Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) says only a government with no priority for its citizens’ security would go to war.

In July, Amadou Abdramane, a colonel-major, in the Niger Republic announced the removal of President Mohamed Bazoum from office in a coup.

On Thursday, Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), during its second extraordinary meeting, directed the deployment of standby military troops to restore constitutional order in the Niger Republic.

Reacting to the development in a statement on Sunday, Debo Ologunagba, national publicity secretary of the PDP, claimed President Bola Tinubu is desperate to plunge Nigeria into war by dragging the country’s military into conflict with Niger Republic.

“The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) strongly condemns the desperation by @officialABAT and the All Progressives Congress (APC) to plunge Nigeria into a state of war by dragging our military into a needless conflict with Niger Republic,” he said.

“While the PDP frowns at unconstitutional change of government in any part of the world, our party holds that the situation in Niger Republic does not warrant any external peace-keeping effort and does not constitute any threat whatsoever to our national interest to justify committing our already overstretched military to harm’s way in a needless war.

“The insistence of the APC government to go to war in Niger Republic is already heightening tension in Nigeria.

“The PDP holds that nothing else can explain why the APC administration is eager to go to war in Niger Republic while it has practically turned a blind eye to the insecurity situation in our country, even with the mindless killing of over 500 innocent Nigerians in Plateau, Benue, Niger, Kaduna and other states of the federation since May 2023.

“Also distressing is that the APC is ready to deploy billions of naira to prosecute a needless war despite our ailing national economy, crippled production sector, energy crisis, massive unemployment, frightening fall in the value of the naira and excruciating hardship in the country occasioned by its ill-informed, hasty and ill-implemented policies.

“Such can only come from an anti-people administration that has no iota of interest in the security and wellbeing of the nation and its citizens.”

The Cable

RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE

Berlin calls for more diplomatic efforts to end Ukraine conflict

The recent summit on Ukraine in Jeddah was a “very special” event, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has said, calling for a greater diplomatic effort to end the ongoing conflict between Moscow and Kiev.

Scholz made the remarks in his major annual summer interview with German broadcaster ZDF, which aired on Sunday. The chancellor urged further diplomatic effort, stating it was actually useful to “press” Russia.

“It makes sense for us to continue these talks because they increase the pressure on Russia to realize that it has taken the wrong path and that it must withdraw its troops and make peace possible,” Scholz stated.

The chancellor also noted a similar diplomatic event hosted by Denmark in June, stating that these talks and the summit hosted by Saudi Arabia were both “very special” events.

“They are very important and they are really only the beginning,” Scholz stated.

The Jeddah meeting, which brought together security advisers and senior diplomats from the participating nations, failed to yield any meaningful results. Effectively, the participants have only agreed that the UN Charter as well as Ukraine’s territorial integrity should be respected.

Moscow has dismissed the Saudi-hosted negotiations, with Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova stating that “without Russia’s participation and without taking into account its interests, no meeting on the Ukraine crisis has any added value.”

Asked about the prospects of further military support to Ukraine and in particular the reportedly imminent delivery of Taurus long-range cruise missiles, the German chancellor failed to provide a direct answer.

“As in the past, we will always review every single decision very carefully, what is possible, what makes sense, what can be our contribution,” Scholz said.

Unlike many Western countries, Germany has long resisted Ukrainian demands to supply increasingly sophisticated military hardware. The situation changed early this year, when Berlin gave in to mounting pressure and agreed to deliver Leopard 2 main battle tanks, as well as enabling third parties to re-export German-made military vehicles to Ukraine.

** Ukrainian counteroffensive falling short of NATO expectations – The Times

NATO was overly optimistic about the Ukrainian military’s ability to regain ground before its summer counteroffensive, The Times reported on Saturday, citing an unnamed US officer. The British newspaper noted that officials in Kiev had begun blaming their Western backers for their supposed lack of resolve.

In its article penned by Mark Galeotti, the author of more than 20 books on Russia, The Times quoted an anonymous US army officer involved in the training of Ukrainian service members. “Nato expected miracles, and the Ukrainians promised them,” he said, adding that “you can’t run a war on optimism.”

Another US official told the media outlet that “we haven’t quite closed the book on 2023, but we are ramping up our thinking about 2024.”

The report claimed that neither Russia nor Ukraine can make any decisive advances at present, with the latter now touting the capture of individual villages as a sign of success.

The author estimates that Kiev has two months at most to turn the tide before autumn rains start making the ground impassable for military hardware in November.

Strong defense fortifications and extensive minefields set up by Russian forces in southern Ukraine were among the reasons for the apparent underperformance of Kiev’s counteroffensive, the report claimed.

Against this backdrop, officials in Kiev have recently begun criticizing NATO for not doing enough, with one describing the US-led military bloc as “gutless,” according to the newspaper.

With neither side willing to compromise, the conflict is likely to continue for the long haul, the report concluded.

Speaking to the Washington Post earlier this week, Polish President Andrzej Duda, one of Kiev’s staunchest Western supporters, acknowledged that the Ukrainian military was “not currently able to carry out a very decisive counteroffensive against the Russian military.”

Also this week, CNN quoted unnamed US and other Western officials as predicting that it was “highly unlikely” that Kiev forces would be able to “make progress that would change the balance of this conflict.”

Ukraine launched its long-awaited counteroffensive in early June, concentrating its efforts at multiple points along the frontline from Zaporozhye to Donetsk Regions.

According to Russia’s Defense Ministry, the operation has turned out to be a failure that has so far cost Ukraine 43,000 personnel and 4,900 units of military hardware.

WESTERN PERSPECTIVE

Russian warship fires warning shots at cargo ship in Black Sea

A Russian warship on Sunday fired warning shots at a cargo ship in the southwestern Black Sea as it made its way northwards, the first time Russia has fired on merchant shipping beyond Ukraine since exiting a landmark UN-brokered grain deal last month.

In July, Russia halted participation in the Black Sea grain deal that allowed Ukraine to export agricultural produce via the Black Sea. Moscow said that it deemed all ships heading to Ukrainian waters to be potentially carrying weapons.

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On Sunday, Russia said in a statement that its Vasily Bykov patrol ship had fired automatic weapons on the Palau-flagged Sukru Okan vessel after the ship's captain failed to respond to a request to halt for an inspection.

Russia said the vessel was making its way toward the Ukrainian port of Izmail. Refinitiv shipping data showed the ship was currently near the coast of Bulgaria and heading toward the Romanian port of Sulina.

"To forcibly stop the vessel, warning fire was opened from automatic weapons," the Russian defence ministry said.

The Russian military boarded the vessel with the help of a Ka-29 helicopter, the ministry said.

"After the inspection group completed its work on board, the Sukru Okan continued on its way to the port of Izmail," the defence ministry said.

A Turkish defence ministry official said he had heard an incident had taken place involving a ship heading for Romania, and that Ankara was looking into it.

Reuters could not immediately reach the vessel or its owners for comment.

A senior adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said the incident was a "clear violation of international law of the sea, an act of piracy and a crime against civilian vessels of a third country in the waters of other states."

The adviser, Mykhailo Podolyak, added on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, that "Ukraine will draw all the necessary conclusions and choose the best possible response."

Zelenskiy did not mention the incident in his nightly video address.

Natalia Humeniuk, spokesperson for the southern military command, stressed that the Russian statement had not been confirmed by other official sources. "I believe that attention should be drawn to this and the peculiarities of hybrid warfare should be kept in mind," she said in televised remarks.

"This statement could be a signal to all civilian vessels in the Black Sea," she said, and called for all transportation and navigation there to be conducted under international guarantees. Russia, she added, was trying to assert its right to stop a ship or deploy aircraft in the Black Sea and "face no consequences."

BLACK SEA AT WAR?

Firing on a merchant vessel will ratchet up already acute concerns among shipowners, insurers and commodity traders about the potential dangers of getting ensnared in the Black Sea - the main route that both Ukraine and Russia use to get their agricultural produce to market.

Russia and Ukraine are two of the world's top agricultural producers, and major players in the wheat, barley, maize, rapeseed, rapeseed oil, sunflower seed and sunflower oil markets. Russia is also dominant in the fertiliser market.

Since Russia left the Black Sea grain deal, both Moscow and Kyiv have issued warnings and carried out attacks that have sent jitters through global commodity, oil and shipping markets.

Russia has said it will treat any ships approaching Ukrainian ports as potential military vessels, and their flag countries as combatants on the Ukrainian side. Russia also struck Ukrainian grain facilities on the Danube.

Ukraine responded with a similar threat to ships approaching Russian or Russian-held Ukrainian ports. Ukraine also attacked a Russian oil tanker and a warship at its Novorossiysk naval base, next door to a major grain and oil port.

Ukraine and the West say Russia's steps amount to a de-facto blockade of Ukrainian ports that threatens to cut off the flow of wheat and sunflower seeds from Ukraine to world markets.

Russia dismisses that interpretation and says the West failed to implement a parallel agreement easing rules for its own food and fertiliser exports.

RT/Reuters

As policymakers around the world embrace industrial policy in pursuit of a wide variety of objectives – supply-chain resilience, green technologies, geopolitical advantage, good jobs – the debate over its effectiveness is reaching fever pitch. Typically, this debate is portrayed as one where sound economics is squarely on the skeptics’ side. “There is a strong case against industrial policy in economics,” intoned one recent commentary, and embracing it “just wastes money and distorts the economy.”

But this is an increasingly outmoded view. While it is generally true that mainstream economists have responded to industrial policy with knee-jerk hostility since at least the 1970s, things have been changing fast, owing to new academic research that is less driven by ideological hostility to government intervention and better grounded in rigorous empirical methods.

This recent crop of research provides more authoritative evidence on how industrial policy really works, improving the quality of debates that in the past shed more heat than light on the issue. And researchers’ more nuanced and contextual understanding of such policies yields a generally more positive assessment.

Industrial policies are complex, and quantifying them for the purposes of analysis can be difficult. Consider, for example, China’s recent push in the shipbuilding industry. Seeking to become the largest shipbuilding country within a decade, China deployed a multitude of policies, including production subsidies, investment subsidies, and entry subsidies. There were many changes along the way, as in 2009, when policymakers turned away from promoting entry and instead focused on industry consolidation.

In the past, economists too often focused on simple indicators such as import tariffs, capturing only limited dimensions of industrial policy and conflating its objectives with others (such as raising government revenue or playing special-interest politics). A number of recent research efforts have taken a more productive approach.

For example, a comparative project at the OECD quantifies industrial policies through deep accounting of government activity, focusing on government expenditures allocated specifically for industrial-policy objectives. A team of economists led by two of us (Réka Juhász and Nathan Lane) apply natural language processing to publicly available policy inventories to generate a detailed classification of industrial policies.

The latter work is yielding important new insights. For starters, industrial policy has been ubiquitous, and its prevalence predates the recent rise in its use and prominence in public discussions. Moreover, it is no longer appropriate, if it ever was, to identify industrial policy with inward-looking, protectionist trade policies; contemporary industrial policies typically target export promotion. And the prevalence of industrial policies tends to increase with income: advanced economies use it more often and intensively than developing countries do.

Improved methods of causal inference are also leading economists to revise their views. Traditionally, economists assessed the effects of industrial policy by examining whether industries receiving more government help performed better – generally reaching a negative conclusion. It is now recognized that such correlational work is uninformative, because it cannot distinguish between cases where industrial policy is useful and not.

The more recent research uses modern statistical techniques to avoid misleading inferences. Such techniques have been applied to a wide variety of cases, including historical episodes of promotion of infant industries (such as textiles, shipbuilding, and heavy industries); large-scale public research and development efforts (as in the “space race” between the United States and the Soviet Union); and selective place-based policies targeting specific firms or industries (as in the US manufacturing drive during World War II and contemporary regional European subsidies).

The results of this research are much more favorable to industrial policy, tending to find that such policies – or historical accidents that mimic their effects – have often led to large, seemingly beneficial long-term effects in the structure of economic activity. For example, the disruption to French imports during the Napoleonic blockade stimulated French industrialization in mechanized cotton spinning long after the end of the Napoleonic wars. These results are consistent with what proponents of nurturing infant industries would argue.

Studies of recent public programs to subsidize investment in lagging regions of Britain and Italy have similarly found strong positive effects on employment creation. While these studies cannot provide a definitive answer to whether industrial policy works in general, they are informative about the prevalence of the market failures targeted by the policy and about the policy’s long-term effects.

Newer studies also shed light on the long-standing controversy over the contribution of industrial policy to East Asia’s economic miracle. The early economic literature on East Asia’s rise had argued that industrial policies were at best ineffective. Newer analyses paying closer attention to the structure of upstream and downstream linkages in these economies reach considerably more sanguine conclusions.

To cite one example, studies of South Korea’s Heavy-Chemical Industry Drive (HCI), a landmark – and controversial – industrial policy pursued by President Park Chung-hee in the 1970s, found that the policy promoted the growth of targeted industries, both in the short and long run. HCI’s effects on productivity and export performance were both positive.

Critics of East Asian policies thought governments could never pick the right sectors because they lacked information on where market failures were more prominent. Princeton economist Ernest Liu has recently provided a useful guide for policymakers confronting an economy where market imperfections occur across multiple, linked sectors. In such settings, subsidizing upstream sectors generally minimizes policy mistakes. Liu shows that the actual policies used in China and during South Korea’s HCI were in line with this guidance.

Some commentators have recently criticized US President Joe Biden’s industrial policy because it “lacks a rigorous economic foundation.” The reality is that there is already plenty of good economic research on industrial policy. While more research is always beneficial, the new literature is already providing us with better assessments of industrial policies in all their diversity, evaluating the consequences of historical and contemporary examples, and illuminating how such policies work or fail depending on their instruments and objectives, and on prevailing economic structures.

Project Syndicate

When it comes to company culture, many business owners, particularly ones that haven't been in business for very long, will dismiss it as a big company issue. You might hear terms like "we are all family here" as if to dismiss the idea that your company and those that you employ have an unspoken hand that guides their decisions when you aren't around. 

But whether you believe it or not, your company has a culture. And it's up to you to help shape that culture into one that will not only benefit your team members, but also the growth and development of your business as a whole.

What Company Culture Consists Of

Before I talk about how to build your company culture, it's important to get clear on what company culture really is. Your culture is shown by the questions that people ask or don't ask, the way you behave or don't behave. 

Maybe you have a history of always being too nice when it comes to having difficult conversations. Maybe you are really good at doing what you say you will. Maybe you have a history of treating new team members with a bit of a cold shoulder until they prove their worth? 

Maybe your team is amazing at celebrating victories within the company. Whatever it is, good or bad it is part of what makes your business succeed (or fail).

A 1000 Taps

Company cultures aren't built overnight. It's not something that you write up in your employee handbook and expect everyone to adopt. Culture is built by the slow accumulation of small little behaviors, events, stories, taps of the hammer if you will. 

What taps would make a difference in your own business? Do you share stories of success and failure to learn together as a team? Do you guide by example? Do you celebrate victories? Do you empower team members to own their success? Do you coach employees for growth? 

Whatever it is that you think will make a difference in your company over time, write it down. And think of ways that you can do little taps each and every day. Because over time, those taps make a difference. 

Now take it a step further. What if your management team did the same? Suddenly your little taps....plus those of your executive team start to compound into something much bigger.

Make it a Habit

The biggest indicator of success when it comes to creating and shaping a company culture comes down to habit. We are all busy and we have a thousand things on our plate. It is super easy to come up with a list of ideas that we think are important to our culture. 

But a much bigger thing to make it a habit to work on every single day. If you have to put it on your to-do list. Set a reminder on your phone. Create a spreadsheet or journal that you write in daily. And commit to it. After a month, it will become a habit. 

After a year, you won't remember a time where you didn't do the daily or weekly taps of the hammer and that is where the magic happens.

Inc

The only way to avoid conflict in Niger between mutinous soldiers who ousted the president and regional countries threatening an invasion to reinstate him is to recognize the new regime, a rights defender with ties to the junta told The Associated Press.

In his first interview with Western media Friday, Insa Garba Saidou, a local activist who assists Niger’s new military rulers with their communications and says he is in direct contact with them, said there will be no dialogue with regional countries until they acknowledge the new head of state. Although Saidou is not an official member of the junta, he acts as a liaison between them and the media.

His comments to the AP were the strongest statement since mutinous soldiers ousted President Mohamed Bazoum nearly three weeks ago that the junta was not open to negotiations with regional countries unless it is recognized as Niger's new leaders. This heightens the risk of regional violence and puts Western nations, many who saw Niger as the last democratic country in the Sahel region to partner with in beating back a jihadi insurgency, in a difficult position.

On July 26, the head of the presidential guard, Gen. Abdourahmane Tchiani, overthrew the West African country's democratically elected president, claiming they could do a better job of securing the nation from extremist violence linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State group. Tchiani was declared in charge of the country.

The West African regional bloc, ECOWAS, has threatened to use military force if President Bazoum, who took office two years ago, is not released and reinstated. However, the junta has dismissed its warnings and refused most attempts at dialogue.

“There is only one option, accepting the regime or war,” said Saidou. “It is finished for Bazoum, you must forget about him. It is finished, it is a waste of time trying to restore him. It is not possible,” he said.

On Thursday, ECOWAS said it had directed the deployment of a “standby force” to restore democracy in Niger after its deadline to reinstate Bazoum expired. It's unclear when, or where the force will be deployed, but analysts say it could include up to 5,000 troops from countries including Nigeria, Benin, Ivory Coast and Senegal.

While the bloc says it wants mediation to prevail, multiple attempts by ECOWAS, as well as others, have yielded little.

Last week a proposed visit by ECOWAS, the United Nations and the African Union was rejected on the grounds of "evident reasons of security in this atmosphere of menace” against Niger. A day earlier, a top U.S. diplomat met some members of the junta but was unable to speak with Tchiani or see Bazoum.

Western countries have poured hundreds of millions of dollars into providing equipment and training for Niger's military by specialized French and U.S. forces, all of which could now be used by the junta to tighten its grip on power.

The military regime is already entrenching itself, appointing a new government and stoking anti-French sentiment toward its former colonial ruler, to shore up its support.

Mercenaries from the Russian-linked Wagner group, already operate in a handful of other African countries and are accused of committing human rights abuses. Earlier this month during a trip to neighboring Mali, which is also run by a military regime and cooperates with Wagner, the junta reportedly asked the mercenaries for help.

Days after ECOWAS' order for the standby force to deploy, it's still unclear what that entails or if they'll invade. The African Union Peace and Security Council could overrule the decision if it felt that wider peace and security on the continent was threatened by an intervention, say analysts. The African Union is expected to meet Monday to discuss Niger's crisis.

Some Sahel experts say the insistence on force is a cover to spare ECOWAS from the embarrassment of having made a threat with no real capacity or notion of how to execute it. “The bloc is acting like a poker player who tried (to) bluff and, when called on it, raised the stakes to buy time,” said Peter Pham, former U.S. special envoy for West Africa’s Sahel region and a distinguished fellow at the Atlantic Council.

If fighting does ensue, the most battle-experienced and best-equipped militaries in West Africa, either belong to Niger or are sympathetic to it, such as Mali and Burkina Faso. Both countries have opposed the intervention and sent delegations to Niger to discuss joint defense efforts.

Aid workers who remained during the start of the coup are evacuating on U.N. run flights to Burkina Faso. Several flights left on Friday and more are scheduled for Saturday, according to a foreigner who’s leaving on one of the flights and did not want to be named due to the sensitivity of the situation

In anticipation of a possible invasion, some Nigeriens have also moved their families out of the capital. But others say they're not going anywhere and want ECOWAS to negotiate a peaceful transition of power with the junta.

“(What) we want to do now is to put things in order and move on. ... We’re not expecting ECOWAS as an African society to come and attack us in this manner. It’s not the best, we are not really happy about it,” said Moussa Ahmed, a food seller in Niamey.

Saidou, the activist who supports the junta, said no matter how ECOWAS plans to invade, be it by land through neighboring Benin or Nigeria or by air, any attack on the palace will result in Bazoum's death. While he didn't confirm a deliberate plan to murder the now-ousted president, he said that if an invasion began soldiers would kill him.

“There is no one among the soldiers still loyal to Bazoum," he said.

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He dismissed reports that Bazoum's conditions under house arrest in his presidential compound were dire and said he had access to medical care if needed and still had his phone, a sign that no one wanted to harm him. He did not say how he had knowledge of the president’s condition. Saidou said he was being kept for his own security and the only way for Bazoum to be released was for ECOWAS to accept that his time in office was finished.

Those close to the president, however, paint a much starker picture.

Since the July 26 coup, Bazoum's been confined with his wife and son to the basement of his presidential compound, which is surrounded by guards and is now cut off from resupplies of food, electricity, water and cooking gas. Niger's ambassador to the United States, Mamadou Kiari Liman-Tinguiri, told the AP that the junta is trying to starve him to death.

On Saturday an advisor to the president who was not authorized to speak about the situation told The AP that for the first time a doctor visited Bazoum and brought him and the family some food. The advisor did not want to comment more on the nature of the visit.

On Friday, United Nations human rights chief Volker Türk said he was extremely concerned about Bazoum's rapidly deteriorating condition, calling the family's treatment “inhuman and degrading” and in violation of international human rights law.

Bloomberg

Labour Party (LP) has asked President Bola Tinubu to fix Nigeria first before “meddling” in the affairs of Niger Republic.

On Thursday, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), during its second extraordinary meeting, directed the deployment of standby military troops to restore constitutional order in the Niger Republic.

Tinubu is the chairman of ECOWAS.

Reacting to the development in a statement on Saturday, Obiora Ifoh, LP national publicity secretary, said now is not the time for Nigeria to be involved in a war because “the socio-economic situation in the country has so badly deteriorated to the extent that Nigeria is wallowing in abject poverty, hunger, and unemployment”.

“The leadership of the Labour Party has been following the recent political development in the Republic of Niger, and how Nigeria-led ECOWAS has threatened to lead the regional nations into a war of purging the coupists out of government from our neighboring country,” Ifoh said.

“We believe sincerely that charity should always begin at home. The holy book also said that one needs to remove the log on one’s eyes before talking about a spec on another’s eyes.

“The poor economic policies of the government, the hike in the prices of petroleum products, and the soaring forex situation have further deteriorated the living conditions of the people.

“So, with a country with such an enormous crisis, thinking of waging war against another country or defending democracy is not only laughable but misconceived and misdirected.

“We already have enough crises on our hands, from insecurity, hunger, unemployment, poverty, and poor infrastructure amongst others, I think the government has enough tasks to focus on rather than footloose into the internal affairs of another country.

“Nigeria cannot be playing the big brother of Africa when the people are hungry. We are giant of Africa only in name but we are far from living up to that expectation. The government needs to think about Nigeria first. We have enormous challenges on our hands.

“The government must focus on how to restore our economy, rebuild infrastructure, create jobs, and end killings and insecurity in Nigeria rather than waste time, resources, and energy in the affairs of another sovereign nation.”

The Cable

Some residents of Kano on Saturday protested against any attempt to use military action to restore democratic rule in the Niger Republic as they stormed the streets of the commercial city.

The protesters who are mostly residents of the state embarked on the action to show their displeasure and non-support of the planned military invasion of the country.

While moving in a procession, they kept chanting, “Nigeriens are our brothers; Nigerians are also our family.”

“Niger is ours; we don’t want war; war against Niger is injustice, a plot by the Western forces,” they kept chanting, raising Nigerian and Nigerien flags alongside their placards, chanting anti-war songs.

Our correspondent gathered that the protesters, who were peaceful, marched through some major streets before dispersing to their respective places.

Punch

Anthony Joshua, the British boxer of Nigerian heritage, defeated Robert Helenius, his opponent, via knockout in their heavyweight boxing bout at the O2 Arena in London on Saturday night.

The former heavyweight champion won the fight after he handed his opponent from Finland a brutal punch in the seventh round.

With the triumph, Joshua scores his first knockout win since December 2020 when he defeated Bulgarian Kubrat Pulev in a WBA, IBO, IBF and WBO title defence.

Helenius, the Finnish boxer who replaced banned Dylian White one week before this bout, required oxygen but recovered to congratulate a slim-looking Joshua before exiting the ring unaided.

“I knew this would happen, everyone’s talking about the new AJ and the old AJ and after two or three rounds the crowd starts to get a little bit impatient,” said Eddie Hearn, Joshua’s promoter, in a chat with BBC.

“He finds the measure of his right hand and he delivers one of the knockouts of the year on Robert Helenius… this is just the AJ you’re going to see now.

“He’s still got to be more aggressive than we saw tonight but there’s a lot on the line.”

It is back-to-back wins for Joshua after his decision victory against Jermaine Franklin in April.

It is also his second victory since relinquishing his heavyweight title belts to Oleksandr Usyk who defeated him on both occasions they fought.

Joshua extends his record to 26 wins and three defeats, with 23 of his wins coming via knockout.

The 33-year-old is expected to fight Deontey Wilder in January 2024.

Wilder knocked out Helenius in the first round of their fight last October.

The Cable

WESTERN PERSPECTIVE

Ukraine military reports progress in south

Ukrainian military officials said on Saturday that Kyiv's forces had made progress in the south, capturing unspecified territories and claiming partial success near the key village of Robotyne.

"Tavria direction," General Oleksandr Tarnavskyi, commander of Ukrainian forces in the south, wrote on Telegram, referring to the southern front. "There are liberated territories. The defence forces are working."

He did not specify where or when the advances were made. Separately, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said they had "partial success in the Robotyne area of the Zaporizhzhia region." Reuters could not immediately verify the battlefield report.

The general staff said children were among dead or wounded civilians following a day in which Russians launched six rockets and 36 air strikes and fired 32 rocket salvo fire systems at populated areas and Ukrainian troop positions.

It said 33 combat clashes had taken place and noted that Ukraine's defence forces continued an offensive operation in Melitopol and Berdyansk directions.

** Ukraine's Odesa opens a few beaches for the first time since Russian invasion

Several beaches in Ukraine's Black Sea city of Odesa have officially opened for swimming for the first time since the start of the Russian invasion, although bathing is banned during air raid alerts, local officials said on Saturday.

Odesa, Ukraine's largest port and naval base, was repeatedly attacked with missiles and drones and the sea was littered with hundreds of sea mines following the invasion in February last year.

For the safety of residents and after incidents of mines exploding on beaches, the coast was closed.

The decision to open the beaches was made jointly by the city's civilian and military administrations, Odesa Governor Oleh Kiper said on Telegram messaging app.

He said the beaches would be open from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.

Oleksandr, a lifeguard and a former diver who gave only his first name, said that an anti-mine net was placed in between two piers to prevent swimmers encountering shallow-water mines.

"The net will stop them. And they (mines) will also be visible from the shore under such weather conditions. Emergency workers will be notified, they will come to handle it," he said.

The opening of the beaches has been a welcome respite from the war for people swimming and sunbathing.

"I have been dreaming of going to the beach and inhaling salty air. We have been missing it a lot. But safety is a top priority," said Svitlana, a resident of the Odesa region.

RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE

Ukrainians paying up to $10,000 to escape draft – FT

Thousands of Ukrainian men have paid large sums in bribes to avoid getting drafted during the ongoing conflict between Kiev and Moscow, the Financial Times reported on Saturday.

The news comes as Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky launched a massive military purge, sacking all of the regional military conscription officials and citing the multiple corruption scandals rocking the country. The recruitment officials are set to be replaced by combat veterans, according to Kiev’s plan.

Over the course of the ongoing conflict, thousands of Ukrainians have managed to escape the draft through various schemes in a culture of corruption. Kiev banned men aged between 18 and 60 from leaving the country when it first introduced martial law in February 2022, but the move only fueled more corrupt practices. One of the most popular options was simply buying medical exemption papers for some $6,000 on average, the FT reported, citing the findings of a probe into corruption by Ukrainian authorities.

Thousands of Ukrainian men have also attempted to leave the country illegally, with some 13,600 caught near border crossings and another 6,100 apprehended at checkpoints with fake papers, the FT noted, citing the latest official figures.

Head of the Odessa regional recruitment center Evgeny Borisov, who was arrested last month, turned out to be one of the most ‘prolific’ officials involved in draft-dodging rackets. The official is now suspected of bagging more than $5 million in bribes, charging from $2,000 to $10,000 per person for various ‘options’ to escape the draft. Borisov is believed to have been using the ill-gotten money to fund a posh lifestyle, with his family procuring a €4.2-million ($4.6-mn) villa in Spain last December, as well as other luxury assets, according to Ukrainian investigators.

Apart from the ongoing corruption scandals, the Ukrainian draft effort has also been marred by the violent actions of conscription officials. Numerous disturbing videos highlighting certain Ukrainian draft techniques emerged online in recent months, as Kiev struggled to compensate for its reported heavy battlefield losses.

Multiple videos show conscription officers chasing random men in the streets to give them a draft notice, violently detaining and even beating up the would-be soldiers. Many of these conscripts were reportedly killed on the frontline just days after getting ‘drafted’ in such a fashion.

Reuters/RT

The Nigerian Presidential Election Petition Court has reserved its judgment. Apprehension and expectation are playing hide and seek in the air. Judgment Day is here. Theologians, writers and musicians have painted poignant colours of the judgment day. From the 1998-direct-to-video film of John Terlesky with that same title – Judgment Day – depicting disaster in the air as a giant meteor that would soon hit the earth, to the Italian Renaissance painter, Michelangelo’s fresco painting which he labeled The Last Judgment, judgment day has never been a tea party. Rastafari-influenced Donald "Tabby" Shaw, Fitzroy "Bunny" Simpson and Lloyd "Judge" Ferguson of the legendary Jamaican roots reggae harmony trio called Mighty Diamonds, also painted very scary and grim picture of this judgment day. There will be “weeping and wailing and mourning and gnashing of the teeth,” they sang, their dreadlock hairs making pendulumic swings, as if in affirmation. According to them, it is a day “he and she will be judged/according to the works they have done.”

The petitions filed by Atiku Abubakar, Peoples Democratic Party (PDP)’s presidential candidate, and Peter Obi of the Labour Party (LP) against the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC)-announced election victory of the All Progressives Congress, (APC) are nearing their denouement. Those who are affiliated to political parties and candidates of the February 2023 elections who have a history of high blood pressure, must, by now, be regularly and faithfully taking dosages of their drugs. Judgment day is nigh, as the holy book says. Nigeria’s version of Michelangelo, Mighty Diamonds and Terlesky’s Judgment Day will be dispensed by a five-man panel led by Haruna Tsammani.

In 1997, there was equally apprehension in the Kenyan sky. In the midst of the reddish firmament, Mwai Kibaki was however very hopeful. He had been announced as coming second against incumbent, Daniel Arap Moi, in the presidential election of that year. According to official results released by the Kenyan electoral commission, Mwai scored 1, 895,527 votes as against Moi’s 2,440,801 votes. Convinced that he had been electorally shortchanged, Mwai filed an action to void the election. He alleged that a horde of malpractices that violated electoral rules had been committed by the incumbent president. Weeks of judicial razzmatazz and mountains of evidence he provided combined to assure him that he would have the day.

On judgment day, as the panel of judges reeled out their figures, Kibaki was still full of optimism, just as River Zambesi regale the world with its huge quantum of water. Then, the dispenser of judgment spoke. Everywhere was silent. And… the petition was flung off the panes like a dirty, soggy rag! The judges climbed the ladder of technicalities to arrive at this frightening junction. Facts suffered colossally. Kibati’s petition was dismissed for “improper service.” In serving the petition against President Moi, ruled the judges, the petitioner fell short of electoral criteria. He had served the petition by publishing it in the Government Gazette. Kibati’s averment was that Moi, as president, was “surrounded by a massive ring of security which is not possible to penetrate.” The judges temporarily became blind to this fact.

Africa’s elections are always torn apart by defects and fraud. Anomalies and disputed results erupt at each election cycle. While the democratic waves of the 1980s and 1990s signified some improvements in elections on the continent, sham elections are still as prevalent as poverty and diseases. Where elections have been held, almost all the time, aggrieved parties angrily go to the judiciary as their last hope to seek redress. Except in a few and negligible instances however, the judiciary has almost always decided presidential election disputes along a particular route: the status quo. The case of Tanzania is even queer as its constitutional provision ousts judicial jurisdiction in hearing challenges to presidential elections. Article 41(7) of the Constitution of the United Republic of Tanzania states unequivocally that, “When a candidate is declared by the Electoral Commission to have been duly elected in accordance with this article, then no court of law shall have any jurisdiction to inquire into the election of that candidate.”

This Status quo was undoubtedly what President Bola Tinubu referenced at the PEPC last month. Asking the court not to nullify his INEC-announced victory, he averred, through his lead counsel, Wole Olanipekun, that strictly and disjunctively reading the constitutional provisions concerning Abuja and Tinbu’s failure to secure 25 per cent of the lawful votes in the FCT, rather than conjunctively with other provisions of the constitution, and thus nullify the election, would bring anarchy in Nigeria. At the election, while INEC announced 8,794,721 votes for Tinubu, it gave Atiku 6,984,520 and Obi, 6,101,533.

Lamentations are mounting on how men in Khaki gun their ways into presidential palaces in Africa. The latest is Niger. One of the principal reasons putschists give for their irreverent stomping on democratic governance is the absence of electoral legitimacy in mandates that propel African leaders into office. Many writers have singled out African judiciary as enablers of these khaki lords. They say that African judges’ flimsy dismissal of electoral cases on the basis of technical flaws and non-adherence to electoral procedural rules, leading to failure to give consideration to merits, seem to render African judges as emergent guns in the hands of civilian dictatorships. This is said to make the judiciary fully complicit in the various stases suffered on the continent in the consolidation of electoral democracy.

Take for example Cote d'Ivoire. In 2010, all eyes were on the Ivoirian judiciary. Coming from years of conflict and instability, elections were eventually held in this French-Speaking African country. After the first round, no winner was produced and a run-off was ordered which pitted incumbent Laurent Gbagbo against the main opposition candidate, Alassane Ouattara. After this highly charged election, Chairperson of the Independent Electoral Commission, (IEC), Youssouf Bakayoko, announced Ouattara winner with 54.1 per cent of votes cast. Gbagbo was announced to have scored 45.9 per cent, leading to Gbagbo heading for Cote D’Iroire’s Constitutional Council. His pleading was for the court to annul Ouattara’s announced election on claims that the elections were massively rigged in Quattara’s northern stronghold. Without an adequate response from Quattara, the Council then voided almost 600,000 votes belonging to Ouattara and declared Gbagbo winner with 51.45 per cent of votes cast. Some of the grounds for the nullification of Quattara’s election sounded spurious and queer. One was that results were announced in a hotel rather than IEC’s office. Second that, results were announced outside of the prescribed three days by the constitution. The 600,000 votes nullified could not be substantiated on account of either ballot theft or over-stuffing.

Same thing happened in 2012 in the Ghanaian case of Nana Akufo-Addo and John Mahama. The petitioner had raised main issue of allegations of over-voting and voting without biometric verification which the law required; absence of signatures of presiding officers on some results sheets, contrary to the law; and the occurrence of the same serial numbers for different polling stations. His averment was that, upon the deduction of alleged tainted votes from announced votes, the man eventually declared president-elect, Mahama, could not have garnered the 50 per cent-plus-one-vote which the Ghanaian constitution required for majority win at the said election.

On judgment day, majority of the judges submitted different reasons why the election must be upheld. The most instructive was that, granted the presence of these complained anomalies, the conduct of the election was in “substantial accordance with the Constitution.” Lawyers quarreled with such jurisprudence as queer and worrying. Why wish away anomalies that were patently contrary to the Constitution? To take them to account translated to mean that the man who was declared winner of the election failed to so qualify. Retired Ghanaian Justice of the Supreme Court, Sophia Adinyira and member of the United Nations Appeal Tribunal, had submitted that, in her view, “public policy favours salvaging the election and giving effect to the voter's intention.” Legal dinosaur, Lord Denning, had stated that, contrary to the Ghanaian court ruling, even if an election is substantially held in accordance with the law, yet assailed with minor infractions that have an effect on the result, the election is vitiated and voidable.

What will the Tsammani-led PEPC do on judgment day which is few days from now? Or, put differently, what do I think the PEPC will do? It will fly without perching, keeping feathers ruffled, regrettably. The Nigerian judiciary cannot afford to disappoint the company it keeps in the African desert of justice. What then will happen? Nothing! Absolutely nothing! Call me a pessimist, but there will be some huff and puffs on the social media and our natural inclination to go inside the cocoon of religious resignation and mundane issues of tribe and personal alliances will take an upper hand. And we will continue another cycle of underdevelopment which Africa is destined to. Like the Greek god Sisyphus condemned to push the boulder to and fro from creation to eternity, we will.

France, your Queendom is falling!

Zimbabwe-born medical doctor and activist, Arikana Chihombori-Quao’s viral video which hit airwaves last week evokes the music of iconoclastic Jamaican reggae musician, Peter Tosh. The video explains the rebellion going on in the Sahel against France. In Tosh’s system-bashing, anthem-of-resistance song, a call to action against the evils of colonialism and oppression, the coup in Niger Republic and France’s decades of paternal oppression against French-speaking Africa gets graphic detailing. His Mystic album, especially the track Babylon, your Queendom is falling, is pregnant with powerful lyricism that is unpretentious against colonial oppression. It calls on black people of the world to reclaim their hearts, their lands, culture, heritage and humanity from the stranglehold of colonizers. Tosh especially chose the oppressive colonial and post-colonial system that underdeveloped black people for censure. He labeled this power structure system that has enslaved and exploited black people in the world for centuries as “Mystery Babylon.” The concept of white supremacy and its Queen(King)dom is falling, Tosh sang: “Mystery Babylon, your Queendom a falling/Tumbling down/And Rahab, a Ethiopia calling…”

If you call Tosh a prophet, you would not be mistaken. As the lyrics lament white oppression, wrapped in fluid-flowing and danceable tune, Tosh addresses the systematic downfall of Babylon and how Ethiopia, regarded as the promised land of Africa, is rising in rebellion, from its ashes of oppression. After so many decades of sustenance of black people’s oppression from the capitals of oppression of the world, Tosh sang, the Babylonian system is meeting its waterloo as the oppression is coming to an end. He made a biblical allusion to Rahab and then to Ethiopia, the only African country never colonized. Rahab was the prostitute from Jericho who helped Joshua and his army in the conquest of the city of Jericho and his reference to Ethiopia was a call for the overthrow of white oppressive system in Africa.

Tosh sang effusively in the Jamaican patois with optimism that all that was stolen from Africa and taken to Babylon would be returned after the system’s overthrow: “Gimme back mi gold, mi ruby an mi diamond…sent I sons and daughters from a far off… I said all those that are called of I name…Gimme back mi zebra, mi lion an mi tiger… Gimme back mi land, mi language and mi culture… I said, take back your chink, your roach and mosquito…” He asked for repatriation of all stolen invaluable possessions which he symbolized with gold, diamonds, rubies, zebras, lions, tigers, land, language and culture, rudely and crudely stolen by stealth by white colonizers.

In the viral video, Chihombori-Quao had appeared on the Eye Gambia, alongside other commentators. She gave a present-day bite to the Tosh song, especially France and French-speaking Africa colonial and post-colonial relations. Former African Union representative to the United States from 2017 to 2019, Chihombori-Quao viewed Africa with the same lens that Tosh looked at the continent’s underdevelopment. This outspoken Zimbabwean, renowned for her caustic review of the implications of the Berlin Conference in Germany in 1885, made some earth-shaking revelations that put the coup in Niger and the rebellion in the Sahel in perspective. Chihombori-Quao is known for her rave lectures delivered on the outcome of the selfish, self-centered and haphazard partitioning of the African continent in Berlin. To her, that division is responsible for the multiplication of Africa's problems and why, in the words of Walter Rodney, Africa remains underdeveloped.

“The government of France has significant control over all their former colonies, specifically fourteen of them. When they were giving them independence, they forced them to sign a document which they called the pact for the continuation of colonization. On one hand, they say we are giving you independence which comes out to be political independence but that you have to sign this document… You are going to be independent, but you have to agree to continually be colonized. Two countries said, absolutely not, they (were) not going to sign the document. They are Mali and Guinea. What the French did was that, they entered those countries, took everything that they thought they brought into those economies, poured concrete into sewage pipes and completely devastated the two economies. They did this to let other countries know that if they (did) not sign this document, this (was) the fate that (awaited them).

“The impact (was) terrible. The pact that that those countries had to deposit 85 per cent of their bank reserves with the French Central Bank, under the control of the French Minister of Finance and should those countries wish to request some of those monies – remember they are only left with 15 per cent of their reserves – they have to submit financial statement for the country and if approved, they can only access up 20 per cent of whatever they had deposited year before as a loan at commercial interest rate. The only difference now is the 85 per cent deposits have now been lowered down to maybe 50 and 60 percent but the countries are still forced and required to deposit their bank reserves with the French Central Bank.

“Now, picture this situation: you are depositing your monies with France. Should you need some of your money, you get it as a loan at commercial interest rates. Immediately, you have credit with France, but you begin to owe France! This has been going on and continuous till this day. So, combined, the 14 countries are giving to France cash of over $500 billion every year and France takes that money and invests it in its own stock market under the French name… currently, for every 14 billion that France takes out of Africa, by the time they finish investing it in the French stock market, they realize upwards of $300 billion so you do the maths to see how much France takes out of Africa every year. And France has the audacity to then look at African countries and call them poor. Why would poor African countries give France $500 billion year in year out? But what gets me the most is, how does the world sit back and watch this carnage take place in Africa. Where is the United Nations? This is the body that is supposed to be looking for any violation of human rights. It is my humble opinion that, singularly, what France is doing to Africa is the biggest violation of human rights. Women and children are dying of starvation, youth unemployment and these same poor countries are giving $500 billion to France. It simply does not make any sense and I don’t know how the world can sit back and watch all this unfold and nobody is saying anything. It is unacceptable. It is wrong and we are simply asking France to do what is right, what is just and right with Africans,” she said.    

Ahmed Sekou Toure was the president of Guinea who refused to sign that pact of servitude. He rejected the French and its bid to appropriate the wealth and farmland of Guinean traditional landlords. He was famous with the lingo that "Guinea prefers poverty in freedom to riches in slavery” and argued that Africa lost its essence and future during colonization. He advocated that Africa should retaliate by cutting off ties with her former colonial masters and for clinging to the apron of the west as their puppeteers. He also voiced his distrust of other African nations.

The above Chihombori-Quao submission may sound inscrutable, horrific and frightening. Another video, which went viral recently, was of Sierra Leonean-German multi-facetted social entrepreneur, Mallence Bart-Williams. At a Ted event, she explained the chaos and crises in Africa and said that chaos in Africa is orchestrated because of the resources of Africa that are cheaply and fraudulently taken out of Africa. “A healthy and thriving Africa will not disperse its resources as freely and cheaply… which in turn may destabilize and weaken western economies established on the post-colonial free meal system” she said. Affirming France’s yearly collection of foreign reserve deposit from Africa posited by Chihombori-Quao, she said France based it on “colonial debt which they force them to pay.” This, she said, was affirmed by former French president Jacques Chirac who an interview said that “we have to be honest and acknowledge that the big part of the money in out banks comes precisely from the exploitation of the African continent” and that in 2008, Chirac said that without Africa, France will slide down in the ranks of third world powers.”  

Another expose has put the animosity against the new military rulers of Niger to the pipeline project that passes through the republic on the way from Nigeria to Europe. The uranium deposit in Niger is also the contention, a mineral that Europe and America have been stealing from Africa for decades. The resistance against the new junta, a regime that has promised to disconnect the stealing and cheap sales of its resources is “the quest to gain back their wealth, the uranium, gold, iron, phosphate, iron and gas and this scares the west.” In this quest to regain their national sovereignty, delink from being an European colony and Russia is backing French-Africa. This incenses the west and America.

This is why the Bola Tinubu-led ECOWAS’s resistance to the revolution going on in Niger and other Francophone African countries is benumbing. Some have alleged that the post-colonial planting of puppeteer governments in Africa, held by the CIA, MI6 and other intelligence services, may just be the explanation. The overwhelming voices in Africa right now are that the imperialists, Peter Tosh’s “Mystery Babylon,” should get out of the continent. If ECOWAS does not listen to the voice of reason and continues to abet America and the west’s continued servitude of Africa, they will be footnotes and flotsams of history when today’s story of their people’s rebellion against puppeteers is told.

Abbey at 70

The headline of this piece is almost a heresy. Unbeknown to him, our boss at the Tribune Newspaper House, Imalefalafia, Abiodun Oduwole, Fellow of the Nigerian Guild of Editors (FNGE) was known and called by his junior staff as simply Abbey. We however dared not bring this appellation to his attention. Abiodun Oduwole, Editor-in-Chief of the Tribune newspapers in the 1990s, was identified by that funkivised inflection of his name by his junior staff like me. Those who belonged to his school called him EiC, the shortened form of his title. Perhaps, that was our own way of taking our pound of flesh from him. Oduwole loomed too large at Imalefalafia that any attempt to deconstruct his mystique was welcomed. When his car entered the premises of the newspaper house, staff in the know of his entrance gleefully volunteered information to others that he had barged on the party of reporters who took time out to relax from their exerting duty by engaging in office prattles. “EiC is around!” whistleblowers announced. And everybody pretended to be at their worktables.

Last week Friday, EiC was 70 years on earth and his protégés walked up to him at an Ibadan event centre to celebrate him. That ice of the fearsome boss had thawed considerably. You could even throw banters at him! The junior staff of those days had become bosses themselves. The boss was so genial, so harmless, so de-fanged that you began to wonder what the matter was. But for the tiny grey on his temple, Oduwole hadn’t changed a bit!

Oduwole is a story I have told repeatedly. But for his recognition of excellence – apologies for that immodesty – I probably wouldn’t be what I am today. Fresh from the University of Ibadan in 1995 as a graduate student of the Department of Political Science, with over a hundred published works, Oduwole had recognized me. As he leafed through my published works in virtually all Nigerian newspapers, with one of his mentees, Sina Kawonise, sitting on a sofa and egging him on to give consent to my appointment, Oduwole had told Segun Olatunji, now a PhD holder, and the editor of the Tribune on Saturday and Sunday, to immediately recruit me. That recruitment is the incubator of what I am today.

Oduwole taught us the rudiments of journalism. He was a stickler for journalism rules and procedures. If you envied column-writing as I did, his Cock-a-too column was enough material for a mentee. Oduwole laid the foundation of what we are today.

So, on Friday, we filed out to celebrate his 70th birthday. Looking twenty years younger than his age, we did not allow history to stand in our way. He too was very happy that God had used him for our advancement. He had morphed from the youthful Oduwole, thrown hither thither by the winds of age, into an elder to boots, even becoming a pastor in a Pentecostal church. One of his mentees, Victor Oluwadamilare, summed up our general impression of what time had made of our boss thus: “If Oduwole could become what he is today, then no one is incapable of becoming a disciple of Jesus Christ,” he said. We all agreed.

This is wishing our boss, mentor and pathfinder, Biodun Oduwole, a happy 70th birthday.