Daily Watch – Police crackdown on Shi’ite protest in Abuja, Guinea leaders bar military from elective office
29th September 2021
Nigerian police denied killing members of a banned Shi’ite Muslim group who had gathered in the capital Abuja on Tuesday, saying they had arrested 57 of them and recovered petrol bombs and bags of stones. Members of the proscribed Islamic Movement in Nigeria (IMN) said earlier that security forces had shot dead eight Shi’ites who were taking part in a procession to mark the religious ritual of Arbaeen. The Abuja police said they had intervened to stop the IMN members as they had been causing “unnecessary hardship to motorists” along the Abuja-Kubwa expressway. “The miscreants attacked the security forces with petrol bombs, (and) weapons including stones, but were adequately rounded up by the security teams without any casualty,” the force said in a statement. The IMN was banned by the government in 2019 after protests against the detention of its leader. Security forces have opened fire at previous IMN events. Abdullahi Muhamed, an IMN member, earlier told Reuters that participants were walking peacefully along the expressway when a combined team of police and soldiers fired tear gas and live bullets at them. Videos and images posted on social media and published by Nigerian news websites showed bodies lying on the ground and people running from what appeared to be clouds of tear gas. Reuters could not independently verify the material. Muslims make up about half of Nigeria’s population of 200 million. The overwhelming majority of them are Sunnis, and the small Shi’ite minority have long complained of discrimination and repression. The IMN leader, Ibrahim Zakzaky, was released from detention after being acquitted in July of eight criminal charges including aiding and abetting homicide, unlawful assembly and disruption of public peace. Zakzaky and his wife had been in detention since 2015 when they were arrested after a clash in which the army killed an estimated 350 people at an IMN compound and a nearby mosque and burial ground in the northern state of Kaduna.
The death toll from the two attacks in Kaura and Zango Kataf local government areas of Kaduna has risen to 45. This follows the recovery of three more dead bodies by security operatives in Madamai and Kacecere villages of Kaura and Zangon Kataf Local Government Areas. The Kaduna State Commissioner of Internal Security and Home Affairs, Samuel Aruwan, had in a statement on Monday said that 34 persons were killed by the suspected bandits at Madamai in Kaura LGA on Sunday while eight others were killed in what looked like a reprisal attack in Zango-Kataf on Monday, following Sunday’s attack on Kaura. According to security authorities, while two corpses were recovered in Madamai, one was found in Kacecere. Aruwan says that search-and-rescue operations are still in progress, while state government officials and security agencies have visited the injured victims in the hospitals located in Jos Plateau State and Kafanchan.
Fitch, a global credit rating agency, has upgraded the long-term rating of the Bank of Industry(BoI) to ‘AAA(nga)’ from ‘AA+(nga). The BOI is Nigeria’s primary development bank, with the mandate of financing the country’s emerging industrial sector. The ‘AAA’ is the highest rating possible that can be assigned to an issuer’s bonds by any of the major credit rating agencies. The rating agency said the upgrade reflected that the linkage between the bank and the sovereign has strengthened, as evident in the significant size of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) guarantees provided for BoI’s recent external funding. “At present, all of BOI’s funding is either guaranteed or provided by the CBN or the Federal Government of Nigeria. In our view, this suggests that the sovereign propensity to provide extraordinary support to BOI in local currency has increased,” Fitch said. It also affirmed the bank’s long-term issuer default rating (IDR) at ‘B’ with a stable outlook. According to Fitch, “BOI’s long-term IDR and Support Rating Floor are equalised with the long-term IDR of the sovereign as we believe that the Nigerian authorities have a high propensity to support BOI.” The agency explained that its assessment primarily reflected the bank’s important and clearly defined policy role in funding economic growth in Nigeria; it’s 99.9 per cent state ownership, split between the Ministry of Finance (94.8 percent) and the CBN (5.1 per cent); and the entirety of the bank’s wholesale funding being either provided or guaranteed by the Nigerian state. It added that the government’s ability to support BOI is limited, indicated by Nigeria’s ‘B’ long-term SDR. Fitch said BOI maintains solid capitalisation and leverage metrics (end-1H21: equity-to-asset ratio of 19.4%), which is prudent for the bank’s exposure to the volatile operating environment.
Guinea’s junta said on Monday its members are barred from standing in the next national or local elections, and that it will agree on the length of transition to elections with an 81-member Transitional National Council (TNC). Earlier this month the leader of the 5 September coup, Mamady Doumbouya, shrugged off asset freezes and travel bans imposed by the ECOWAS regional bloc aimed at pressuring a swift transition to constitutional rule. Over the past two weeks, the junta has held consultations with public figures and business leaders to map out a framework for a transitional government. According to the charter of the transition, Doumbouya is to be president, with a government composed of a civilian prime minister and cabinet, none of whom may be candidates in the elections, a junta spokesperson said on the state broadcaster. The TNC must be at least 30% female, and will include a president and two vice-presidents, who are also not allowed to run for office in the upcoming elections, the spokesperson said. Regional leaders sought to impose sanctions to deter further democratic backsliding in the region after four military-led coups in West and Central Africa since last year.