, so that we should not trust in ourselves but in God who raises the dead, who delivered us from so great a death, and does deliver us; in whom we trust that he will still deliver us.” (2 Corinthians 1:9-10).

The “great death” we are delivered from is this life. We are delivered from a life of death to eternal life. We are delivered from counterfeit life into original life. We are delivered from the life of the body to the life of the Spirit. We are delivered from the life of men to the life of God.

Therein lies our dilemma. Jesus’ prescription of death is unpalatable. We do not want to give up the vainglories of this life. We try, pretend but finally give up. We fail to realise that the devil is the author of the life we want to continue living in this world.

In effect, Jesus our Saviour becomes Jesus our adversary. We are determined to save our life from Jesus, who is equally determined that we must relinquish it.

Salvation from Life

Therefore, Jesus warns:

“Whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?” (Matthew 16:25-26).

Jesus is in the business of saving men from themselves. He is in the business of saving a man from his own life. The reason is simple: we are our own worst enemies. My enemy is in me.  

Therefore, many sick people desire sickness. The alcoholic desires alcohol. The drug addict desires cocaine. The lung cancer patient desires cigarettes.

When a man must be saved from his own life there is inevitably a problem. He is confronted with death. Salvation from life requires death. Therefore, the Lord kills before he makes alive.

But are we prepared to face death? Is self-preservation not a basic human instinct? It might be human, but it is not divine. Jesus laid down his life, leaving us an example to follow.

Ministry of Death

Death is a minister of the gospel. The gospel was preached in the Old Testament, but the people did not understand it because they had a veil over their hearts. The ministration of death was written and engraved in stones at the hand of Moses. But nothing can give a man a whole new perspective on life than to come face to face with death.

Armed robbers attacked me on Airport Road in Lagos. A man pointed a gun at me and my whole life flashed before my eyes. It never occurred to me that my life was supposed to end like that. What about all my plans? What about all my hopes?

Solomon warns:

“Many are the plans in a man’s heart, but it is the LORD’s purpose that prevails.” (Proverbs 19:21).

Then Jesus appeared to me, right there and then in the middle of the attack. “Trust me,” He said to me. “Believe in me,” He cajoled.

Just then, I looked up to see an armed robber approach. He pointed a gun at me, and he fired. The bullet hit me, and I fell and “died.” It ripped into my flesh, and I “died”. It is necessary to put it in graphic terms. I “bled to death” right there on that dreadful road.

There is nothing like death to make a man realise his need of a saviour. What does a dead man need? He needs a redeemer. What does a dead man need? He desperately needs a resurrection. A dead man needs Jesus.

Accordingly, Paul cried out:

“O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord.” (Romans 7:24-25).

Jesus came to save me from death. But this death was the very life of me. Therefore, Jesus “took my life.”

He made me work for Him in His fishing industry. But I am not a fisherman, and I am not interested in fishing. As a matter of fact, I am contemptuous of fishermen. They are poorly paid and are of low social status. I did not go to university to become a fisherman. By ending up as a mere fisherman it meant my life has been one big waste of time. 

Spiritual Life

Job lamented that man born of a woman is of few days, and full of trouble. (Job 14:1). What was Job’s problem?

He was born of a woman but not born again. He was born of a woman but not of the Spirit. He was born of a woman but not of God. Therefore, his life was full of insoluble trouble. Job had great possessions. However, he did not have the peace that passes all understanding. (Philippians 4:7).

It is incredible how many things can kill a man who is born of a woman. Ordinary mosquitoes can kill him. Armed robbers can kill him. He can be killed in car accidents and in plane crashes. He can fall sick and die. The spirit of fear forever torments him day and night. He is anxious about practically everything.

But what about those who are born of the Spirit? They are impregnable. Since they have died only to be born again, they can no longer be killed. Armed robbers cannot kill them. They are immune to sicknesses and diseases. Though they walk through the valley of the shadow of death, they fear no evil. (Psalm 23:4).

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David Cox

Male or female, young or old, a surprising number of us can’t make it till morning without a toilet break. Some simple changes could help

Every week, Hussain Al-Zubaidi, a GP, will see at least one patient who suffers from nocturia, the medical term for needing to get up in the night to pee. A weak bladder has long been known as a side-effect of getting older, and nocturia has been found to affect between 69% and 93% of men over 70. It is often related to benign prostatic hyperplasia, the swelling of the prostate and surrounding tissue that occurs with age.

“For many men over 60, this means that their ability to empty their bladder is poorer,” says Al-Zubaidi, the lifestyle and physical activity lead for the Royal College of GPs. “They take longer when standing over the toilet and generally they’ll retain urine, which means they’re much more likely to be triggered to wake up and go for a wee in the night.”

But Al-Zubaidi has begun to notice a worrying new trend – many of the patients coming to see him are men or women in their 20s and 30s. Some researchers have found that nocturia can affect up to 44% of men between 20 and 40. So what is going on?

One theory is that this is a consequence of modern lifestyles. “I think it’s mainly down to drinking habits,” says Al-Zubaidi. “People are often busier during the day, so they tend not to ‘fluid load’ in the morning, which is what we’re designed to do. In the evenings, they’ll drink more water because they’re thirsty, and then get really awakened in the early hours when their bladder is full.”

Such unhealthy drinking habits may be encouraged by our fondness for streaming platforms and social media. A recent study using data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey in the US found that 32% of participants over the age of 20 had to wake up and urinate twice or more in the night. This risk was almost 50% greater in people who spent five or more hours a day watching videos in various formats.

“I wonder whether it’s having that time for yourself in the evening while you’re watching Netflix, and suddenly you’re better able to notice your thirst, respond to it and do something about it,” says Al-Zubaidi. “But by that point, it’s a bit too late in the day and you’re going to wake up in the middle of the night needing to pee.”

But there are plenty of other factors that can contribute to nocturia. Rebecca Haddad, a doctor at the Hôpital Rothschild in Paris who has previously specialised in research on nocturia and ageing, says that smoking, consuming too much alcohol and being physically inactive can all reduce bladder capacity, making the need to urinate more frequent.

“There is a link between physical activity and urine production during the day and at night,” she says.

In particular Haddad explains that spending too much time sitting during the day, or staring at screens in the evening, may change the body’s circadian rhythms and lead to a strange phenomenon known as nocturnal polyuria, where people pass normal amounts of urine during the day, but large volumes at night.

Life’s big hormonal shifts also explain why nocturia becomes more common with age. Haddad points out that while it is often perceived as a male condition, it is just as much of a problem for women, with one leading study, called EpiLUTS, of 30,000 people finding that 69% of men and 76% of women over the age of 40 lived with nocturia episodes that woke them at least once in the night.

“Nocturia is definitely about much more than just the prostate,” she says. “Menopause is one of the transitional periods that generally impacts its occurrence. Diminished levels of the hormone oestrogen may induce anatomical and physiological bladder changes, contributing to a reduction in functional bladder capacity. Excess nocturnal urine production can also be provoked by oestrogen depletion.”

Menopause can also impair sleep and lead to weight gain, a combination of factors that drives many cases of nocturia. People with obesity and postmenopausal women are far more prone to a condition called obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA), where your breathing stops and starts hundreds of times during sleep, reducing the amount of oxygen that gets into the bloodstream.

“The thinking is that when people are of increased weight, it puts strain on the heart,” says Al-Zubaidi. “And when people are also getting poor-quality sleep, the heart has to beat faster to keep your blood circulating with the oxygen that it has.”

Whenever the heart is working harder, it releases a hormone called brain natriuretic peptide, which increases urine production. “It’s basically trying to reduce the strain on the heart by removing some of the blood volume as urine,” says Al-Zubaidi. “There’s a huge proportion of the population who have undiagnosed OSA, and nocturia is one of the nine key symptoms that could point towards that. Although many people don’t connect the two.”

Because of the connections between the bladder and other bodily systems, nocturia can also be a sign of chronic conditions such as hypertension, type 2 diabetes and kidney impairment.

“Chronic kidney disease is a problem because the kidneys are no longer as effective at making concentrated urine, meaning that too much water may end up being peed,” says Prof Marcus Drake, a specialist in neurological urology at Imperial College London.

However, Drake says that people should not be unduly concerned unless there is a sudden increased severity in the problem, with no apparent behavioural cause. “It is more worrying if the person is also constantly thirsty, or if there are additional unexplained symptoms such as unsteady walking or excessive snoring.”

At the same time, having to get up during the night to go the toilet is not ideal for your health. We’re increasingly learning that poor sleep can have all kinds of negative consequences, not just for energy levels but also for the stability of blood-sugar levels and long-term cognition.

“When you have blood sugar that is regularly spiking, you’re more likely to retain weight, which causes obesity,” says Al-Zubaidi. “We also know that even after a single poor night’s sleep, you accumulate certain proteins in the brain that are linked to dementia in later life.”

When it comes to preventing nocturia, the best advice is probably to focus on scheduling most of your fluid intake earlier in the day. In particular, Al-Zubaidi advises not having more than 330ml of fluids within three hours of going to sleep. That’s the same amount as a typical can of soft drink, or a large glassful.

“You want to have at least a quarter of your daily fluid intake in that first hour to two hours, when your body is really requiring some hydration after sleep,” he says. “And then if you’ve been doing any exercise, try to replace that fluid there and then. We call it the golden hour – if you can do it within an hour of activity, it’s much, much better than going for a run, and then catching up three or four hours later.”

If you do have to get up in the night, try to get back to sleep as soon as possible. While it may be tempting to check your phone for notifications or scroll social media, the light from the screen will affect the levels of sleep hormones and make it harder to nod off again.

“Try to avoid switching on any lights when you go for a wee,” says Al-Zubaidi. “Your eyes should be adapted to the dark, given that you’ve woken up in the middle of the night. And then try to get back into bed as soon as possible. My final tip is that one of the key signals the body uses to go to sleep is a dip in temperature. So just turn the pillow round or have the duvet off when you get back into bed, and you’re much more likely to feel sleepy again.”

Five other reasons you might regularly wake during the night

1 Overheating During sleep, your core body temperature should dip by 1-2C, a common pattern across all mammals. However, if you’re too warm – something that can be triggered either by eating a large meal close to bedtime or by consuming alcohol or caffeine in the evening, because digestion increases your metabolic rate – you might struggle to reach deep sleep. Your duvet also might be too thick.

2 Stress A stressful day can mean that a complex network in your body known as the hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis, which connects the brain and various glands, is still active when you’re trying to get to sleep. This means that cortisol, the main stress hormone, is far higher than your body expects it to be in the early hours of the morning. This can disrupt your natural sleep cycles.

3 Sleep apnoea Obstructive sleep apnoea, a condition that causes you to temporarily stop breathing, is estimated to affect 1.5 million people in the UK, becoming more common in people carrying excess weight. The resulting lack of oxygen activates a survival reflex that wakes you sufficiently to start breathing again, interrupting your sleep cycle. As a result, people with the condition tend to start their mornings feeling exhausted.

4 Heartburn Lying down for many hours in bed allows food and stomach acid to flow into the oesophagus, with this acidity slowly building throughout the night until you wake up with a burning sensation and discomfort. This can be triggered by smoking, eating large meals before bed, or consuming spicy, acidic or highly fatty foods, as well as drinking excessive amounts of alcohol and carbonated drinks.

5 Restless legs syndrome This surprisingly common condition affects 5-10% of adults in the UK and can have a variety of causes, from genetic predisposition to low iron levels in the brain. Some antidepressant or antihistamine medications can exacerbate the condition. Sufferers typically experience tingling or pulling sensations in their legs, with symptoms being more intense at night. The best remedies are thought to be daily exercise, a regular sleep schedule, stretching leg muscles before bed and taking a hot bath.

The Guardian

Disruption to internet services for millions of users in Africa could take weeks or even months to fix, following damage to undersea cables off the continent’s west coast.

Eight West African countries were suffering a second day of major connectivity issues on Friday with users in South Africa also affected, after damage to four sub-sea cables. The cause of the cable cutting was still not known, though a shifting of the seabed was among the likely possibilities.

“Repairs can take weeks to months, depending on where the damage is, what needs to be repaired, and local weather conditions,” said a spokesperson at internet analytics firm Cloudflare. “The assignment of repair ships depends on a number of factors, including ownership of the impacted cables.”

The West Africa Cable System, MainOne, South Atlantic 3 and ACE sea cables — arteries for telecommunications data — were all affected on Thursday and Friday.

MTN Group Ltd. – one of the largest wireless carriers in Africa – said that ACE and WACS have jointly initiated the repair process, and that they would send a vessel to fix the damaged cables.

Orange Marine said the firm was one of the specialist companies that would be involved in the repair operations for the cables, adding that other companies are also involved in efforts to restore the various cables. It said the repair time is not yet known.

Data show a major disruption to connectivity in eight West African countries, with Ivory Coast, Liberia and Benin being the most affected, NetBlocks, an internet watchdog, said in a post on X. Ghana, Nigeria, and Cameroon are among other countries impacted. Several companies have also reported service disruptions in South Africa.

Ghana’s main stock exchange extended trading hours by an hour on Thursday and Friday, while Nigeria’s second-largest cement maker scrapped a call with investors as the damage to four subsea cables off the west coast of Africa, stymied businesses across parts of the continent.

“This is a devastating blow to internet connectivity along the west coast of Africa, which will be operating in a degraded state for weeks to come,” said Doug Madory, director of internet analysis firm Kentik.

Ghana’s National Communications Authority said cable disruptions also occurred in Senegal and Portugal.

“This has led to a significant degradation of data services across the country, with mobile-network operators working around the clock to restore full services,” the authority said.

Red Sea

The cable faults off Ivory Coast come less than a month after three telecommunications cables were severed in the Red Sea, highlighting the vulnerability of critical communications infrastructure. The anchor of a cargo ship sunk by Houthi militants was probably responsible, according to assessments by the US and cable industry group the Internet Cable Protection Committee.

The Red Sea is a critical telecommunications route, connecting Europe to Africa and Asia via Egypt.

Together, the problems with cables on either side of the continent create a capacity crunch, with customers of those cables scrambling to find alternative routes.

Microsoft Corp. reported disruptions to its cloud services and Microsoft 365 applications across Africa.

The Downdetector website showed that a number of companies in South Africa were still severely affected on Friday, including Microsoft and Nedbank Group Ltd.

Telkom SA SOC Ltd.’s Openserve fiber unit and Standard Bank Group Ltd. were also affected, they said in statement, with Openserve adding it had re-routed traffic.

Off the southeastern coast of South Africa, the island country of Mauritius also experienced outages, with Mauritius Telecom Ltd. having to arrange to redirect traffic to other cables, it said.

Last year, WACS, along with another pipe – the South Atlantic 3 – were damaged near the mouth of the Congo River following an undersea landslide. The loss of the cables knocked out international traffic traveling along the west coast of Africa and took about a month to repair.

Bloomberg

Consumer prices remain high in Nigeria, as the February Consumer Price Index (CPI) reading otherwise known as inflation, released yesterday by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) indicated that headline inflation scaled by 1.8 percentage points (ppts) to 31.7%, the highest level since April 1996.

The inflation rate, which was a negative surprise to analysts, outpaced the Bloomberg consensus estimate of 31.3% and the 31.1% projection of analysts at CardinalStone Finance, a Lagos based investment house.
The unabated inflation pressure indicates that Nigeria remains within the top 10 countries with the highest inflation reading in Africa.

Most inflationary pressure in Nigeria remains skewed to the food basket of the CPI, with the corresponding food inflation reading settling at 37.9% in February 2024, 2.5ppts higher than in January 2024.

The analysts stated: ”This is unsurprising, as our channel checks indicated a material jump in prices of food products like rice, a consequence of the increasing depletion of food reserves and incessant insecurity issues in food-producing regions.

”The rising food prices appear to be hitting Nigerians hard, as it triggered protests in some parts of the country during the review period”.

Also, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has warned that 8.0% of Nigerians are at a high risk of food insecurity if the current trajectory persists.

Also the elevated energy prices have continued to pressure transport inflation, with a second-order impact on food prices.

NBS said: “In February 2024, the headline inflation rate increased to 31.70% relative to the January 2024 headline inflation rate which was 29.9 %.

“Looking at the movement, the February 2024 headline inflation rate showed an increase of 1.8 % points when compared to the January 2024
headline inflation rate.

“On a year-on-year (YoY) basis, the headline inflation rate was 9.79% points higher compared to the rate recorded in February 2023, which was 21.91%.

“This shows that the headline inflation rate (YoY, basis) increased in February 2024 when compared to the same month in the preceding year (i.e., February 2023).

“Furthermore, on a month-on-month (MoM) basis, the headline inflation rate in February 2024 was 3.12%, which was 0.48% higher than the rate recorded in January 2024 (2.64%).

“This means that in February 2024, the rate of increase in the average price level is more than the rate of increase in the average price level in January 2024.”

On food inflation, it stated: “The food inflation rate in February 2024 was 37.92% on a YoY basis, which was 13.57% points higher compared to the rate recorded in February 2023 (24.35%). The rise in food inflation on a year-on-year basis was caused by increases in prices of bread and cereals, potatoes, yam and other tubers, fish, oil and fat, meat, fruit, coffee, tea, and cocoa.

“On a MoM basis, the Food inflation rate in February 2024 was 3.79% this was 0.58% higher compared to the rate recorded in January 2024 (3.21%).

“In February 2024, Food inflation on a Year-on-Year basis was highest in Kogi (46.32%), Rivers (44.34%), and Kwara (43.05%), while Bauchi (31.46%), Plateau (32.56%), and Taraba (33.23%) recorded the slowest rise in food inflation on Year-on-Year basis.

”On a MoM basis, however, February 2024 food inflation was highest in Adamawa (5.61%), Yobe (5.60%), and Borno (5.60%), while Cross River (2.08%), Niger (2.56%), and Abuja (2.60%) recorded the slowest rise in food inflation on MoM basis.

Vanguard

First ship to use a new sea route delivers aid to Gaza, Israeli miliary says

A ship delivered 200 tons of humanitarian supplies, food and water to Gaza on Friday, the Israeli military said, inaugurating a sea route from Cyprusfor aid to help ease the humanitarian crisis brought by Israel’s 5-month-old offensive in the enclave.

Israel has been under increasing pressure to allow more aid into Gaza, especially in the Palestinian territory’s isolated north where hunger is at its worst, with many people reduced to eating animal feed and weeds. The United States has joined other countries in airdropping supplies into northern Gaza and has announced separate plans to construct a pier to get aid in.

Aid groups said the airdrops and sea shipments are far less efficient than trucks in delivering the massive amounts of aid needed. Instead, the groups have called on Israel to guarantee safe corridors for truck convoys after land deliveries became nearly impossible because of military restrictions, ongoing hostilities and the breakdown of order after the Hamas-run police force largely vanished from the streets.

The ship, operated by the Spanish aid group Open Arms, left Cyprus on Tuesday towing a barge laden with food, including rice, flour, lentils, beans, tuna and canned meat. The food was sent by World Central Kitchen, the charity founded by celebrity chef José Andrés, which operates kitchens providing free meals in Gaza.

Throughout the day Friday, the ship could be seen off Gaza’s coast. In the evening, the military said its cargo had been unloaded onto 12 trucks. Grainy footage released by the military showed a truck on a pier approaching the barge.

The food is to be distributed in the north, the largely devastated target of Israel’s initial offensive in Gaza, where up to 300,000 Palestinians are believed to remain, mostly cut off by Israeli forces since October.

The delivery is intended to pave the way for larger shipments. A second vessel will head to Gaza once the supplies on the first ship are distributed, Cyprus’ Foreign Minister Constantinos Kombos said. Its timing depends in part on whether the Open Arms delivery goes smoothly, he said.

The Israel-Hamas war was triggered by Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel that killed 1,200 people and resulted in another 250 being taken into Gaza as hostages. Israel’s offensive in Gaza has killed over 31,000 Palestinians and driven most of Gaza’s 2.3 million people from their homes. A quarter of Gaza’s population is starving, according to the United Nations.

The Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza accused Israeli forces late Thursday of attacking Palestinians waiting for an aid convoy at a distribution point in northern Gaza, killing at least 20 people and wounding 155. At Shifa Hospital, doctors said the casualties were mostly hit by live fire, with some showing signs of being crushed.

The Israeli military denied its forces fired at civilians or the convoy. In a statement, it said Palestinian gunmen opened fire among the crowd and that some were run over by the trucks. Aerial footage released by the military appeared to show only one man pushing and shoving people.

Bloodshed surrounding an aid convoy on Feb. 29 killed 118 Palestinians in northern Gaza, when the Israeli military said its forces fired at people in the crowd who were advancing toward them and that tanks fired warning shots to disperse them. Witnesses and hospital officials said many of the casualties were from bullet wounds.

Military officials initially blamed many of the deaths on a stampede; a later military command review said only that the stampede caused “significant harm” without addressing the cause of the deaths.

After that, plans for the sea route took shape, and the United States and other countries joined Jordan in dropping aid into the north by plane.

But people in northern Gaza say the airdrops cannot meet the vast need. Many can’t access the aid because people are fighting over it, said Suwar Baroud, 24, who was displaced by the fighting and is now in Gaza City. Some people hoard it and sell it in the market, she said.

A recent airdrop that malfunctioned plummeted from the sky and killed five people.

Another landed in a sewage and garbage dump, said Riham Abu al-Bid. Men ran in but were unable to retrieve anything, she said.

“I wish these airdrops never happened and that our dignity and freedom would be taken into consideration, so we can get our sustenance in a dignified way and not in a manner that is so humiliating,” she said.

On average, around 115 supply trucks a day have entered Gaza over the entire course of the war, according to figures released by the Israeli prime minister’s office — far below the average of 500 a day before Oct. 7 — though on some days the number spikes to above 200.

This week, Israel began allowing trucks to enter directly into the north, a step aid groups have long called for. The military has also been arranging private commercial convoys and says more than 300 trucks — mainly private — have entered the north since the beginning of February.

The Gaza Health Ministry said Friday that at least 31,490 Palestinians have been killed in the war. The ministry does not differentiate between civilians and combatants in its count but says women and children make up two-thirds of the dead.

International mediators have been working to broker a cease-fire, though hopes were thwarted for one before the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which started this week.

Hamas put forward a new cease-fire proposal calling for a three-stage process, according to a report by Al Jazeera television that was confirmed to The Associated Press by a Palestinian official.

The first six-week stage would bring a partial Israeli pullback in Gaza and the release of all female hostages held by the militants in exchange for the release of dozens of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel. In the second stage, a permanent cease-fire would be declared, and Hamas would release all Israeli soldiers being held. In the third stage, reconstruction of Gaza would begin, and the Israeli blockade of Gaza would be lifted.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the proposal “unrealistic,” but said Israel would send negotiators to Qatar for more talks.

Netanyahu’s office also said Friday that Israel has approved military plans to attack Rafah, the southernmost town in Gaza where some 1.4 million displaced Palestinians are sheltering.

It said the operation will involve the evacuation of the civilian population but did not give details or a timetable. The military said Wednesday it planned to direct civilians to “humanitarian islands” in central Gaza.

At Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, the third-holiest site in Islam, the first Friday prayers of Ramadan were held without a major outbreak of protest or violence.

The mosque has been a frequent flashpoint for Israeli-Palestinian violence in the past. Israel limited West Bank Palestinians’ access to Friday’s prayers to men over 55, women over 50 and children under 10.

The compound has long been a deeply contested religious space, as it stands on the Temple Mount, which Jews consider their most sacred site.

AP

WESTERN PERSPECTIVE

Europe to use frozen Russian profits to arm Ukraine, Scholz says

Ukraine's backers will use windfall profits on frozen Russian assets to finance arms purchases for Kyiv, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said following a meeting with his French and Polish counterparts aimed at showing unity after weeks of friction.

At a joint press conference in Berlin, Scholz, French President Emmanuel Macron and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk reaffirmed their support for Ukraine, whose ammunition-starved troops face their toughest battles since the early days of Russia's invasion two years ago.

European support has become increasingly key as U.S. President Joe Bidenhas been unable to get a big Ukraine aid package through Congress, and much of his foreign policy energy is focused on the war in Gaza.

Scholz said the leaders had agreed on the need to procure more weapons for Ukraine on the global market and to boost the production of military gear, including through cooperation with partners in Ukraine.

"We will use windfall profits from Russian assets frozen in Europe to financially support the purchase of weapons for Ukraine," Scholz said as he listed European Union efforts to increase support for Ukraine.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen called last month for the EU to consider using such profits to "jointly purchase military equipment for Ukraine".

The Commission is expected to make a concrete proposal in the coming days.

Some EU member countries such as Hungary have signalled reservations about the idea, according to diplomats in Brussels. But Scholz's comments suggested he is confident that EU countries will ultimately approve the proposal.

Scholz said the leaders also agreed on the need for the Ukraine Defence Contact group - a U.S.-led group of some 50 countries that provide military support to Ukraine - to set up a coalition to provide long-distance artillery to Kyiv.

A proposal to set up a long-range missile coalition had already been agreed in Paris on Feb. 26. It was unclear whether Scholz' comments referred to this and how Germany, which has opposed sending its long-range Taurus missiles to Ukraine, would participate.

Defence ministers from the contact group are set to meet early next week at the Ramstein U.S. Air Base in Germany.

Macron reiterated his warning that it was not just Ukrainian but European security at stake.

"We will do everything as necessary for as long as needed so that Russia cannot win this war," Macron said. "This determination is steadfast and implies our unity."

He added that the three leaders had agreed on the need to reinforce support for Moldova, which says Russia is trying to destabilize it through a "hybrid war".

He said the three leaders had agreed to never initiate an escalation with Russia, a possible way to downplay talk of sending Western ground troops to Ukraine, which has irked Germany.

FRICTION BETWEEN SCHOLZ, MACRON

The meeting of the so-called Weimar triangle - Germany, France and Poland - came after weeks of tensions, in particular between Scholz and Macron, that had alarmed officials in Kyiv and across the continent.

A hastily-arranged summit in Paris last month had aimed to give fresh impetus to stagnating Western efforts to help Ukraine repel a full-scale Russian invasion that has entered its third year.

Instead, Macron's refusal to rule out deploying Western troops to Ukraine triggered a dressing down from Scholz.

Mykhailo Podolyak, a senior adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, told Reuters that "indecision and uncoordinated action" among Kyiv's allies was leading to "grave consequences".

"Russia starts to get cocky and begins to believe that it can quantitatively squeeze Ukraine," he said. "Ukraine, in turn, is experiencing a severe shortage of specific resources, primarily shells, and is partially losing the initiative."

Tusk said the meeting on Friday showed "that some malicious rumours that there are differences between European capitals are very exaggerated".

Tusk, who is seeking to revitalize the Weimar Triangle after eight years of nationalist rule in Warsaw, said Macron and Scholz had accepted his invitation to meet again in early summer to present their next joint plans.

RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE

‘We’re not at war with Russia,’ Scholz tells Macron

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has announced that countries that support Ukraine are not at war with Russia. The statement came as the leaders of Germany, France and Poland met in Berlin on Friday to show solidarity after their recent disagreement over military support for Kiev.

During a joint press conference with French President Emmanuel Macron and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, the chancellor stated that the countries stand firmly behind Ukraine and that allied help would continue for “as long as it takes.”

“It is also clear that we are not at war with Russia,” Scholz added.

The statement follows simmering disagreements between Paris and Berlin over possible supply of long-range missiles and deployment of troops on the ground in Ukraine.

Scholz has thus far refused to send Taurus missiles to Ukraine in order to avoid further escalating a conflict with Russia. France, on the other hand, has been delivering SCALP-EG cruise missiles, which are already being used by Ukraine and are roughly equivalent to the Taurus.

Macron’s recent suggestion that the West “cannot exclude” the possibility of sending soldiers to aid Ukraine in its conflict with Russia has also drawn criticism from Germany and other NATO states.

The chancellor and the French president came together before the three-way talks on Friday to clear the air, after weeks in which the two very publicly disagreed over their Ukraine strategy.

Simmering disagreements between the two threatened to undermine cooperation between the allies.

Germany, France and Poland are among Ukraine’s key allies. Germany has become Ukraine’s second-biggest supplier of military aid after the US and is stepping up support this year.

Reuters/RT