African press review 25 February 2015

Nigeria’s opposition lashes Jonathan over continuing Boko Haram violence. A new crisis looms for Kenya’s education system. Kenyan corruption-watchers are accused of corruption. SA’s opposition wants no new taxes. And hopes of a vaginal gel preventing HIV are dashed.

The latest explosions in Nigeria, in Kano and Yobe, dominate this morning's local front pages.

Police say that at least 12 people, including two bombers, died in the Kano Line bus park attack, while 16 died in the blast in the town of Potiskum in Yobe State.

According to the Lagos-based Guardian, eyewitness accounts suggest that the number of casualties could be higher than the police figures.

The Abuja-based Daily Trust gives the combined death toll from the two attacks as 37.

The opposition All Progressives Congress has said that President Goodluck Jonathan bears a huge moral responsibility for deliberately allowing the Boko Haram insurgency to fester, leading to the deaths of over 15,000 Nigerians and the displacement of over three million others in the past six years.

Critics say Jonathan has been unwilling to deal with the problem since the north-west is an opposition stronghold.

There's more trouble brewing in the Kenyan education sector.

According to the main story in this morning's Daily Nation, the main teachers’ union has warned that fees guidelines released by the education ministry last week will plunge schools into a management crisis.

Education Cabinet Secretary Jacob Kaimenyi yesterday said there was no turning back and insisted that headteachers must adhere to the new guidelines. Those who don’t, he said, would face disciplinary action from the Teachers Service Commission.

One trade union official suggests that the reduced fees would require schools to cancel supplies legally procured through tenders, therefore putting schools at risk of legal action by suppliers.

Sister paper the Standard reports that the Kenya National Union of Teachers has opposed the new fees guidelines, arguing that reductions will disrupt budgets.

The Daily Nation reports that members of a number of parliamentary committees that are supposed to keep an eye on the behaviour of their fellow MPs are themselves suspected of using their positions for personal enrichment.

According to the Nation, suspicions of corruption have derailed the work of the Public Accounts Committee, which is supposed to oversee government spending.

Members of the committee, says the Nairobi-based daily paper, claim that some of their colleagues are involved in bribery, coercion and improper contact with some of the individuals being investigated by the committee.

There have been claims that some members became concerned after hearing allegations that their colleagues collected bribes on their behalf but failed to deliver the money.

South Africa's Finance Minister is 24 hours away from delivering his 2015 budget proposals but already he's being criticised.

According to the front page of the Johannesburg-based financial paper BusinessDay, the tax increases expected to be announced by Nhlanhla Nene in his budget speech on Wednesday are "unnecessary and unjustifiable", according to the opposition Democratic Alliance finance spokesperson Dion George.

Rather than adding to taxpayers’ burdens, the government should look for ways to cut wasteful expenditure, George said at a media briefing to present the DA’s alternative budget.

This would include stemming the billions of rand lost to corruption each year and trimming "bloated" government bureaucracy.

On its health pages BusinessDay reports that hopes that a South African-developed vaginal gel containing the HIV/Aids drug tenofovir would protect women against HIV were dashed yesterday, after a major new study found that the treatment does not work.

Five years ago, according to the South African daily, scientists were optimistic that the microbicide would protect millions of women from HIV, after a study of 900 women in KwaZulu-Natal found the gel reduced the risk of getting the virus by 39 per cent. The development was hailed as a breakthrough, though the scientists who led the work were careful to emphasise that further research was needed to validate the findings.

Yesterday it was announced at the annual Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in Seattle that a tenofovir-containing microbicide provided to 2,059 women aged between 18 years and 30 years did not protect them from HIV.