Sudan has established emergency prosecutors and courts nationwide, state news agency SUNA said Tuesday, a day after President Omar al-Bashir announced sweeping new security powers to contend with months of unrest.

Bashir declared a national state of emergency last Friday and sacked state governors, replacing them with officials from the military and security services.

Dozens of doctors staged peaceful protests in the capital Khartoum and other cities Tuesday, chanting slogans in the halls of several public hospitals and demanding that Bashir step down. Hundreds of students also continued protests at Sudan’s oldest university for women, in the city of Omdurman.

Neighboring Egypt and some Western countries including the United States expressed concern about the situation in Sudan, which has been shaken by almost daily demonstrations since December over the rising cost of living and other grievances.

As well as having emergency courts set up in every Sudanese state, Bashir also reshuffled some senior military staff on Tuesday. He switched the positions of several members of Sudan’s eight-strong military staff council and appointed General Essam al-Din Mubarak as minister of state in the defense ministry.

“These are normal, routine changes that happen from time to time,” a military spokesman told Reuters.

A coalition of opposition lawyers denounced Tuesday’s moves as unconstitutional.

‘Deep concern’

Bashir, who came to power in 1989 in a military coup, issued a raft of edicts Monday banning unlicensed public gatherings and awarding sweeping new powers to police.

Security forces were given the power to search any building, restrict movement of people and public transport, arrest individuals suspected of a crime related to the state of emergency, and seize assets or property during investigations.

The United States, Britain, Norway and Canada issued a joint statement expressing “deep concern” over the situation.

“There remains a clear need for political and economic reform in Sudan that is fully inclusive, and which addresses the legitimate grievances expressed by the protesters,” it said.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry, speaking to Reuters on Tuesday on the sidelines of a U.N. Human Rights Council conference in Geneva, said Egypt stood ready to help its southern neighbour if required.

“We believe that the Sudanese and Egyptian peoples have a common history and a common future, and definitely anything that disrupts the security, stability and prosperity of the Sudanese people is of utmost concern to us,” Shoukry said.
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Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari on Tuesday won a second term at the helm of Africa’s largest economy and top oil producer, a tally by Reuters based on electoral commission results showed.

Buhari faces a daunting to-do list, including reviving an economy still struggling to recover from a 2016 recession and quelling a decade-old Islamist insurgency that has killed thousands of people in the northeast, many of them civilians.

Buhari of the All Progressive Congress party proved wrong those who doubted he could survive the blows of recession, militant attacks on oilfields, and Islamist insurgency that blighted his first term.

He won by 56 percent compared with 41 percent for the other candidate, businessman and former vice president Atiku Abubakar of the People’s Democratic Party.

The president won by 3.9 million votes, having garnered 15.2 million to Atiku’s 11.3 million.

The turnout, based on valid votes, was 33.2 percent. In the 2015 presidential election, turnout was 44 percent.

A message posted on Buhari’s Twitter feed late on Tuesday showed him smiling and surrounded by applauding staff at his campaign office.

“I met the very hardworking members of our team, many of them young people, and was briefed on the performance of our party so far in the Presidential Elections. I am very proud of what has been accomplished,” he said on Twitter.

Garba Shehu, Buhari’s spokesman, said the president’s office would have no comment until the electoral commission announces the winner.

Earlier, Atiku’s party demanded an immediate halt to the release of results by the Independent National Electoral Commission until turnout figures are provided to the competing parties.

Atiku’s party has rejected the tallies announced so far as “incorrect and unacceptable”. Buhari’s party has said the opposition was trying to discredit the returns from Saturday’s election.

The accusations have ratcheted up tensions in a vote marred by delays, logistical glitches and outbreaks of violence.

Nigeria’s six decades of independence have been marked by long periods of military rule, coups and secessionist wars.

Observers from the Economic Community of West African States, the African Union and the United Nations appealed to all parties to await the official results, expected later this week, before filing complaints.

The candidate with the most votes nationwide is declared winner as long as they have at least one-quarter of the vote in two-thirds of Nigeria’s 36 states and the capital, Abuja.

Otherwise there is a second-round run-off.

Buhari secured enough votes to meet both requirements.

Ex-Military Ruler

Buhari, 76, is a former military ruler who took office in 2015 and sought a second term with pledges to fight corruption and overhaul Nigeria’s creaking road and rail network.

Atiku, 72, had said he would aim to double the size of the economy to $900 billion by 2025, privatize the state oil company and expand the role of the private sector if voted into office.

Voting took place on Saturday after a week-long delay which the election commission said was due to its inability to get ballots and results sheets to all parts of the country.

The event – Africa’s largest democratic exercise – has also been marred by violence in which at least 47 people have been killed since Saturday, according to the Situation Room, a monitoring organization linking various civil society groups.

Some of the deaths took place after gangs allied to the leading parties clashed with each other as well as the police over the theft of ballot boxes and allegations of vote fraud.

Police have not yet provided official casualty figures.

More than 260 people have been killed since the start of the election campaign in October. The toll so far is lower than in earlier elections, but the worst violence occurred previously only after results were announced.
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A new report is calling on the United States to significantly change its approach to fighting terrorists and extremist groups, warning success on the battlefield will never be enough to stop the spread of extremist ideology.

The report, released Wednesday by the bipartisan Task Force on Extremism in Fragile States, says that after nearly two decades and an estimated $5.9 trillion spent fighting terror groups in the Middle East and North Africa, the U.S. and its partners must prioritize prevention over military solutions.

“Terrorism is a symptom, but extremism — an ideology calling for the imposition of a totalitarian order intent on destroying free societies like ours — is the disease,” the report warns. “The United States thus finds itself trapped in a seemingly endless cycle of crisis response.”

“Even modest preventive investments — if they are strategic, coordinated, and well-timed — can reduce the risk that extremists will exploit fragile states,” it adds.

The task force’s findings come as the Islamic State terror group, whose ideology attracted tens of thousands of fighters to flock to Syria and Iraq, appears to be in decline.

Its self-declared caliphate, which once spread over large swaths of Syria and Iraq, has been reduced to a small collection of tents and damaged buildings on a patch of land in the northeastern Syrian village of Baghuz.

Officials with the international coalition fighting IS estimate several hundred of the terror group’s “most hardened” fighters remain inside. But commanders with the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces say the terrorists are surrounded, and that while it may take several more days, their defeat is inevitable.

Rather than see the collapse of the IS caliphate as an end, though, the task force says the liberation of the final stretch of territory should be seen as an opening to refocus U.S. priorities in the fight against terror.

“What we need is a sense of urgency,” the task force’s co-chairs — former New Jersey Gov. Tom Kean and former Indiana Congressman Lee Hamilton — said in the report.

“The threat that it (IS) could reestablish itself in another fragile state underscores prevention’s importance,” they wrote, adding other countries increasingly share the same view. “We should harness this emerging consensus.”

The task force argues that a large part of the U.S. focus must shift to failed or failing states where the government services and institutions are no longer able to provide for its citizens.

Extremist attempts to establish control “resonate only in societies where the existing state has failed its people,” the report warns.

But rather than try to impose solutions, the report recommends the U.S. work to find partners on the ground who are, at the least, committed to governing responsibly.

The report also calls on the U.S. to streamline its approach, noting that while numerous agencies already are funding prevention-based initiatives, such efforts have been “disjointed, piecemeal, and intermittent.”

And it calls for the creation of a so-called Partnership Development Fund, a “new international platform for donors and the private sector to pool their resources and coordinate their activities.”

Task force members admit progress in the fight against terrorism and extremism will not come overnight, but they warn the failure to adopt a prevention-driven approach could have devastating consequences.

Already, they say, the number of annual terror attacks have increased fivefold since 2001, while the number of Salafi-jihadist fighters has more than tripled over the same period, operating out of 19 countries across the Middle East and Africa.

U.S. military and intelligence officials have likewise warned that Islamic State, while losing control of almost all the territory it once ruled, still has up to 30,000 fighters and followers across Syria and Iraq, while al-Qaida also has managed to strengthen its position in Syria, while maintaining close ties to affiliates in Yemen and elsewhere.

So, too, there are concerns that U.S. intervention has either backfired, or at the most, produced only short-term gains against terrorist and extremist groups, citing examples in Iraq, Libya, Mali and Yemen.

“”The United States thus finds itself trapped in a seemingly endless cycle of crisis response,” the report states, adding however, that a commitment to a prevention-based approach will pay off.

“Every dollar invested in efforts to prevent conflict saves $16 in spending on reconstruction, crisis management and the military,” the report says, pointing to recent analysis by the World Bank and the United Nations.

 
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We are live. In Extra Time Shaka answers your questions about politics in Africa.
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Vote counting continues in Nigeria after last Saturday’s presidential election. Initial results indicate incumbent President Muhammadu Buhari is in the lead.

The official announcement of partial results started Monday and the process is moving slowly. Early results show Buhari by 1.5 million votes ahead of his closest challenger at the halfway point of state-by-state announcements of the results of Saturday’s election.

For supporters like Nasir Usman it’s a result he was hoping to see.

“We will be happy if Buhari wins this election. There is no problem in this country and Buhari has brought peace. Everything is working in this country,” Usman said.

For Nigerians like Taiwo Ogunkuade, who supports the main opposition candidate, Atiku Abubakar, conceding defeat will not be easy.

“If Atiku loses in this election, I’ll feel so bad and I don’t think the majority of people fighting for him to become the president will feel so good about this. It’s really not going to be a good news for most of the people,” Ogunkuade said.

Jaiye Gaskia, a political analyst, says Buhari’s All Progressives Congress (APC) could win but that the margin of victory might be slim.

“It seems from what is emerging that the APC has a slight edge over the PDP (opposition People Democratic Party) but the results are not showing any dramatic differences in terms of differences in the number of votes between the two parties. I think it’s going to be a close election,” she said.

Gaskia said he worries that neither of the top candidates is fit for the job.

“I’m worried because it does seem that one of these two is going to be president and very likely the incumbent but I don’t see it transforming into a better life for the common and average Nigerian because the growth model that both candidates have favored are models that are not inclusive,” Gaskia said.

But as more results emerge, Nigerians are watching and wondering.  Will the trends continue to favor the incumbent leader or is there still a glimmer of hope for his main challenger?

 
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