LAGOS, Nigeria: Nigeria, West Africa’s economic and military powerhouse, is adrift as President Muhammadu Buhari has been in London for medical treatment for a month as of Wednesday, worrying many that his undisclosed health problems have left Africa’s most populous country without strong direction.
The president’s prolonged absence has created “a vacuum,” said Dapo Alaba Sobowale, the head of a small IT company in Lagos’ sprawling Computer Village, where small shops and vendors line the streets selling mobile phones and computer gadgets.
“A lot of people are relying on him,” Sobowale said. He said he isn’t bothered about who, exactly, is sitting in office. “I’m bothered about the person being there making the right choices,” he said.
Buhari, 74, went on medical leave to the United Kingdom on May 7 for unspecified health problems. He had already been in London for nearly seven weeks earlier this year for treatment. He looked thin and frail when he returned to Nigeria, where he later missed three consecutive weekly Cabinet meetings. On his return, he said he’d never been as sick in his life.
Government officials and Buhari’s family have sought to reassure Nigerians who have expressed their worry about his absence on social media under hashtags like #WhereIsBuhari and #MissingPresident.
On Tuesday, Aisha Buhari, the president’s wife, said her husband is “recuperating fast” after she returned to Nigeria from visiting him in London. “He thanks Nigerians for their constant prayers for his health & steadfastness in the face of challenges,” she tweeted.
Buhari’s long absences this year have raised questions over whether the former military leader from northern Nigeria will be able to complete his four-year term that is up in 2019 and kicked off speculation over who might succeed him.
This is especially important in Nigeria because an unwritten agreement maintains the presidency should alternate between the Muslim-majority north and Christian-dominated south. Nigeria’s 170 million people are almost evenly divided between Christians and Muslims.
Buhari was elected in 2015 after defeating incumbent Goodluck Jonathan, a southerner, on campaign promises to battle corruption and crack down on Boko Haram extremists in the nation’s northeast. Buhari’s administration, which marked two years in office on May 29, has a mixed track record of fulfilling those promises, analysts say.
Although the military has dislodged Boko Haram from areas where it had declared a caliphate, Nigeria’s homegrown Islamic extremists continue to carry out suicide bombings and attacks. A rail-thin Buhari welcomed 82 Chibok schoolgirls who were released by Boko Haram in May after three years in captivity and then he flew to London that night.
This is not the first time Nigeria has experienced an ailing, absent president. In 2010 President Umaru Yar’Adua died after being out of the country for medical treatment for several months.
Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, now acting president, is credited for bringing some momentum back to the government by easing tensions in the insecure, oil-producing Niger Delta and pledging to tackle an economy battered by the fall in global oil prices.
“There was an element of fatigue when it came to Buhari,” said Malte Liewerscheidt, senior Africa analyst for risk management firm Verisk Maplecroft. “He wasn’t acting on the big macroeconomic issues.”
However, if Osinbajo, who comes from Lagos in the south, were to take over for Buhari and stand for election in 2019, the move could be seen by northerners as threatening the power-sharing balance and potentially prompt unwelcome political unrest, observers say.
Buhari’s absence has highlighted the sense that his government is unable to get this powerful oil-producing nation back on track, critics say.
“It looks like we are rudderless,” said Dr. Jay Osi Samuels of the Alliance for New Nigeria, a group of professionals registering as a new political party. “Right now it seems like (politicians) have lost the idea of how to move the country forward.”
In Computer Village, mobile phone shop owner Williams Akah and a few customers said the majority of people in Lagos are struggling with Nigeria’s recent economic downturn, especially when it comes to finding decent work in this megacity.
Akah doesn’t know exactly what’s wrong with Buhari, but he said he’s keeping track of what happens to him: “I’m worried about him — he’s the Number One citizen.”
Nigeria adrift as leader in London for month of treatment
Nigeria adrift as leader in London for month of treatment
Pakistan militant raid kills 16 soldiers: intelligence officials
- Pakistani Taliban claim responsibility for the attack, saying in a statement it was staged ‘in retaliation for the martyrdom of our senior commanders’
“Over 30 militants attacked an army post” in the Makeen area of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, one senior intelligence official said on condition of anonymity. “Sixteen soldiers were martyred and five were critically injured in the assault.”
“The militants set fire to the wireless communication equipment, documents and other items present at the checkpoint,” he said, before retreating from the two-hour assault which took place 40 kilometers (24 miles) from the Afghan border.
A second intelligence official also anonymously confirmed the same toll of dead and wounded.
The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, saying in a statement it was staged “in retaliation for the martyrdom of our senior commanders.”
Myanmar ethnic rebels say captured junta western command
- Ann would be the second regional military command to fall to ethnic rebels in five months
- Fighting has rocked Rakhine state since the Arakan Army attacked security forces in November last year
BANGKOK: A Myanmar ethnic rebel group has captured a military regional command in Rakhine state, it said, in what would be a major blow to the junta.
The Arakan Army (AA) had “completely captured” the western regional command at Ann on Friday after weeks of fighting, the group said in a statement on its Telegram channel.
Ann would be the second regional military command to fall to ethnic rebels in five months, and a huge blow to the military.
Myanmar’s military has 14 regional commands across the country with many of them currently fighting established ethnic rebel groups or newer “People’s Defense Forces” that have sprung up to battle the military’s 2021 coup.
Fighting has rocked Rakhine state since the AA attacked security forces in November last year, ending a ceasefire that had largely held since the putsch.
AA fighters have seized swathes of territory in the state that is home to China and India-backed port projects and all but cut off state capital Sittwe.
The AA posted photos of a man whom it said was the Ann deputy regional commander, in the custody of its fighters.
AFP was unable to confirm that information and has contacted the AA’s spokesman for comment.
AFP was unable to reach people on the ground around Ann where Internet and phone services are patchy.
In decades of on-off fighting since independence from Britain in 1948 the military had never lost a regional military command until last August, when the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA) captured the northeastern command in Lashio in Shan state.
Myanmar’s borderlands are home to myriad ethnic armed groups who have battled the military since independence for autonomy and control of lucrative resources.
Last month the UN warned Rakhine state was heading toward famine, as ongoing clashes squeeze commerce and agricultural production.
“Rakhine’s economy has stopped functioning,” the report from the UN Development Programme said, projecting “famine conditions by mid-2025” if current levels of food insecurity were left unaddressed.
Joe Biden approves $571 million in defense support for Taiwan
- The US is bound by law to provide Taiwan with the means to defend itself despite the lack of formal diplomatic ties between Washington and Taipei
- Taiwan went on alert last week in response to what it said was China’s largest massing of naval forces in three decades
WASHINGTON: US President Joe Biden on Friday agreed to provide $571.3 million in defense support for Taiwan, the White House said, while the State Department approved the potential sale to the island of $265 million worth of military equipment.
The United States is bound by law to provide Chinese-claimed Taiwan with the means to defend itself despite the lack of formal diplomatic ties between Washington and Taipei, to the constant anger of Beijing.
Democratically governed Taiwan rejects China’s claims of sovereignty.
China has stepped up military pressure against Taiwan, including daily military activities near the island and two rounds of war games this year.
Taiwan went on alert last week in response to what it said was China’s largest massing of naval forces in three decades around Taiwan and in the East and South China Seas.
Biden had delegated to the secretary of state the authority “to direct the drawdown of up to $571.3 million in defense articles and services of the Department of Defense, and military education and training, to provide assistance to Taiwan,” the White House said in a statement without providing details.
Taiwan’s defense ministry thanked the United States for its “firm security guarantee,” saying in a statement the two sides would continue to work closely on security issues to ensure peace in the Taiwan Strait.
The Pentagon said the State Department had approved the potential sale to Taiwan of about $265 million worth of command, control, communications, and computer modernization equipment.
Taiwan’s defense ministry said the equipment sale would help upgrade its command-and-control systems.
Taiwan’s defense ministry also said on Saturday that the US government had approved $30 million of parts for 76 mm autocannon, which it said would boost the island’s capacity to counter China’s “grey-zone” warfare.
US Senate approves Social Security change despite fiscal concerns
- The Senate in a 76-20 bipartisan vote shortly after midnight approved the Social Security Fairness Act
- The House of Representatives last month approved the bill in a 327-75 vote
WASHINGTON: The US Congress early on Saturday passed a measure to boost Social Security retirement payments to some retirees who draw public pensions — such as former police and firefighters — which critics warned will further weaken the program’s finances.
The Senate in a 76-20 bipartisan vote shortly after midnight approved the Social Security Fairness Act, which would repeal two-decades-old provisions that can reduce benefits for people who also receive a pension.
The House of Representatives last month approved the bill in a 327-75 vote, which means that Senate approval sends it to Democratic President Joe Biden to sign into law. The White House did not immediately respond to a question about whether Biden intended to do so.
The bill will overturn a decades-old change to the program that had been made to limit federal benefits to some higher-earning workers with pensions. Over time, growing numbers of municipal employees such as firefighters and postal workers also saw their payments capped.
Most Americans do not participate in pension plans, which pay a defined benefit, and instead are dependent on what money they can save and Social Security. Just one in ten US private sector workers have pension plans, according to Labor Department data.
The new provisions impact about 3 percent of Social Security beneficiaries — totaling a little more than 2.5 million Americans — and the workers and retirees affected by these provisions are key constituencies for lawmakers and their powerful advocacy groups have pushed for a legislative fix.
Some of them could receive hundreds of dollars more a month in federal benefits as a result of the bill, retirement experts said.
Some federal budget experts warned the change could hurt the program’s already shaky finances as the bill’s price tag is approximately $196 billion over the next decade, according to an analysis by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office.
Emerson Sprick, associate director of economic policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center, said in an interview, “the fact that there is such overwhelming support in Congress for exactly the opposite of what policy researchers agree on is pretty frustrating.”
Instead of scrapping the current formulas for determining retirement benefits for these workers, revisions have been floated, as well as more accurate communication from the Social Security Administration on how much money these public sector employees should expect.
The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a nonpartisan fiscal think tank, is also warning the extra cost will affect the program’s future.
“We are racing to our own fiscal demise,” the group’s president, Maya MacGuineas, said in a statement.
“It is truly astonishing that at a time when we are just nine years away from the trust fund for the nation’s largest program being completely exhausted, lawmakers are about to consider speeding that up by six months.”
Republican Senator Ted Cruz on the Senate floor on Wednesday said the bill as written will “throw granny over the cliff.”
“Every senator who votes to impose $200 billion dollars of cost on the Social Security Trust Fund, you are choosing to sacrifice the interest of seniors who paid into Social Security and who earned those benefits,” he said.
Bill supporters said Social Security’s future can be addressed at a later time.
Asked about the solvency implications pf this legislation, Senator Michael Bennet, a supporter of the bill, said: “Those are much longer term issues that we have to find a way to address together.”
US authorizes military sales of more than $5 billion to Egypt
- Cairo is one of the largest recipients of US security aid since its peace treaty with Israel in 1979
Washington: The United States government on Friday authorized the sale of more than $5 billion in military equipment to Egypt, which has become an increasingly close partner in mediating the Gaza crisis despite serious human rights concerns.
The State Department informed Congress it had approved the sale of $4.69 billion in equipment for 555 US-made M1A1 Abrams tanks operated by Egypt, $630 million in 2,183 Hellfire air-to-surface missiles and $30 million in precision-guided munitions.
The sale “will support the foreign policy and national security of the United States by helping to improve the security of a Major Non-NATO Ally country that continues to be an important strategic partner in the Middle East,” according to a statement.
US President Joe Biden took office in 2021 vowing a harder line on Egypt over human rights concerns under President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, but his administration has repeatedly gone ahead with arms deals with Egypt.
Cairo is one of the largest recipients of US security aid since its peace treaty with Israel in 1979.
Egypt and the United States have worked increasingly closely since the outbreak of the war in Gaza in 2023, with Cairo playing a mediating role.
In addition to the sales to Egypt, the State Department also authorized $295 million in equipment for Taiwan, $170 million in bombs and missiles for Morocco, and $130 million in uncrewed aircraft systems and armored vehicles to Greece.
The Taiwan authorizations were announced shortly after US President Joe Biden announced $571.3 million in new military aid to the self-ruled island, which China claims as part of its territory and has vowed to retake — by force, if necessary.
The US Congress can still block the sales, but such attempts are usually unsuccessful.
