Israel pushes deeper into Gaza and frees Hamas captive; Netanyahu rejects calls for cease-fire

Israeli ground forces pushed deeper into Gaza on Monday, advancing in tanks and other armored vehicles on the territory’s main city and freeing a soldier held captive by Hamas militants. The Israeli prime minister rejected calls for a cease-fire as airstrikes landed near hospitals where thousands of Palestinians are sheltering beside the wounded.

The military said a soldier captured during Hamas’ brutal Oct. 7 incursion was rescued in Gaza — the first rescue since the weekslong war began. Military officials provided few details but said in a statement that Pvt. Ori Megidish, 19, was “doing well” and had met with her family.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu welcomed her home, saying the “achievement” by Israel’s security forces “illustrates our commitment to free all the hostages.”

He also rejected calls for a cease-fire to facilitate the release of captives or end the war, which he has said will be long and difficult. “Calls for a cease-fire are calls for Israel to surrender to Hamas,” he told a news conference. “That will not happen.”

Netanyahu, who faces mounting anger over Israel’s failure to prevent the worst surprise attack on the country in a half century, also said he had no plans to resign.

Hamas and other militant groups are believed to be holding some 240 captives, including men, women and children. Netanyahu has faced increasing pressure to secure their release even as Israel acts to crush Hamas and end its 16-year rule over the territory.

Hamas, which has released four hostages, has said it would let the others go in return for thousands of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel, including many implicated in deadly attacks on Israelis. Israel has dismissed the offer, and Netanyahu said the ground invasion “creates the possibility” of getting the hostages out, adding that Hamas will “only do it under pressure.”

Hamas released a short video Monday purporting to show three other female captives. One delivers a brief statement — likely under duress — criticizing Israel’s response to the hostage crisis.

It was not clear when the Hamas video was made. The Associated Press usually refrains from reporting details of hostage videos because they show individuals speaking under duress and are often used for propaganda purposes.

Amos Aloni, whose daughter Danielle appeared in the video, told reporters that he and his wife were shocked to see her on TV but felt “relief from her being alive and seeing her.”

The U.S. is providing weapons shipments on an almost daily basis to Israel, Pentagon deputy press secretary Sabrina Singh told reporters.

Despite the rising number of civilian casualties, “we are not putting any limits on how Israel uses weapons,” Singh said. “That is really up to the Israeli Defense Force.”

The Israeli military has been vague about its operations inside Gaza, including the location and number of troops. Israel has declared a new “phase” in the war but stopped short of declaring an all-out ground invasion.

Larger ground operations have been launched both north and east of Gaza City. Israel says many of Hamas’ forces and much of its militant infrastructure, including hundreds of kilometers (miles) of tunnels, are in Gaza City, which before the war was home to over 650,000 people, a population comparable to that of Washington, D.C.

Though Israel ordered Palestinians to leave the north, where Gaza City is located, and move south, hundreds of thousands remain, in part because Israel has also bombarded targets in so-called safe zones. Around 117,000 displaced people hoping for safety are staying in hospitals in northern Gaza, alongside thousands of patients and staff, according to U.N. figures.

The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, known as UNRWA, says nearly 672,000 Palestinians are sheltering in its schools and other facilities, which have reached four times their capacity.

UNRWA head Philippe Lazzarini accused Israel of “collective punishment” of the Palestinians, and of forcing their displacement from northern Gaza to the south, where they are still not safe.

The death toll among Palestinians passed 8,300, mostly women and children, the Gaza Health Ministry said Monday. The figure is without precedent in decades of Israeli-Palestinian violence. More than 1.4 million people in Gaza have fled their homes.

Over 1,400 people have died on the Israeli side, mainly civilians killed during Hamas’ initial attack, also an unprecedented figure.

Lazzarini said 64 of the agency’s staff were killed in the past three weeks, the latest just hours before he addressed an emergency U.N. Security Council meeting, when an agency security official was killed with his wife and eight children.

Most Palestinians in Gaza “feel trapped in a war they have nothing to do with,” he said.

Video circulating on social media showed an Israeli tank and bulldozer in central Gaza blocking the territory’s main north-south highway.

The video, taken by a local journalist, shows a car approaching an earth barrier across the road. The car stops and turns around. As it heads away, a tank appears to open fire, and an explosion engulfs the car. The journalist, in another car, races away in terror, screaming, “Go back! Go back!” at approaching vehicles.

The Gaza Health Ministry later said three people were killed in the car that was hit.

Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, an Israeli military spokesman, declined to comment on where Israeli forces are deployed, but said additional forces had entered Gaza and operations would continue to “expand and intensify.”

The military said troops have killed dozens of militants who attacked from inside buildings and tunnels. It said that in the last few days, it had struck more than 600 militant targets, including weapons depots and anti-tank missile launching positions. Palestinian militants have continued firing rockets into Israel, including toward its commercial hub, Tel Aviv.

Hamas said its fighters clashed with Israeli troops who entered from the northwest. It was not possible to independently confirm battlefield claims made by either side.

Meanwhile, crowded hospitals in northern Gaza came under growing threat.

Gaza’s Health Ministry shared video footage that appeared to show an explosion and a column of smoke near the Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital for cancer patients. The hospital director, Dr. Sobhi Skaik, said it had sustained damage in a strike that endangered patients.

All 10 hospitals operating in northern Gaza have received evacuation orders, the U.N.’s office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs said. Staff have refused to leave, saying evacuation would mean death for patients on ventilators.

Strikes hit within 50 meters (yards) of Al Quds Hospital after it received two calls from Israeli authorities on Sunday ordering it to evacuate, the Palestinian Red Crescent rescue service said. Some windows were blown out, and rooms were covered in debris. It said 14,000 people are sheltering there.

Israel says it targets Hamas fighters and infrastructure and that the militants operate among civilians, putting them in danger.

Beyond the fighting, conditions for civilians in Gaza are continually deteriorating.

With no central power for weeks and little fuel, hospitals are struggling to keep emergency generators running to operate incubators and other life-saving equipment. UNRWA has been trying to keep water pumps and bakeries running.

On Sunday, the largest convoy of humanitarian aid yet — 33 trucks — entered the territory from Egypt, and another 26 entered Monday. Relief workers say the amount is still far less than what is needed for the population of 2.3 million people.

The fighting has raised concerns that the violence could spread across the region. Israel and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah have engaged in daily skirmishes along Israel’s northern border.

In the occupied West Bank, Israel carried out airstrikes Monday against militants clashing with its forces in the Jenin refugee camp. Hamas said four of its fighters were killed there. As of Sunday, Israeli forces and settlers have killed 123 Palestinians, including 33 minors, in the West Bank, half of them during search-and-arrest operations, the U.N. said.

AP

RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE

Zelensky ‘feels betrayed’ by West – Time

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky feels “betrayed” by his Western backers, who have denied him the support and attention he has grown used to, his aides told Time magazine. According to the report, published on Monday, the president’s circle now see him as “delusional” and the conflict with Russia as impossible to win.

Zelensky and his advisors spoke to the US magazine after the Ukrainian president visited Washington last month. Unlike the hero’s welcome he received last December, the most recent visit saw Zelensky grilled about corruption in Ukraine and forbidden from addressing lawmakers on Capitol Hill.

Despite US President Joe Biden’s pledge to support Kiev “for as long as it takes,” Congress has failed to agree on a new aid bill for Ukraine. Ten days after Zelensky returned to Kiev from Washington, lawmakers managed to pass a spending bill to avert a government shutdown, but only after stripping $6 billion in Ukraine funding from it.

“Zelensky feels betrayed by his Western allies. They have left him without the means to win the war, only the means to survive it,” Time wrote, citing a member of his team. 

“The scariest thing is that part of the world got used to the war in Ukraine,” Zelensky said. “Exhaustion with the war rolls along like a wave. You see it in the United States, in Europe. And we see that as soon as they start to get a little tired, it becomes like a show to them: ‘I can’t watch this rerun for the 10th time’.”

Zelensky told Time that he still believes that his forces can defeat Russia on the battlefield, and that he will not entertain any negotiations with Moscow, despite Ukraine’s summer counteroffensive failing to achieve its objectives and resulting in what the magazine called “enormous losses.” According to the most recent Russian figures, the Ukrainian military lost more than 90,000 men between early June and the beginning of this month.

“He deludes himself,” one of Zelensky’s closest aides told Time. “We’re out of options. We’re not winning. But try telling him that.”

The outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war has drawn the attention of the West away from Kiev in recent weeks, with the Pentagon surging troops and weapons to the Middle East and US House Speaker Mike Johnson prioritizing a vote on military aid to the Jewish state instead of Ukraine.

“It’s logical,” Zelensky told Time, adding that while “the world’s help is needed” in Israel, “we lose out.”

WESTERN PERSPECTIVE

Ukraine boosts grain deliveries to Black Sea ports as new export route working

The success of Ukraine's new Black Sea export corridor has led to a sharp increase in the number of rail wagons heading to the ports of Odesa region, a senior railways official said on Monday.

Valeriy Tkachov, deputy director of the commercial department at Ukrainian Railways, said on Facebook that over the last week the number of grain wagons heading to Odesa ports increased by more than 50% to 4,032 from 2,676.

In August, Ukraine launched a "humanitarian corridor" for ships bound for African and Asian markets to try to circumvent a de facto blockade in the Black Sea after Russia quit a deal that had guaranteed Kyiv's seaborne exports during the war.

Later, a senior agricultural official said the route - which runs along Ukraine's southwest Black Sea coast, into Romanian territorial waters and onwards to Turkey - would also be used for grain shipments.

More than 700,000 metric tons of grain have left Ukrainian ports via the new route since August. Ukraine shipped up to six million tons of grain per month from its Black Sea ports before Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Ukraine's first deputy farm minister said last week that grain shipments through the new corridor may exceed one million metric tons in October.

However, ministry data showed on Monday that overall grain exports fell by about 50% in October due to logistics difficulties.

Ukrainian officials say more that 50 cargo vessels have entered the corridor since it came into operation in August.

Ukraine's government expects a grain and oilseeds harvest of 79 million tons in 2023, with a 2023/24 exportable surplus of about 50 million tons.

RT/Reuters

Businesses, governments, and investors were already navigating a foggy global landscape before the tragic events unfolding in the Middle East. But the horrible conflict between Hamas and Israel, which has already led to enormous suffering and claimed the lives of thousands of civilians, including so many children, has introduced a new layer of uncertainty for the global economy, the subject of this commentary. Even in the highly unlikely event that the geopolitical situation improves rapidly in the region and beyond, a deep sense of uncertainty will remain, driven by five economic and financial factors.

First, the global economy’s major growth engines are currently under strain. With Europe teetering on the brink of recession and China stalling, the US economy has emerged as the main driver of global growth. This became particularly evident in the third quarter of 2023, with the United States’ growth estimates impressing once again.

But even America’s growth outlook is uncertain. Over the past 15 months, the consensus of analysts about the US economy’s direction has oscillated wildly between four scenarios: soft landing, hard landing, crash landing, and no landing. Although the prevailing view now is that the US is headed for a soft landing, forecasts may well shift toward a hard one over the coming weeks.

When the growth narrative of the world’s largest economy, with its mature institutions and diversified productive base, can change so easily, it is no wonder that uncertainty in the rest of the world is even more pronounced. Instead of resembling a normal bell-shaped distribution of potential outcomes with a single peak and slender tails, the global outlook looks like a multimodal distribution with fat tails on either end, suggesting a higher likelihood of extreme events.

On the positive side, as Gordon Brown, Michael Spence, Reid Lidow, and I argue in our new book Permacrisis, advances in generative artificial intelligence, life sciences, and clean energy have the potential to enhance productivity and boost potential GDP growth significantly. On the other end of the distribution, there is the risk that a set of vicious cycles will aggravate cascading effects.

Second, the journey toward this uncertain future is fraught with peril. The most immediate risk is the recent spike in global borrowing costs as markets adapt to the likelihood that the US Federal Reserve and other major central banks, having hiked interest rates aggressively – albeit belatedly – to counter inflation trends they initially misdiagnosed – will maintain elevated rates for an extended period.

Third, the persistence of this interest-rate outlook increases the risk of recessions and financial-market turbulence. We saw early signs of this in March when balance-sheet mismanagement and slippages in bank supervision led to the failure of some regional US banks.

Fourth, the global economy and key financial markets like the one for benchmark US government bonds now lack key top-down anchors such as growth momentum, confidence in policymaking signals, and stabilizing financial flows.

As economic-policy tools become more subordinate to political and geopolitical considerations, the already weak outlook for global growth may well deteriorate. Monetary policy faces a credibility threat and genuine structural uncertainties about the equilibrium level of interest rates and the delayed effects of a remarkably concentrated rate-hiking cycle. Moreover, shrinking central-bank balance sheets and the absence of an effective policy framework compound the challenge of determining the right inflation targets in a world economy characterized by an insufficiently flexible supply side.

Amid growing deficits and rising interest payments, there is also the question of who will absorb the significant surge in government debt issuance. For more than a decade, the Fed has been the most reliable buyer of US government bonds, owing to its seemingly limitless money-printing capabilities and minimal price sensitivity. But, having been forced by inflation and other excesses to shift from quantitative easing to quantitative tightening, the Fed is now a reliable net seller. International buyers also appear more cautious, partly owing to geopolitical tensions. Moreover, many domestic institutional investors, such as pension funds and insurance companies, have already accumulated significant bond holdings, incurring substantial mark-to-market losses.

Without these economic, policy, and technical anchors, the global economy and capital markets resemble boats in a rough and unpredictable sea. That brings us to the fifth driver of global uncertainty: the inadequate response to long-term crises like climate change and widening economic inequality. The longer we wait to tackle these problems, the greater the eventual costs will be. Our insufficient actions today ensure that we will face more complicated economic and political obstacles down the line.

As we write in Permacrisis, today’s world has been shaped by three ongoing failures: the repeated inability to achieve consistent and inclusive growth that also respects our planet; recurrent domestic-policy errors; and the constant lack of effective global policy coordination at a time when shared challenges demand collective action. Together, these failures have had profound economic, financial, institutional, sociopolitical, and geopolitical ramifications.

That is the bad news. The good news is that we have the capacity to solve these problems and turn today’s vicious cycles into virtuous ones. But to implement the major shifts required to achieve this goal, we need visionary political leadership at the national level and increased global awareness of our shared challenges. Absent such leadership, we risk leaving our children and grandchildren a world plagued by economic and financial instability, domestic political unrest, and geopolitical turmoil.

Project Syndicate

As a young computer developer, I never had any aspirations of being a manager, let alone a CEO.

When I started my career some 30 years ago, everybody in my field seemed to be following the so-called IBM model of climbing the corporate ladder — starting at the entry level for a few years and then hopping from rung to rung into more senior managerial roles. It wasn't for me.

Luckily for me, I worked for a progressive company that understood the need to create dual career paths. You could remain an individual contributor, sometimes leading technical projects, or you could be a manager. I chose the technical track, rising through my field until there was nowhere left to go but the C-suite. Now that I'm here, I see a huge problem.

The average person has no interest in being a manager anymore.

My company recently ran a survey of 1,000 full-time employees across the U.S. who are not already in a managerial position. A meager 38% said they were interested in becoming a people manager at their current company. This problem crosses industries and borders. We're seeing clients in all lines of work struggling to fill frontline management positions.

It's becoming clear that companies have to adapt to fill these gaping voids, and the stakes couldn't be higher. Picture a Jenga tower — there are only so many blocks you can remove from the middle before the top comes crashing down.

Why management roles have grown less attractive

There was a time when the title manager meant prestige, respect, maybe even admiration — a chance to lead, a pathway to the top. But that dynamic has been shifting for decades and can now feel out-of-touch and out-of-date.

This management backlash has roots in several places. For one, trust in leadership has eroded sharply. Only 21% of workers strongly agree that they trust the leadership in their company, and the number has been on the decline since the pandemic.

At the same time, the "individual contributor" has enjoyed increasing status in many circles, especially in the tech community. A talented developer, for instance, can rise through the ranks of a company without managing people. Ultimately, their pay and perks may end up being comparable with senior people leaders, without ever having to wrestle with the challenges that go along with management.

Meanwhile, the pressures on managers are only growing. Familiar challenges with delivering results and bottom-line value have been augmented in recent decades with mounting HR responsibilities. For many, the stress and time commitment of management simply outweigh any added benefits.

Indeed, of all the insights gleaned from this survey, one stood out to me more than any other — people see managerial responsibilities as a non-starter for work-life balance. Among those we surveyed, 40% said their biggest worry with becoming a manager was increased stress, pressure and hours. When we asked people to identify their top ambition, 67% said spending more time with their friends and families and 64% said being more physically and mentally. The lowest priorities were becoming a C-suite executive (4%) and becoming a people manager (9%).

How to fill the 'missing middle'

This management gap couldn't come at a worse time. As companies struggle with disruptions from AI, increasing automation and a tight labor market, clear leadership is needed more than ever, but it's getting hard to find.

So how can companies fill the "missing middle" — and make management aspirational again?

One important step is to redefine the meaning of manager. Partly, this is about reconceptualizing the role. The tech industry, for instance, has popularized "player-coaches:" employees who continue to contribute as individuals, while also leading small teams of trusted colleagues. While this balance can be challenging to strike, the upside is sustained engagement with your field and growth of new management skills.

At the same time, companies are finding new ways to valorize management. When McKinsey asked middle managers what they wanted more of, the obvious answer was bonuses. In a competitive market, many companies are dishing out signing bonuses to attract talent into the pipeline. According to a 2021 survey, 43% of hiring managers were offering more paid time off and 40% were offering better job titles to win the war for talent. It's not all about perks, however. Middle managers also said they wanted to be rewarded with increased autonomy and more responsibility.

An equally critical step is to help managers handle those increased responsibilities with better technology — enabling them to extend spans of control while diminishing toil and grunt work. Take the challenge of handing out raises. Traditionally, this process required a manager to manually evaluate every employee and come up with a number and a rationale for each one. But new tools are taking the guesswork and paperwork out of the equation. We use a smart compensation tool to evaluate performance metrics and create a clear picture of what a person is paid relative to their peers, and relative to industry standards. This not only removes risk of bias but also cuts down on time. There are similar tools for goal-setting and skills-mapping, lessening the burden of regular performance reviews while making them more meaningful.

Behind all these efforts lie advances in collecting and sharing people data. The better we can arm frontline managers with insights about their teams, the faster they can make the right decisions.

In a world with fewer managers, these steps mean companies can increase spans of control while maintaining productivity, reducing stress and saving people time. In the end, it's not just for retaining current managers, but recruiting new ones. Consider this: Deloitte found 73% of managers said they should be a model of well-being for their employees, but only 35% of employees could see that in their manager. Until we give them the time and resources to do their jobs effectively and happily, people will continue to have reservations about moving up in the ranks. The Jenga tower will continue to sway — if not collapse.

Entrepreneur

At least two new Resident Electoral Commissioners (RECs) appointed by President Bola Tinubu may be card-carrying members of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), the president’s party.

Two other nominees are also found to be long-term allies of prominent politicians serving in the Tinubu administration.

President Tinubu last Wednesday announced the nomination of 10 Resident Electoral Commissioners (REC).

The nominees are Etekamba Umoren (Akwa Ibom State), Isah Ehimeakne (Edo), Oluwatoyin Babalola (Ekiti), Abubakar Ma’aji (Gombe), Shehu Wahab (Kwara), Bunmi Omoseyindemi (Lagos) and Aminu Idris (Nasarawa).

Others are Mohammed Yelwa (Niger), Anugbum Onuoha (Rivers), Isma’ila Moyi and (Zamfara).

In announcing the nominations, presidential spokesperson Ajuri Ngelale noted that the president exercised the powers granted him by Section 154 (1) of the Nigerian constitution and Section 6 of the Electoral Act (2022).

“Tinubu expects the new appointees to abide by the highest standards of professional and ethical conduct in the discharge of their duties,” Ngelale said.

Initial confusion

However, there was confusion initially over the nomination of the new RECs. Ngelale had earlier in the afternoon issued a statement containing the names of nine nominees.

The nine nominees were Isah Ehimeakne (Edo), Bamidele Agbede (Ekiti), Jani Bello (Gombe), Taiye Ilayasu (Kwara), Bunmi Omoseyindemi (Lagos), Yahaya Bello (Nasarawa), Mohammed Yalwa (Niger), Anugbum Onuoha (Rivers) and Abubakar Dambo (Zamfara).

But by the time the second list of RECs came out, there were 10 names with the inclusion of Umoren from Akwa Ibom.

Also, five nominees that made the initial list were dropped. They are Messrs Agbede (Ekiti), Bello (Gombe), Ilayasu (Kwara), Yahaya Bello (Nasarawa), and Dambo (Zamfara).

No reason was given for the changes.

RECs ties with Tinubu, APC, others

To ensure the neutrality of the electoral umpire, Nigerian law prohibits the appointment of members of political parties as resident electoral commissioners, individuals who coordinate INEC activities in different states.

However, at least four of the RECs nominated by Tinubu are known to have ties with him, the APC or politicians in his government.

They are Umoren, Shaka, Omoseyindemi and Onuoha.

Umoren is a member of the APC and a long-time ally of the Senate President, Godswill Akpabio.

He served as the Chief of Staff at the Akwa Ibom State Government House when Akpabio governed the state between 2007 and 2014.

Akpabio also nominated him to serve as the Secretary to the State Government (SSG) under his successor, Udom Emmanuel, then an ally of Akpabio. Umoren was only sacked in 2018 following a fallout between Akpabio and Emmanuel, which also led to the removal of other key allies in the state executive council.

August 2018, during a welcome rally for Akpabio in Uyo, Umoren and other sacked members of Emmanuel’s state executive council embraced the All Progressives Congress (APC).

In what could best be described as an induction into the party, Umoren accepted a broom, an emblem of the APC, from Akpabio on stage and chanted APC through the speakers.

“Akwa Ibom, you are in safe hands,” he told the audience as he shook the broom vigorously.

Another open supporter of Tinubu and the APC is the nominee for Edo State REC, Isah Shaka.

PREMIUM TIMES reviewed Shaka’s digital footprint and found multiple social media posts before, during and after the 2023 general elections that showed his bias towards Tinubu and his party, the APC.

In one of such posts reviewed by this newspaper, Shaka took to social media to list reasons other Nigerians should support Tinubu just like he was doing.

In another post a few days before the presidential election held on 25 February, Shaka showered praises on Tinubu on his Facebook page.

“He is the issue,” he wrote of Tinubu on 18 February. “He is the subject matter. He is the target. He is the Numero Uno in this game. He is the subject of discussion across the Nation. He is the owner of the game. He that wrestles with him sharpens him and makes him pay attention. He is the Jagaban. He is the President of Nigeria 2023-2032 By his grace Almighty God.”

Again, minutes after INEC declared Tinubu winner of the presidential election around 4 a.m. on 1 March, Shaka took to his page to congratulate the party. “Congratulations to all APC families,” he posted.

Curiously, on Friday shortly after PREMIUM TIMES reviewed Shaka’s Facebook page where he scribbled some of his thoughts, his profile and posts were removed from the social media platform.

The Lagos REC nominee, Bunmi Omoseyindemi, had enjoyed political patronage from Tinubu and his allies since 2001. He was appointed chairman of the Lagos State Traditional Medicine Board in 2001 when Tinubu governed the state, a position he held until 2015.

In 2016, he was appointed an electoral commissioner in the Lagos State Independent Electoral Commission (LASIEC) by the then-governor Akinwunmi Ambode who was also an ally of Tinubu at the time.

Another REC nominee, Onuoha was found to be an ally of a top official of the Tinubu administration. He has been close to the Minister of Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Nyesom Wike.

Onuoha was a Special Adviser on Lands and Surveys to Wike until 2019 when he was crowned as a traditional leader in Rumuepirikom, Obio/Akpor Local Government area in the state – the same community Wike hails from.

However, before he was appointed as a Special Adviser to Wike, he had in 2007, served as the Commissioner, Legal and Political Parties Monitoring at the Rivers State Independent Electoral Commission (RSIEC). He was one of the nine-member RSIEC Electoral Commissioners sworn in by the then-governor, Rotimi Amaechi, in 2007. They were led by the late Nimi Briggs, an emeritus professor.

Ex-INEC staff make list

The president also nominated four former officials of INEC as RECs from Ekiti, Kwara, Nasarawa and Zamfara states.

The Zamfara REC nominee, Isma’ila Moyi, was an official of the commission. He retired as a director of the Stores Directorate at the INEC headquarters in Abuja in 2015. Before then he had served as an administrative secretary for the commission in Zamfara, Sokoto, Adamawa, Katsina, Borno and Kano states.

The REC nominee for Nasarawa State, Aminu Idris, is a former director of Election Planning and Management (EPM) at the INEC headquarters.

While the nominee for Kwara State REC, Wahab, is a former INEC administrative secretary in Benue State, the Ekiti REC nominee, Oluwatoyin Babalola, was INEC’s director of Legal Drafting and Clearance.

What the Law says

The third schedule to the Nigerian 1999 Constitution prohibits the appointment of a partisan person into INEC in Item F, paragraph 14.

“There shall be for each State of the Federation and the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, a Resident Electoral Commissioner who shall be a person of unquestionable integrity and shall not be a member of any political party,” section 14, 3(b) states.

Section 6 of the Electoral Act (2022) added that the appointees “shall be answerable to the Commission” and “shall hold office for a term of five years from the date of his or her appointment which may be renewable for another term of five years and no more.”

The section also said the appointments must be in accordance with the Federal Character Commission Act.

“The Resident Electoral Commissioner appointed under the Constitution may only be removed by the President, acting on an address supported by a two-thirds majority of the Senate praying that the Resident Electoral Commissioner be so removed for inability to perform the functions of the office, whether arising from infirmity of mind or body or any other cause, or for misconduct,” the section states.

Jega’s warning

A few days before Tinubu nominated the new RECs, a former chairperson of Nigeria’s Electoral Commission, INEC, Attahiru Jega, criticised the existing laws that empower politicians to appoint top officials of the commission.

Jega, who headed the electoral commission from 2010 to 2015, said such nominees are usually not thoroughly screened, a situation he said has a ‘damaging effect’ on the integrity of elections.

“The appointment of Resident Electoral Commissioners should be divested from the president and given to the Commission at INEC, with powers to hire and fire,” he said at a retreat for members of the Senate in Akwa Ibom State.

Like Buhari, Like Tinubu

With the new appointments, Tinubu appears to be following the path of his predecessor, former President Muhammadu Buhari.

Buhari had on multiple occasions nominated partisan individuals and persons with integrity issues as INEC RECs, drawing widespread criticism from Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) and members of the public.

In 2017, Buhari nominated Olalekan Raheem, a member of his party, the APC as REC from Osun state. The Senate stood down his nomination for being a card-carrying member of the APC, which he established during his screening by the senators. Although he claimed to have ditched party politics, it didn’t change his fate.

In 2021, Buhari’s nomination of Lauretta Onochie, a known member of his party, drew another round of criticisms and condemnations from the public.

Although the Senate rejected her nomination, it was not due to her party affiliation.

The chairperson of the Senate Committee on INEC at the time, Kabiru Gaya, said she was disqualified because there was no vacancy in the Delta State slot where Buhari nominated her to represent.

Onochie was later appointed the chairperson of the board of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) by the former president.

Last year, at least four of the 19 REC nominees by Buhari were found to either be members of political parties or have corruption baggage. The Senate, however, went ahead to confirm their appointments.

Gaya, a member of the ruling APC said at the time that the 19 nominees were confirmed because the petitions against them were not enough to stop the Senate from approving them.

The Adamawa scenario

During the last general elections, the sordid effect of the phenomenon Jega criticised, played out in Adamawa when the state’s former REC, Hudu Ari, illegally announced a winner in the governorship elections even though the collation of results was still in progress and when he was not empowered to do so by law.

His action provoked chaos across the state, leading to a mob brutalising a National Commissioner of the commission, Abdullahi Zuru, a professor. Yet, all the Electoral Commission could do was to nullify his pronouncement, which until the latest amendment of the electoral act in 2022, may have been binding.

INEC also suspended him and recommended him for punishment by the then President, Buhari, the only one empowered to sack him.

Screening and Confirmation

It remains to be seen if the Senate will confirm the nominees with partisan interests considering what the law says.

The confirmation of the nominees’ appointments is subject to a two-thirds vote of the members of the Senate who are expected to screen them.

If confirmed, they are to serve a five-year term each, and can only be removed by the president and a two-thirds vote from the National Assembly.

Rarely in modern times can so few have tried to take so much from so many. If Nigeria had lost its arbitration dispute with Process & Industrial Development in a London court on 23 October, it would have cost our people close to $1 billion.

We won, and all decent people can sleep easier as a result. Justice Robin Knowles said Nigeria had been the victim of a monstrous fraud. But it was a close-run thing. As the judge said: “I end the case acutely conscious of how readily the outcome could have been different, and of the enormous resources ultimately required from Nigeria as the successful party to make good its challenge.”
But ordinary Nigerians never took the decisions that ended up before Knowles. Had Nigeria lost, it would have required schools not to be built, nurses not to be trained and roads not to repaired, on an epic scale, to pay a handful of contractors, lawyers and their allies – for a project that never broke ground.

How did it get to this point? How did Nigeria prevail? Was this a one-off, or par for a shabby and distasteful course? What are the lessons for the future?

The ‘P&ID Affair’ was already firmly set by the time I came into office in 2015. A company registered in the British Virgin Islands that no one had heard of, with hardly any staff or assets, had won a contract to build a gas processing plant in Cross Rivers state. The company was owned by Irish intermediaries who knew Nigeria well and had done business in everything from healthcare to fixing tanks.
The previous government could not supply the gas. The plant was never built. Construction was not started. P&ID did not even buy the land for the facility. But the contract, incredibly, was clear: P&ID could sue Nigeria, and claim all the profits it might have made over 20 years as if everything had been completed.

Nigeria was in court in London, trying to talk down liability and costs. Back at home, fixers were looking to work out a quiet settlement. This is often the way. A lot of contracts end up in dispute. P&ID won a settlement in 2017 of $6 billion, with compound interest. People, including out of work ex-British Cabinet Minister Priti Patel, were queuing up to insist we paid, or risk Nigeria becoming an untrustworthy trade pariah.

It was clear that far from the whole story had been told. I tasked Abba Kyari, my chief- of-staff and Attorney General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami, with finding a way, even at that late stage and despite so much conflicting advice, to get us a fair hearing. Working with a number of different agencies and senior officials of government, we began to find a huge amount of evidence, not all of which Knowles was to accept. But he agreed that P&ID had paid bribes. He agreed that one of P&ID’s founders had committed perjury. And he agreed that P&ID had somehow found in its possession a steady supply of Nigeria’s privileged internal legal documents, outlining our plans, strategies and problems.
My own view is that this whole, sorry affair shows how important it is to follow the legal process in resolving a dispute. It shows that given time and opportunity for each side to present their case, the temple of justice can satisfactorily resolve all disputes without resort to extra-judicial measures. It was definitely worth the struggle: this was an attempted heist of historic proportions, an attempt to steal from the treasury a third of Nigeria’s foreign reserves.

But even at this moment, we should note what the English judge cautioned. The arbitration process in London “was a shell that got nowhere near the truth.” We need better contracts, in the public and private sector. And we need greater transparency: the reality is that, had P&ID not conjured up quite such an outlandish ransom, they may have found themselves in the same place as the myriad other invisible contractors who all too often quietly take Nigeria for many millions in out of court settlements. Sterner sanctions are indicated for Nigerian public officials who have been proven to connive with foreign criminals to defraud our country.

Nigeria has won this battle with corruption, but the war is far from over. As Knowles concluded: “This case has also, sadly, brought together a combination of examples of what some individuals will do for money. Driven by greed and prepared to use corruption; giving no thought to what their enrichment would mean in terms of harm for others. Others that in the present case include the people of Nigeria, already let down in so many ways over the history of this matter by a number of individuals in politics and administration whose duty it was to serve them and protect them.” Well said.

** Buhari was Nigeria’s President from 2015 to 2023.

Ayo Adebanjo, leader of Afenifere, the Yoruba socio-cultural group, says Nigerians should be ashamed to have a president with a certificate “baggage”. 

Adebanjo spoke in a 41-minute interview published by PUNCH on Sunday. 

During the presidential election tribunal, Atiku Abubakar, flagbearer of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the election, had contested the authenticity of the Chicago State University (CSU) certificate presented to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) by President Bola Tinubu.

Tinubu had said he lost his original certificates and presented a replacement of his CSU diploma to INEC for the 2023 presidential election.

Following a court order, the university later released Tinubu’s academic records, saying his replacement certificate matched its format.

But the Afenifere leader said without technicalities, no honest person can defend Tinubu on the matter.

“There is no truth in what he says. That’s the unfortunate thing. I feel sorry for the country, particularly Tinubu defenders, can they be proud? Whether true or not, why is it him? When they finally produced the record from the university, it was even more damaging,” Adebanjo said. 

“In this Tinubu saga, you presented the certificate from the university, now they are trying to change (the conversation) to his attendance at the university. 

“How many people attended the university and never completed it or even dropped out? You said you attended and have the certificate, and the registrar said they don’t know about the certificate. What more do you want?

“This is what makes me sad in this country and those still saying something in defence of this ugly situation where we should cover our face as Nigerians that the man produced to be our president has this baggage. I am concerned.”

Adebanjo said he had defended Tinubu on the certificate scandal in the past because of the little knowledge he had on the matter.  

“Mind you, I should be one of those who should be proud that Tinubu is the president of this country because I made him the governor of Lagos state. When this certificate saga started, I was the one who defended him. I defended him from the fact I saw at that time. But when some facts are now coming up, I folded my arms,” he said. 

“Forget technicalities, do the substantial justice. Can any honest person, in view of the exposure from the university, say he (Tinubu) got that certificate from the university?”

The Cable

Germany is eyeing imports of natural gas from Nigeria in an effort to secure and diversify its energy supply, Chancellor Olaf Scholz said during a visit to the country.

“This will also have an impact on the global gas price,” Scholz said in the Nigerian capital Abuja on Sunday after a meeting with president Bola Tinubu. If more states offered gas on the global market, prices would decrease, the German leader said.

“It is important to use the capacities where they are, and that we diversify production all over the globe,” Scholz added.

Tinubu said that given Nigeria’s sizable resources, “we are ready to encourage investments in a gas pipeline.”

Germany — which switched off its last nuclear power plants this year and weaned off Russian pipeline gas during last year’s energy crisis — will need large volumes of LNG to run its power-hungry industry. So far, Europe’s economic powerhouse gets crude oil from Nigeria, but not gas.

Scholz last year also visited Senegal, where he offered German help to open up gas fields off the coast. The West African country expects to deliver first quotas of the fuel in the second half of 2024.

This week’s trip is Scholz’s third to Africa since taking office two years ago. Nigeria, the continent’s largest economy, also wants to make business deals in the areas of raw materials with European partners. Scholz will travel to Ghana on Monday (today).

For quite a while, Nigeria has been talking up its desire to end its reliance on oil money and earn more from other sources, especially farming. Its population of around 213m, the biggest in Africa, has some 37m hectares of fertile land. But it grows too little on it.

Worse, some of its produce isn’t healthy. Food exported to Europe and America has been rejected because of its excessive residue of pesticide. To feed Nigeria’s own people, let alone markets abroad, farmers will have to cut back on their use of some chemicals.

That will not be easy, since Nigeria is one of the continent’s leaders at splurging on pesticides, importing some $384m-worth in 2018 alone to kill bugs and weeds. Yet 58% of the pesticides registered for use in Nigeria are banned in Europe because of their toxicity.

Sometimes the chemicals are so strong that they don’t only wipe out pests and other crop-predators; they can kill people. In 2020 some 270 people in a village in Benue state died after fishermen using chemicals to catch fish had dumped some of them into the community’s main water source. Scientists at several Nigerian universities argue that dangerous pesticides and other agrochemicals are contributing to rising rates of cancer, which kills as many as 79,000 Nigerians a year. A recent study found that roughly 80% of the pesticides most commonly used by small-scale farmers are highly hazardous.

“Farmers use what’s available and recommended to them,” taking advice from marketers and traders, says Jochen Luckscheiter of the Heinrich Böll Foundation, an NGO tied to Germany’s Green party. “If you want to stop them, you have to stop the supply—and make alternative products available.”

In August environmental activists and politicians gathered in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital, to review the current laws on importing and using pesticides—and discovered that hardly any exist. Instead, they lamented that two bills going through parliament will make it easier for foreign firms to sell dangerous wares.

Boosting Nigeria’s farm output is no simple task. Farmers need seeds that produce higher yields, affordable fertiliser and better access to markets. They also need security. Thousands have fled their homes and fields because of jihadists in the north and to escape fighting over land between herders and farmers. By contrast with these challenges, it ought to be easy to regulate pesticides so they do not poison people.

A boat carrying over 100 passengers capsized mid water at Benue river on Saturday.

Traders, women and children, heading for Binnari town in Karim-Lamido local government area of the state were on the ill-fated boat.

Many of the passengers were returning from Mayoreneyo fish market in Ardo-Kola LGA.

The boat left Mayoreneyo local jetty at about 3.30pm and capsized 40 minutes later, according to sources.

A resident of Mayoreneyo, Musa Mayoreneyo, told our correspondent that the ill-fated boat had earlier conveyed the passengers from Binnari to Mayoreneyo.

In a telephone interview, a resident of Binnari, said, “As l am  talking to you now, only bodies of two persons were recovered by local divers.”

A source at the Mayoreneyo local jetty told our reporter that none of the passengers had life jacket when the incident occurred.

Acting chairman of inland water transporters in Taraba state, Jidda Mayoreneyo, said that  about 15 bodies were recovered close to the scene.

Confirming the incident, Chairman, caretaker committee of Ardo-Kola, Dalhatu Kawu, described it as tragic.

Daily Trust