Skip to main content

African press review 10 October 2014

Kenya's president gets a hero's welcome on his return from the ICC. Kind donors offer to pay for Zuma's home improvements. A reconciliation meeting of Nigeria's People’s Democratic Party fails in that endeavour. A human skull is found buried in a Nigerian church. And two children are beaten and dumped in the forest after being accused of practising witchcraft.

Advertising

We begin in Kenya where the national dailies react to the enthusiastic reception granted to President Uhuru Kenyatta as he returned home from The Hague on Thursday. 

The Daily Nation says that, while Kenyatta had travelled without the ceremonies of office, his status was very much in evidence when he exited the commercial Kenya Airways flight at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport. After the formalities, it reports, he set off on a five-hour series of roadside rallies across the eastern parts of the city, addressing jubilant supporters, some of who had been bussed in from as far away as the Rift Valley.

At the various stopovers, he went back to nationalistic rhetoric, criticising those who thought that the international community had the solution to Kenya’s problems. The Nation reports that Kenyatta hit out at the decision to order him to travel to court at The Hague “only for me to sit there and say nothing”.

StandardDigital says the rousing reception from massive crowds was a strong message to the world that Kenya would not be intimidated by powerful nations.

In South Africa the press is awash with news that a group from Durban has offered to pay back the millions of rand from the state’s coffers unduly spent in upgrading President Jacob Zuma’s Nkandla home.

Mail and Guardian says the group calls itself the Public Members Unit team. It says it had learned that financiers representing three separate groups had sent a formal letter to parliament about their offer. The ruling party said on Tuesday that it would be out of order for Zuma to repay the 18 million euros spent on non-security upgrades for which he did not ask or to which he did not consent.

The Sowetan is monitoring a campaign by powerful groups to get the scalp of Public Protector Thuli Madonsela over her handling of the Nkandla investigation. The paper reports that parliament ad-hoc committee on Nkandla received a formal complaint from one such group calling itself "concerned lawyers and educationalists for equality before the law" calling for her dismissal.

City Press
reports that the scapegoats are fighting back, with public works officials getting up to defend themselves against executive onslaughts and pleading that they were simply following orders.

Several Nigerian dailies open with an ugly fight that broke out at a reconciliation meeting of the ruling People’s Democratic Party in Abuja Thursday. The Daily Independent reports that tens of supporters of Education Minister Minister Nyeson Wike, who hopes to be the  party's candidate for the governorship of Rivers State in 2015, used dangerous weapons, such as sticks, bottles and stones, to prevent his rivals from entering the PDP national campaign office.

This Day says the meeting had been organised by the PDP’s leadership to discuss grievances by some members of the party protesting the non-recognition of zoning and rotation of the office of the governor in the state.

The Vanguard also reports that in the ensuing melee journalists and television cameramen were abused and their cameras vandalised, as police officers looked away.

The Nigerian Tribune takes up the story of a pastor arrested by Osun state police after a tip-off by members of his flock that a human skull and other charms were buried in his church. Following the grim discovery, the 35-year-old man of God told investigators he was about to confess to the police when he was denounced. His life had become a nightmare with spirits often chasing him at night and demanding that he go return the head of the woman to her kith and kin, he said.

Punch reports that police are investigating an unbelievable case of human cruelty in the southern Akwa Ibom state – the saga of two children beaten unconscious and abandoned in the forest after being accused of killing their uncle through witchcraft.

According to the paper, the orphans, both aged eight, are currently being treated at an Akwa Ibom state hospital for machete wounds, having found their way out of the forest.

Daily newsletterReceive essential international news every morning

Keep up to date with international news by downloading the RFI app

Share :
Page not found

The content you requested does not exist or is not available anymore.