Daily Watch – DSS knew of BVAS flaws pre-election, Amhara protests threaten fragile peace

The United States intelligence community monitored Nigeria’s just-concluded national elections and tracked top-level talks within the Department of State Services (DSS), according to leaked files seen by HumAngle. The briefing slides were part of a cache of highly classified documents circulated online recently that revealed information about the US spying on allies and adversaries. It included intelligence on South Korea, France, Israel, Ukraine, and Russia. Though Washington has not confirmed the authenticity of the documents, it said it was “actively reviewing” the issue. Officials, however, told CNN and the New York Times that the documents appear legitimate “though at least one of the dozens of pages of classified reports had been altered.” One of the top-secret briefs obtained through the intercepts revealed that the Nigerian security services were aware of the malfunction of some of the  Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) prior to the elections.

Unilever Nigeria says it will stop producing the well-loved Omo, Sunlight and Lux home care brands as it struggles to sustain its in-country operations. The company is “exiting the home care and skin cleansing categories to concentrate on higher growth opportunities,” according to a company statement. “The exit of these two categories over 2023 will boost the vision to make Unilever Nigeria great, building on the impressive progress made in other key aspects of the business, and is envisaged to result in the overall improvement in profitability, growth and a more sustainable business,” it added. The company said it will review the optimal treatment of “redundant resources and assets.”

This week, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen will push for the urgent resolution of Ghana and Zambia’s requests to restructure their sovereign debts and help conclude a debt treatment for Sri Lanka. Yellen, who is slated to meet counterparts from around the world during this week’s meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, is also pushing for concrete steps to speed up the overall debt relief process and make it more transparent, a senior Treasury official told Reuters. The official said it remained unclear if there would be progress on Zambia’s request this week, adding, “That’s in some ways up to China.” Yellen will discuss the debt issue in separate meetings with officials from the G20 group of major economies and the Global Sovereign Debt Roundtable on Wednesday, the official said.

Gunfire was heard in at least two towns in Ethiopia’s Amhara region on Sunday as thousands protested against a federal government order to integrate regional special forces into the police or national army. Amhara’s special forces members and allied militias vowed to oppose last Thursday’s order, setting up a standoff with Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, who said in a statement that the plan was “for the sake of Ethiopia’s national unity.” The order applies to all of Ethiopia’s 11 regions, which have their own regional armies and the right to use their own language but has been received particularly poorly in Amhara, the second biggest, which has fallen out with Abiy recently. In a related development, two Catholic Relief Services (CRS) workers were shot and killed on Sunday in Amhara, the charity said. CRS communications director Kim Pozniak said, on Monday, that the incident occurred in Kobo town.