Daily Watch – APC bag early guv results, 10m in Sahel need humanitarian aid

Early results from Nigeria’s gubernatorial elections show some incumbent governors have been reelected. In Ogun, Governor Dapo Abiodun of the All Progressives Congress was declared the winner by the Independent National Electoral Commission, polling 276,298 votes to defeat the Peoples Democratic Party’s Oladipupo Adebutu who scored 262,383. Meanwhile, in a petition submitted to INEC through Sunkanmi Oyejide, his collation agent, the PDP has asked that the election be declared inconclusive, saying a rerun should be conducted in some polling units voting was cancelled. In Oyo, the PDP’s Seyi Makinde clinched a second term, polling 563,756 votes to defeat the APC’s Teslim Folarin who garnered 256,685 votes. In Kwara, Governor Abdulrahman Abdulrazaq won in all 16 Local Government Areas (LGAs), polling 273,424 votes against the PDP’s Abdullahi Yaman who scored 155,490 votes. In Gombe, the APC’s Muhammadu Yahaya bagged 342,821 votes to defeat the PDP’s Muhammed Barde who scored 233,131.

Deputy Speaker of Nigeria’s House of Representatives and Chairman of the House Committee on Constitution Review, Idris Wase (APC; Wase Federal Constituency) says President Muhammadu Buhari has signed 16 constitution alteration bills into law. Among those passed was a bill to guarantee the financial independence of the State Houses of Assembly and Judiciary. Other bills included the removal of the railway, prison and electricity from the Constitution’s Exclusive Legislative List to the Concurrent List. The National Assembly had in January transmitted 35 constitution amendment bills to the president for assent. A majority of state assemblies, however, failed to vote on the two bills that sought financial and legislative autonomy for local governments.

The Minority Caucus in Ghana’s Parliament has called for an investigation into some alleged galamsey or illegal small-scale gold mining claims by Professor Kwabena Frimpong-Boateng, a former Environment, Science, Technology, and Innovation Minister. According to Frimpong-Boateng, some government officials were involved in illegal mining activities. At a press conference, Dr Rashid Pelpuo (NDC; Wa Central Constituency), ranking member on the Lands and Forestry Committee, said the allegations were grave and needed to be probed. “It is also our expectation that the government must desist from joining illegal immigrants engaged in galamsey because today, most of the lands destroyed have not been restored,” he said in his remarks.

Ten million children in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger are in urgent need of humanitarian aid, UNICEF said. “Armed conflicts are increasingly affecting children, who are victims of intensified military clashes or targeted by non-state armed groups,” observes the body’s West and Central Africa regional director, Marie-Pierre Poirier. According to the organisation’s Chief of Emergencies for West and Central Africa’s Chief, Nicola Bennett, in humanitarian emergencies, children tend to suffer first, and often they suffer most, especially in the Sahel region. “The year 2022 has been particularly violent for children in the central Sahel,” Marie-Pierre Poirier continued. More than 8,300 schools have closed in the three countries either because they have been targeted or because parents have been displaced or are afraid to send their children there. According to UNICEF, more than 20,000 people living in the Burkina Faso-Mali-Niger border area will reach a level of food insecurity described as “catastrophic” by June.