'Where is the state?': Mass looting engulfs Sudanese capital

Mass looting by armed men and civilians is making life an even greater misery for Khartoum residents trapped by fierce fighting between Sudan's army and paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), witnesses said.

While the RSF dominates the capital on the ground and the army conducts frequent airstrikes, the witnesses said police had simply vanished from the streets when the fighting started in Khartoum on April 15.

"Nobody protects us. No police. No state. The criminals are attacking our houses and taking everything we own," said Sarah Abdelazim, 35, a government employee.

As mayhem grips Khartoum, the army accuses the RSF of looting banks, gold markets, homes and vehicles. The RSF denies the charge and has released videos showing its men arresting looters. The paramilitary force say some people wear RSF uniforms and steal to make them look bad.

Some witnesses said the RSF was stealing vehicles and setting up camps in people's houses. The RSF also denies this.

More than 17,000 men who were jailed in Sudan's two most dangerous prisons -- Kobar and Al Huda -- were released early in the fighting. Both sides blame the other for the prison break.

'THE DEVIL'S CITY'

"We are now living in the devil's city. People are looting everything and neither the army nor the RSF nor the police, none of them want to protect ordinary people. Where is the state?" said Mohamed Saleh, 39, a primary school teacher.

The fighting erupted after disputes over plans for the RSF to join the army and the chain of command as part of a political transition. It has caused some 200,000 to flee to nearby countries and over 700,000 have been displaced inside Sudan, triggering a humanitarian crisis that threatens to destabilise the region.

Intense battles have continued to rage in Khartoum and its sister cities of Bahri and Omdurman despite Saudi and U.S.-brokered talks between the army and the RSF in Jeddah aimed at securing humanitarian access and a ceasefire.

Most attention is focused on the battles, not the chaos which is demoralising the population, or the rapidly depleting supplies of food, cash, and other essentials that drive much of the looting.

Huge groups have been seen looting mobile phone, gold, and clothes stores.

Factories including a wheat mill belonging to DAL Group, the country's largest conglomerate, were looted in Sudan's main industrial zone, which contains key food and industrial manufacturers.

"They were brandishing machetes, they wave them in the air," said Qassim Mahmoud, a bank general manager who passed through the zone as he fled Khartoum for Egypt and saw people carrying away sacks of wheat and large appliances.

Three commodities and storage facilities were burned down in Omdurman. On Thursday, people could be seen in a video stealing mattresses and clothes and loading them onto trucks. Others used donkey carts.

"Yesterday thieves came and burgled my house in Omdurman. Who do I complain to," said Ahmed Zahar, 42, a trader.

Many Khartoum residents have put posts on social media seeking assistance in retrieving stolen cars.

At one bank where money had already been looted, people were also seizing televisions and furniture, said a Reuters witness.

Aid warehouses have also been targeted by the looters.

Medical aid agency MSF, one of few entities continuing to provide aid in Khartoum, said armed men had broken into its warehouse in Khartoum on Tuesday and taken two cars filled with supplies.

Reuters

I was in the car with my sons, listening to the Beach Boys. I picked some of my favorite songs: “Wendy,” “Girl Don’t Tell Me,” “Let Him Run Wild.” But when I played another track I love, “Wild Honey,” the boys cocked their heads. “Why did they put that out?” one of them asked. The lead vocal sounded wrong to him. Fair enough. Something was off.

Carl Wilson’s performance on that song is not a typical Beach Boys lead vocal. You can hear him reaching for notes, at times barely getting there. There’s vocal strain, unmistakable pitch imperfections. But the Beach Boys, a celebrated vocal group, let that performance stand.

For me, it’s the imperfections that make that recording great. I was a teenager when I first heard it. It gave me the feeling I got from, say, Chuck Berry’s “Maybellene” or the punk rock of Richard Hell and the Voidoids’ “Blank Generation.” Raw, not too well-behaved, stuff that sounded like I felt. Flawed but fully alive. And surely the flaws were where I saw myself reflected. They were recorded at a time when technology was not yet capable of making the kinds of fixes that can be made easily today. But my sons grew up in a digital era, when corrections can be made and usually are.

In most recording situations today, engineers can see music as waveforms, there on a screen. Listening back to what they’ve recorded, they’re also watching the music go by. People often talk about 1980s MTV as the major turn toward a more visual music culture, but the more impactful visual turn came, I believe, when digital recording allowed music to be seen and, as a result, fixed, using the eyes as much as the ears.

When the capacity to achieve something closer to perfection — or to edit out a blemish or select a single image from hundreds — is widely available, most people choose to make the fix. It’s Photoshop’s world, we just moved into it without thinking. Who doesn’t want to sound or look better?

But when music gets cleaned up too much, listeners lose opportunities to connect their imperfections with those in the music, the human traces that might otherwise reach the ear and burrow into the heart. Fewer are the opportunities to hear oneself in the music, to follow the threads that tie the listener to it. The effect is the same when the pumped-up realities we encounter on social media leave people who are feeling their own unfiltered humanness at a distance, isolated.

I’m not suggesting a kind of abstinence — an out-and-out refusal of the fix — but I am arguing for a more conscious balance. We know when we’re trying to make our images or our music look or sound better than they are, and it’s time to consider, on occasion, choosing not to.

I’ve been there myself, in a recording studio, watching as an engineer sees my vocal going past, a little out of tune. Trust me, I’m grateful when he does his thing and makes it “right.” I’m part of the problem of recorded music revealing less and less about the beauty and the emotional possibility surrounding imperfection.

But I wouldn’t want to hear the Beatles’ debut or Stevie Wonder’s “Innervisions” fixed in the way I’m describing here. It would alter the moods, the meanings, the energy, the uneven pace and breath of the things as we’ve come to know them. Sometimes the drums speed up because of a song’s emotion, sometimes a singer’s pitch drifts because that’s where the feeling takes it. If we had made it “right,” as technology allows us to do to a greater and greater degree now, the music would have moved further away from where we live.

There’s a moment in the history of popular music that has, for four decades, stood as one of the greatest examples of an artist choosing to leave a recording unfixed, unfinished, imperfect: Bruce Springsteen’s sixth album, “Nebraska.” It’s one of American music’s great left turns. Springsteen’s prior release, “The River,” was his first No. 1 album. He was poised to go to the superstar level. Instead, he released a recording too rough to be played on commercial rock stations.

Why did he do it? He told me in an interview for my book about the making of the album that he felt it couldn’t be “made better” and still manage to transmit the turbulence he’d captured. So he didn’t fix what he easily could have. Joel Selvin’s 1982 San Francisco Chronicle review of “Nebraska” is telling: The album “is a stark, raw document, rough edges intact, and so intimately personal it is surprising he would even play the tape for other people at all, let alone put it out as an album,” he wrote. Understand, this was a very positive review.

Many artists look back to “Nebraska” to remember what it sounded like when a major songwriter and performer, at the top of his game, had stories to tell in song that suffered when he went in to fix the recordings that transmitted those stories.

As Springsteen said to me, “Every time we went in to improve it, we lost the characters.” Their frailty, their humanness, their conflicts and troubles: You couldn’t hear them when he cleaned up the recordings, not in the way Springsteen wanted them to be heard. So he released the album as it was, flawed. It was recorded on a cheap cassette tape, mixed onto a malfunctioning boom box. And that’s what you heard when you bought it. I wasn’t the only one who wanted to hear it again and again.

As a teenager, I felt like “Nebraska” was telling me a few things, but one of them in particular stuck with me: You can do this, it said. Steely Dan recordings didn’t have the same effect. Same for Toto’s “Rosanna” and the “Chariots of Fire” soundtrack. “Nebraska” was dirty, kind of mumbled in sections, its hushed tones punctuated by a few screams; it told scary stories. But it felt so close to the world I lived in. It was a recording I listened to and never felt left out. There are times when we need that kind of art. I’d say now is one of them.

** Warren Zanes is the author of “Deliver Me From Nowhere: The Making of Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Nebraska’” and “Petty: The Biography.” A former member of the Del Fuegos, he teaches at N.Y.U. and continues to write and record music, sometimes with the poet Paul Muldoon’s Rogue Oliphant band, sometimes on his own.

New York Times

A trio of Peruvian thieves managed to make international news headlines after pulling off one of the dumbest heists in history – 220 sneakers from various brands, all for the right foot.

The hilarious crime occurred on April 30th, at a sports goods store in Huancayo, central Peru. At around 03:30 am, three men managed to cut the padlocks at the back of the store and steal three large crates filled with sneaker boxes from various brands. What the thieves didn’t realize was that all the shoeboxes they stole only contained sneakers for the right foot, as the owner had prepared the three crates to have the footwear displayed at a local sports goods fair. Authorities suspect that the thieves have hidden their haul, as there is no way that they can sell the sneakers on the black market without their pairs.

“We have carried out the inspection at the scene, the particular thing about this theft is that only right-foot sneakers have been stolen,” Eduan Díaz, head of the Junín police region, told América Noticias, adding that it’s just a matter of time before the thieves are identified, as they were caught on surveillance cameras in the area, and have left their prints at the crime scene.

Even with the left sneakers still in their possession, the owner of the store estimates losses of around $13,000, unless the 220 stolen sneakers are recovered, because, just like the thieves, he can’t sell the sneakers individually.

The sneaker store had only been open for a few months but is one of several to be burglarized recently. In mid-April, the National Police of Peru captured a thief who had made off with six sacks full of sneakers from a shoe store in Ica, a city in southern Peru.

“Surely they wanted to sell it at half price,” one Twitter user joked.

Oddity Central

A delegation of five Nigerian Weightlifters and two coaches returned to the country on Thursday after they amassed 12 medals at the 2023 Senior Africa Weightlifting Championship in Tunisia, which also serves as 2024 Olympic Games qualifiers.

The delegation, led by the President of the Nigeria Weightlifting Federation, NWF Ibrahim Abdul, came into the country via Lagos.

This was announced in a statement signed by the federation’s media officer, Amaechi Agbo.

Nigeria won 12 medals, comprising three gold, seven silver, and two bronze medals at the championship.

Lawal Rofiat and Olarinoye Adenike Adijat won three gold and three silver medals, respectively, in the 59kg women’s category on Tuesday.

Eze Joy Ogbonne and Edidiong Umoafia won six additional medals on Wednesday. While Ogbonne clinched three silver medals in the 71kg women’s category, Umoafia won a silver and two bronze medals in 73kg men.

Umoafia could have won more medals, but he had an injury during the Snatch, where he won a silver medal. He managed to continue and got a bronze in the Clean & Jerk and Total.

Nigeria’s quest to increase their medal haul on Wednesday did not go as planned after Akano Desmond came fourth in the 89kg men’s category.

Desmond, who rounded off Nigeria’s participation at the championship, had a lift of 145kg in the snatch, 190kg in the Clean & Jerk and a Total lift of 255 kilograms to emerge fourth in the category.

Nigeria weightlifters will participate in six Championship qualifiers as they seek to return Nigeria to the global weightlifting map in the 2024 Olympics Games in Paris, France.

PT

Presidential Election Petitions Court has fixed May 22 to rule on the modalities for the conduct of the main hearing in the petition by the Allied Peoples Movement (APM).

Presiding justice of the court, Haruna Tsammani, on Thursday adjourned the petition of the APM on the date, which is also meant to hear agreements by parties on the number of witnesses and time to be allocated for their examination and cross-examination.

Lawyers to the parties in the APM petition, INEC, APC, Tinubu, Shettima, and Kabiru Masari confirmed that they agreed not to object to any documents certified by INEC to be relied on at the trial.

The panel also reserved a ruling on the application by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, for the live broadcast of the proceedings of the court.

As the pre-hearing session is set to end on Monday, the panel is also expected to rule on agreements on motions to be allowed in the main hearing as agreed by parties in the petition, which is expected to be on the same Monday.

Meanwhile, the panel has directed Atiku’s lawyers and the parties in the matter to attend the sitting on Friday to adopt their outstanding motions after those of the Labour Party and its presidential candidate, Peter Obi.

Tinubu and the APC have filed separate applications seeking to strike out paragraphs or the entire reply of Atiku to their preliminary objection where he raised fresh issues of dual citizenship and drug offenses forfeiture in the US.

Similarly, INEC, Tinubu, and APC on Thursday argued their respective motions opposing the live broadcast of the proceedings of the court.

Moving the motion on Thursday, lead counsel to Atiku, Chris Uche, said the application was necessary because of the “monumental importance and significance” of the petition to members of the public.

He said the court should discountenance the objections to the application as it did not raise a single legislation or statute in support of their objection.

But counsel to INEC, Abubakar Mahmoud, said the application was unnecessary, uncalled for, and defeats the aim of the court as the media already have access to proceedings.

He said any special provision for live broadcast has to come by judicial policy, which the panel as constituted could not do.

Similarly, counsel to Tinubu, Wole Olanipekun, described the application as strange because the court is not a stadium ground, theatre, or circus but a place of serious business. 

He noted that the security of judges, lawyers, and witnesses could be jeopardised by the live broadcast.

Making his submission, counsel to APC, Lateef Fagbemi, described the application as similar to seeking a reality TV like the ‘Big Brother Series’, adding that the petitioners did not disclose the injury they would suffer if the application was not granted.

The parties also informed the court that they would similarly be objecting to LP and Obi’s application for the live broadcast on Friday.

The panel directed that the parties must present all issues that they would be objecting to or not and the time for their witnesses during the main hearing.

Daily Trust

Federation Account Allocation Committee says it shared N655.93bn among the three tiers of government in April 2023.

The figure represents a decrease of N58.7bn compared to the N714.63bn shared in March 2023.

FAAC disclosed this in a communiqué issued at the end of its latest meeting in Abuja on Thursday.

The allocation shared for April is consistent with the pattern of declines throughout this year.

The total amount includes gross statutory revenue, Value Added Tax, Augmentations from Forex and Non-oil Mineral Revenue, and electronic money transfer levies.

The Federal Government received N248.81bn, the states received N218.31bn, and the local government councils got N160.6bn, while the oil-producing states received N28.22bn as derivation (13 per cent of mineral revenue).

It was also noted that the gross revenue available from the Value Added Tax for the month of April 2023 was N217.74bn, with the cost of collection taking N8.71bn, and the rest was shared among the Federal Government, States and Local Government Councils.

The breakdown showed “From that amount, the sum of N8.71bn was allocated for Costs of Collection and the sum of N6.271 given for Transfers and Refunds. The remaining sum of N202.76bn was distributed to the three tiers of government of which the Federal Government got N30.41bn, the States received N101.38bn, Local Government Councils got N70.97bn.”

For the Gross Statutory Revenue, N497.46bn was received, with N18.79bn as the Cost of Collection and a total of N114.02bn for Transfers, Refunds and Consultancy fees.

The remaining balance of N364.65bn was shared with the Federal Government (N180.66bn), States (N91.63bn), and LGCs got (N70.65bn), while Oil Derivation (13 per cent Mineral Revenue) got N21.72bn.

The communique added that N15.12bn from the electronic money transfer Levies was distributed to the three tiers of government.

The breakdown for EMTL showed “the Federal Government received N2.18bn, States got N7.26bn, Local Government Councils received N5.08bn and the sum of N0.61bn was allocated to Costs of Collection.”

It added, “The Communique disclosed an Augmentation N50bn from Forex Equalization, which was shared as follows; Federal Government received N22.92bn, the States got N11.62bn, the sum of N8.96bn allocated to Local Government Councils, while N6.5bn given to Derivation (13 per cent of Mineral Revenue).

“Also, N24bn Augmentation from Non Mineral Revenue was shared accordingly. The Federal Government got N12.64bn, the States received N6.41bn, while the Local Government Councils got N4.94bn.”

It was noted that Petroleum Profit Tax, Companies Income Tax, Oil and Gas Royalties, Import and Excise Duties and Value Added Tax all decreased considerably, only Electronic Money Transfer Levy increased albeit marginally.

It added, “The balance in the Excess Crude Account as at May 18, 2023 was $473,754.57.”

Punch

As the Dangote Refinery begins operations next week, the supply of 300,000 barrels of crude oil per day by the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited to the facility is going to commence, Group Chief Executive Officer, NNPCL, Mele Kyari, announced on Thursday.

Kyari, who disclosed this at the ongoing 4th Nigerian Oil and Gas Opportunity Fair in Yenagoa, Bayelsa State, also urged all stakeholders to join the national oil company in growing crude oil and gas production in Nigeria.

He said the NNPCL, which had 20 per cent stake in the refinery, was ready to meet its crude supply obligations to the facility, stressing that with the coming on stream of the refinery next week, the national oil company “wll be supplying 300,000 barrels of crude oil per day to Dangote.”

He was quoted in a statement as saying, “We want to address the energy challenges so that industrialisation can come to the country. 48 per cent of all revenue that comes to the government comes from the oil and gas sector and we are in a very good position to support the growth of the economy.”

Dangote Refinery, established by Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote, is scheduled to be inaugurated on May 22. The inauguration would be done by President Muhammadu Buhari.

The 650,000bpd facility, estimated to worth over $19bn, is an integrated refinery project under construction in the Lekki Free Zone, Lagos, Nigeria. It is expected to be Africa’s biggest oil refinery and the world’s biggest single-train facility.

The company, on its website, said the refinery would meet 100 per cent of the Nigerian requirement of all refined products and also have a surplus of each of these products for export.

“Dangote Petroleum Refinery is a multi-billion dollar project that will create a market for $21bn per annum of Nigerian crude. It is designed to process Nigerian crude with the ability to also process other crude,” the firm stated.

The announcement of the planned inauguration of the facility on May 22 had also elicited excitement and expectations among Nigerians, industry operators, government officials and other stakeholders.

“We are optimistic and excited to know that the refinery is set for the inauguration, considering the humongous benefits that it is going to have on not just the oil sector, but on the Nigerian economy,” the National Public Relations Officer, Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria, Ukadike Chinedu, had stated.

“With the coming on board of the Dangote Refinery, we believe that Nigeria will say goodbye to PMS scarcity, as well as the poor supply of other petroleum products,” Ukadike stated.

Punch

National Population Commission (NPC) says it has spent about N200 billion for the preparation of the 2023 population and housing census.

Speaking at a breakfast meeting on Thursday, Nasir Kwarra, executive chairman of the commission, said the money spent was part of the N800 billion expected from the federal government as the total budget for the conduct of the population census.

Kwarra said the money included the cost of more than five years of preparing for the exercise.

He said the cost of conducting a digital census was high as the commission would be procuring equipment and data needed for the exercise.

He said about one million personnel have been recruited to conduct a credible and acceptable digital census.

“It is important to sustain the tempo of the preparation for the census. The focus of the commission is to lay a foundation for future censuses,” Kwarra said.

He assured the public of the commission’s commitment to ensuring a credible census.

Also speaking, Inuwa Jalingo, census manager, said the commission worked hard to conduct a digital census.

Jalingo added that the commission was prepared to ensure a robust quality dashboard and data for the exercise.

In April, President Muhammadu Buhari directed that the census be postponed. The exercise was billed to take place across the country between May 3 and 5.

Lai Mohammed, minister of information and culture, who announced the postponement in a statement, said the new date for the census would be determined by the incoming administration.

The Cable

President Muhammadu Buhari has approved the dissolution of the board of the Federal Roads Maintenance Agency (FERMA).

Femi Adesina, presidential spokesperson, in a statement on Thursday, said Buhari also approved the appointment of James Akintola as the board chairman of FERMA to succeed Tunde Lemo.

Adesina said Lemo had earlier voluntarily stepped down from the position.

“Other members of the old board have their terms renewed,” the statement reads.

“Lemo conveys his appreciation to President Buhari for the opportunity given him to serve the country.”

The new FERMA chairman had occupied a corresponding position in many states before his new appointment.

Akintola had been senior special assistant, infrastructure in Ogun state and consultant to the Kwara government on infrastructure.

He was the special adviser on infrastructure in Oyo and executive chairman of Lagos state public works corporation, among others.

Akinola holds a Bachelor’s degree in architecture from the University of Lagos, and an MSc in the same field from Obafemi Awolowo University.

Established by an act of the national assembly in 2002, FERMA commenced operations in 2003. It has two operational departments (east and west). Each of them is headed by an executive director.

The operations department is charged with the responsibility of road maintenance across the country.

The Cable

National Chairman of Labour Party, Julius Abure, and three other national executive members, on Thursday, announced their return to the party secretariat.

The development is coming one month after they were barred by Hamza Muazu of Federal High Court in Abuja from parading themselves as national officers of the party.

The judge ruled that Abure; his National Secretary, Farouk Ibrahim; National Organising Secretary, Clement Ojukwu and one other, should no longer be given recognition as party executives.

The order was granted in an ex parte application argued by James Ogwu Onoja, in which he informed the court the affected national officers allegedly forged several documents of the FCT High Court to carry out unlawful substitutions in the recently-held 2023 general elections.

According to him, such documents included receipts, seal and affidavits of the court, which he claimed the party officials used to carry out criminal activities.

However, addressing journalists at a press conference in Abuja on Thursday, Abure announced the official return of all suspended national executive members to the secretariat following motion for stay at the Court of Appeal.

He dismissed reports that the Labour Party has been factionalised, despite the fact that Bashiru Apapa had taken over as acting National Chairman with Abure’s suspension.

The Abure and Apapa factions clashed on Wednesday at the Presidential Election Petition Court in Abuja where the Labour Party and its presidential candidate, Peter Obi, are challenging the emergence of Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress as winner of the February 25 presidential election.

Speaking on Thursday on his return, Abure said, “It has become imperative for me to address this press conference to properly put the legal issues surrounding the leadership of the party in proper perspectives. It is pertinent to state categorically that Labour Party has no faction. It has only one leadership and that leadership is the National Working Committee led by myself, Julius Abure.”

Punch