Month: June 2024

Abuja, Nigeria — Nigerian unions began an indefinite strike on Monday, closing schools and public offices, impacting airports and shutting down the national power grid after talks with the government failed to agree a new minimum wage.

The worst cost-of-living crisis in a generation in Africa’s most populous country has left many Nigerians struggling to afford food.

The main Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and the Trade Union Congress (TUC) urged workers to down tools after the government refused to increase its minimum wage offer beyond 60,000 naira ($45) per month, according to local media.

“Nigeria workers stay at home. Yes! To a living wage. No! To a starvation wage!” the unions said in a joint statement.

Since coming to office a year ago, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has ended a fuel subsidy and currency controls, leading to a tripling of gas prices and a spike in living costs as the naira has slid against the dollar.

Tinubu has called for patience to allow the reforms to take effect, saying they will help attract foreign investment, but the measures have hit Nigerians hard.

‘No work now’

Government buildings, gas stations and courts in the capital Abuja were closed, AFP journalists saw, while the doors to the city’s airport were also shut and long queues formed outside.

A source close to the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) said domestic flights had been cancelled and the airport would be shut to all flights on Tuesday.

AFP has contacted FAAN for comment.

The unions are also protesting an electricity tariff hike.

The labor union at the Transmission Company of Nigeria said it had shut down the national grid overnight. Blackouts were reported across the country.

Security was stepped up with an increased presence of soldiers on the streets of Abuja.

Outside the Federal Secretariat, which houses several ministries, picketing union members urged workers to return home.

“Stay at home and stay safe. We don’t want to embarrass you. No work now,” they called.

In Lagos, an AFP journalist saw the industrial court was padlocked shut and children walked back home after finding their schools were closed.

In the northern city of Kano, government offices were shut and public schools closed. Children in one neighborhood chanted: “No school, it’s a free day!”

The unions said in a statement on Friday: “Nigerian workers, who are the backbone of our nation’s economy, deserve fair and decent wages that reflect the current economic realities.”

AFP has contacted the government for comment.

Thousands of Nigerians rallied against soaring living costs in February, though previous strikes have had limited effect.
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JOHANNESBURG — President Cyril Ramaphosa called Sunday for South Africa’s political parties to overcome their differences and find “common ground” to form the first national coalition government in its young democracy.

His comments came in a speech straight after final election results were announced confirming that no party won a majority in last week’s vote. Unprecedented coalition talks were set to start to find a way forward for Africa’s most industrialized economy.

Ramaphosa’s African National Congress party had already lost its 30-year majority after more than 99% of votes were counted by Saturday and showed it couldn’t surpass 50%. 

The ANC received 40% of the votes in last week’s election in the final count, the largest share. 

Without a majority it will need to agree on a coalition with another party or parties for the first time to co-govern and re-elect Ramaphosa for a second term. South Africa’s national elections decide how many seats each party gets in Parliament and lawmakers elect the president later.

“Our people have spoken,” Ramaphosa said. “Whether we like it or not, they have spoken. We have heard the voices of our people, and we must respect their choices and their wishes. … The people of South Africa expect their leaders to work together to meet their needs. This is a time for all of us to put South Africa first.”

The ANC was the party of Nelson Mandela and freed South Africa from the apartheid system of white minority rule in 1994. It had governed with a comfortable majority since then, but this election saw an unprecedented slump in its support as voters deserted the party due to its failure to solve widespread poverty, extremely high unemployment levels and problems with delivering basic government services to many in a nation of 62 million.

The ANC had said earlier Sunday that it was starting its negotiations with all major parties. More than 50 parties took part in the election, and at least eight had significant shares of the vote. At least 26 of them, including the MK Party led by former President Jacob Zuma, have lodged objections and complaints with the electoral body alleging voting irregularities, which it has promised to address. 

ANC Secretary-General Fikile Mbalula said it was open to all negotiations, even with the main opposition Democratic Alliance, which has led the chorus of criticism of the ANC for years but is viewed by many analysts as the most stable coalition option for South Africa.

The DA won the second most votes with 21.8%, and the two parties would hold a majority together and be able to govern. DA leader John Steenhuisen said his party was also initiating talks with parties. The ANC won 159 seats in the 400-seat Parliament, down from the 230 it won in the last election. The DA increased slightly to 87 seats. 

There is some time pressure for coalition talks to progress and for the uncertainty to be minimized, given that the new Parliament needs to sit for the first time and elect a president within 14 days of the election results being declared. 

Ramaphosa is seeking a second and final term and Mbalula said his position as leader of the ANC was not in question despite the election result. Mbalula said the ANC would not consider the demands by Zuma’s MK Party that Ramaphosa step down as a condition for talks.

“No political party will dictate terms to us, the ANC. They will not … You come to us with that demand, forget (it),” Mbalula said.

He said the ANC would not be arrogant, though. “The elections have humbled us, they have brought us where we are,” he said.

South Africa is a leading voice for its continent and for the developing world on the global stage and is due to take over the presidency of the Group of 20 rich and developing nations late this year. It’s the only African nation in that group.

“Everyone is looking to see if South Africa can weather the storm and come out the other side,” political analyst Oscar van Heerden said on the eNCA news network. 

Amid many coalition options, the ANC could also join with MK and the far-left Economic Freedom Fighters, although they have been cast as partners that would make investors uneasy. Both have pledged to nationalize parts of South Africa’s economy, including its gold and platinum mines, among the world’s biggest producers.

The DA has long said it will not work with the EFF and MK, calling them a “doomsday coalition” for South Africa. Steenhuisen, the party’s leader, repeated that stance Sunday in a speech on national television but said his party was starting talks with others and would approach them “with cool heads and open minds.”

Political analyst van Heerden said an ANC-DA coalition would “possibly give stability” but there were some within the ANC who would oppose it. Other smaller parties could be involved to dilute it and make it more palatable for the ANC, some commentators said.

“The DA has approached the ANC as the enemy over many, many years,” van Heerden said. “The next few days is going to be a very difficult period. People will have to be mature behind closed doors.”
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Johannesburg — The Electoral Commission of South Africa Sunday night announced official results that marked the start of a new era in the country’s politics. 

Official results from Wednesday’s historic election showed the governing African National Congress, ANC, had lost its absolute majority for the first time.

The ANC won 159 seats in the 400-member National Assembly — about 40% of the vote — a huge drop of 71 seats since winning 57% of the ballot in the last elections in 2019.

The chairman of the Electoral Commission, Mosotho Moepya, acknowledged the election had been fiercely contested.

“These elections were undoubtedly the most difficult and the most hotly contested,” he said.However, he added that they were free and fair and represented “the collective voice of the nation.”

While the ANC still received the largest number of seats by far, it will now have to enter a coalition with opposition parties.

The business-friendly Democratic Alliance, or DA, took the second-largest share of the vote, with 87 seats.

It was followed with 58 seats for uMkhonto we Sizwe, or MK, a newly formed party led by former President Jacob Zuma. The radical left, Economic Freedom Fighters party, overtaken by upstart MK, came in fourth, with 39 seats. Smaller parties took the remaining seats.

Analysts say corruption, high unemployment and general failure to do more to improve the lives of poor Black South Africans was why many South Africans turned on the ANC, 30 years after it brought about the end of apartheid.

After Sunday’s announcement, President Cyril Ramaphosa took to the podium to accept the results.

“Our people have spoken whether we like it or not …. Through their votes they have demonstrated clearly and plainly that our democracy is strong, that our democracy is robust, and it is enduring.”

Zuma’s MK said the day before the results announcement that it doesn’t accept the results and wants a recount. Zuma intimated violence could ensue if it didn’t get its way.

However, Defense Minister Thandi Modise told VOA at the results ceremony that she was not worried.

“Well, we have not necessarily taken extra measures…. We have begged all political parties to be calm…. We hope that there will not be any necessity for any of us in the security sector to come in and interfere,” she said.

The ANC now has 14 days in which to form a coalition government, so negotiations with the other parties will be getting underway.
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Minibus taxis are everywhere in South Africa, and all of them run on gasoline. But engineers at one university are hoping to change that as they are getting better-than-expected results from their all-electric minibus taxi. Vicky Stark has the story from Cape Town, South Africa.
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Johannesburg — The final results of a tumultuous South African election are expected to be declared late Sunday, though what is already evident is that the governing party has lost its majority for the first time.

A former South African president once boasted that the African National Congress would rule “until Jesus comes back.”

There’s a joke now doing the rounds in South Africa that Jesus must have returned, given the bashing the party took in general elections this week.

In a seismic political shift, the ANC lost its parliamentary majority for the first time, getting just 40 percent of the vote.

It was a chastened ANC when the party’s secretary-general Fikile Mbalula made the first public remarks since the vote, acknowledging that there was “nothing to celebrate” but “It is the will of the people, and that is what we must accept.”

“The African National Congress commends the people of South Africa for once again demonstrating the strength and vibrancy of our democracy. The results send a clear message to the ANC. We wish to assure the people of South Africa that we have heard them, we have heard their concerns, their frustrations and their dissatisfaction,” Mbalula said.

Mbalula stressed that contrary to some reports the party would not be asking President Cyril Ramaphosa to step down. In terms of who the ANC might now go into coalition with, he said they were engaging with other parties, without specifying.

David Everatt, a professor at Johannesburg’s Wits School of Governance said he suspected “almost everything” was still on the table in terms of coalitions.

The party that got the second largest amount of votes, at over 21 percent, was the Democratic Alliance, or DA, which the business-minded would prefer to see in a coalition.

However, some in the ANC might balk at going into an alliance with them as they are seen as a “white” party, and prefer to go with a radical party like the Economic Freedom Fighters, he said.

“The political arithmetic is being recalibrated almost hourly…we’ll have final results by the end of today, being Sunday, and after that they have to horse-trade very quickly, because they don’t have very long before we have to form, or they have to form, a government,” he said.

One of the main upsets of the election was newly formed party uMkhonto weSizwe, or MK, led by former President Jacob Zuma. Coming in with around 14 percent of the votes, MK ate into some of the ANC’s support.

Ironically it was Zuma who made the comment about the ANC governing until Jesus returns.

Zuma, 82, has an axe to grind with the ANC, after it forced him to resign from the presidency in 2018 amid corruption scandals.

On Saturday, the former ANC stalwart-turned-disrupter called for a delay in the official declaration of results, alleging rigging and demanding a re-count. He provided no proof for this claim, and the election on Wednesday has been widely praised as free and fair.

However Zuma intimated there could be violence if the announcement of official results went ahead as planned, said Everatt.

“This is not a democrat, this is an autocrat who is threatening violence to try to get what he wants,” he said.

However the electoral commission said while they were dealing with challenges to the vote, the announcement would go ahead Sunday night at a conference center in Johannesburg.

President Ramaphosa has confirmed his attendance.
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ABUJA, Nigeria — Nigeria’s government is cracking down on illegal mining, making dozens of arrests of unlicensed miners since April for allegedly stealing the country’s lithium, a critical mineral used in batteries for electric vehicles, smartphones and power systems.

The recent arrests come as Nigeria seeks to regulate its mining operations of critical minerals, curb illegal activity and better benefit from its mineral resources. The clean energy transition, a shift away from coal, oil and gas and toward renewable energy and batteries has spiked global demand for lithium, tin and other minerals. Illegal mines are rife in the country’s fledging industry as corruption among regulatory officials is common and the mineral deposits are located in remote areas with minimal government presence. Officials say profits from illicit mining practices has helped arm militia groups in the north of the county.

In the most recent arrests in mid-May, a joint team of soldiers and police conducted a raid on a remote market in Kishi, in the country’s southwestern Oyo State. Locals said the market, once known for selling farm produce, has become a center for illicit trade in lithium mined in hard-to-reach areas. The three-day operation resulted in the arrest of 32 individuals, including two Chinese nationals, local workers and mineral traders, according to the state government and locals. Loads of lithium were also seized.

Jimoh Bioku, a Kishi community leader, said there had been “clandestine searches” for the mineral at remote sites tucked away in the bush in the past years by Chinese nationals before “they engaged people to dig for them and turned the market into a transit point.” The community was “particularly worried about the insecurity that usually follows illegal mining and that was why we reported to the state government,” he said.

China is the dominant player in the global EV supply chain, including in Nigeria where China-owned companies employ mostly vulnerable people leaving Nigeria’s far north — ravaged by conflicts and rapid desertification — to work in mining operations throughout the country. China’s nationals and companies are frequently in the spotlight for environmentally damaging practices, exploitative labor and illicit mining. There have been at least three cases of illegal mining arrests involving Chinese nationals in two months.

President Bola Tinubu has repeatedly blamed illegal mining for the worsening conflicts in the country’s north and asked the international community for help to stop the problem, which provides armed groups with the proceeds needed to sustain and arm themselves.

The Chinese Embassy in Abuja did not respond to an Associated Press request for comment on the arrests and claims of illegal operations. But in a statement last year following a report by The Times of London alleging Chinese miners were bribing militants for access, the embassy said it “always encouraged and urged the Chinese companies and nationals in Nigeria to abide by the laws and regulations of Nigeria.”

Nigeria is emerging as a new source of lithium in Africa as the world’s largest producers, like Australia and Chile, are unable to fulfill the growing demand worldwide. But illegal activities thrive in Nigeria’s extractive sector, denying the government due revenues, said Emeka Okoro, whose Lagos-based SBM Intelligence firm has researched illicit mining and terrorism financing in northern Nigeria.

And the combination of conflict and climate change effects, such as once fertile land rapidly turning into useless arid sand in northern Nigeria, has produced a cheap workforce for mining sites.

The arrests of “both Chinese nationals and young Hausa boys from conflict-affected regions underscore a troubling pattern,” Okoro told the AP. “The socioeconomic strain stemming from conflict and the repercussions of climate change has given rise to a vulnerable demographic desperate for survival.”

To fight resource theft that causes losses of $9 billion to the government annually, according to the country’s extractive industry transparency watchdog, the West African nation has set up a 2,200-strong “corps of mining marshals” earlier in the year.

While existing law enforcement agencies are still combating the problem, the new corps is geared at curbing “the nefarious activities of illegal miners,” said Segun Tomori, spokesperson for the solid minerals ministry.

Before the Kishi raid, the mining corps arrested two trucks laden with lithium on the outskirts of the capital Abuja in April. Later that month, the corps raided a location in Karu, Nasarawa State, near Abuja, leading to the arrest of four Chinese nationals and the seizure of tons of lithium. Tomori said the cases are now in court.

On April 22, a federal court in Ilorin, in the north-central region, convicted two Chinese nationals for illegal mining and sentenced them to a one-year jail term, although with an option of a fine.

Nigeria has long neglected the solid minerals sector, which allows some communities like the northern-central town of Jos — which is tin-abundant — to depend on subsistence mining for their livelihood.

For those communities where livelihood is tied to mining, Tomori said the government is encouraging artisanal miners there to form cooperatives and operate legally.
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ABUJA, Nigeria — Nigeria adopted a new national anthem Wednesday after lawmakers passed a law that replaced the current one with a version dropped nearly a half-century ago, sparking widespread criticism about how the law was hastily passed without much public input.

President Bola Tinubu’s assent to the law comes a day after it was approved by both chambers of Nigeria’s National Assembly, which is dominated by the governing party. The federal lawmakers introduced and passed the bill in less than a week, an unusually fast process for important bills that usually take weeks or months to be considered.

The Arise, O Compatriots anthem being replaced had been in use since 1978, when it was introduced by the military government. The anthem was composed at a time when the country was reeling from a deadly civil war and calls on Nigerians to “serve our fatherland with love and strength” and not to let “the labor of our heroes past (to be) in vain.”

The new version that takes immediate effect was first introduced in 1960 when Nigeria gained independence from Britain before it was dropped by the military. Titled Nigeria We Hail Thee, it was written by Lillian Jean Williams, a British expatriate who was living in Nigeria at the time.

The new anthem was played publicly for the first time at a legislative session attended by Tinubu, who marked his one year in office as president Wednesday.

Many Nigerians, however, took to social media to say they won’t be singing the new national anthem, among them Oby Ezekwesili, a former education minister and presidential aspirant who said that the new law shows that the country’s political class doesn’t care about the public interest.

“In a 21st Century Nigeria, the country’s political class found a colonial National Anthem that has pejorative words like “Native Land” and “Tribes” to be admirable enough to foist on our Citizens without their consent,” Ezekwesili posted on X.

Supporters of the new anthem, however, argued it was wrong for the country to have adopted an anthem introduced by the military.

“Anthems are ideological recitations that help the people to be more focused. It was a very sad development for the military to have changed the anthem,” public affairs analyst Frank Tietie said.
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