Daily Watch – Tribunal sacks Kano governor, S’Africa to host US-AFRICA summit

The Kano Governorship Election Petition Tribunal has sacked Governor Abba Kabir Yusuf of the  New Nigerian Peoples Party (NNPP), declaring the All Progressives Congress (APC) winner of the 18 March 2023 election. The three-man panel ordered the withdrawal of the certificate of return which INEC presented to Governor Yusuf and directed a certificate of return to be issued to Gawuna.  INEC had declared that Yusuf polled 1,019,602 votes to defeat Gawuna, who scored 890,705 votes. The Tribunal deducted 165,663 votes from the NNPP as invalid, stating that the ballot papers (165,663) were not stamped or signed and, therefore, declared invalid. The Tribunal also ruled that Mr Yusuf was not a member of the NNPP before he contested and won the election, affirming that he did not follow the required procedures of becoming a member of the NNPP and was not qualified to contest the election.

Nigerians abroad sent home a record $20.1 billion. At the current official market rate of ₦767 per dollar, the amount is equivalent to ₦15.3 trillion. This is the highest amount sent to any country in Sub-Saharan Africa, according to the World Bank’s latest Migration and Development Brief. The World Bank report said remittance flows to Sub-Saharan Africa grew to $54 billion in 2022, a 6.1 percent increase from the preceding year. The report said regional growth in remittances was largely driven by strong remittance growth in Ghana (11.9 percent), Kenya (8.5 percent), Tanzania (25 percent), Uganda (17.3 percent), and Rwanda (21.2 percent). It added the increase in remittance flows to the region supported the current accounts of several African countries dealing with food insecurity, supply chain disruptions, severe drought (Horn of Africa), floods (in Nigeria, Chad, Niger, Burkina Faso, Mali, and Cameroon), and debt-servicing difficulties. 

Ghana’s economic growth slowed slightly to 3.2 percent year-on-year in the second quarter, according to the Ghana Statistical Service. This is compared to 3.5 percent recorded during the same period in 2022 and the revised 3.3 percent in the first quarter of 2023. The Services sector recorded the highest growth rate of 6.3 percent followed by the Agriculture sector with an expansion of 6.0 percent. Industry, however, contracted by 1.9 percent. Three sub sectors expanded by more than 10 percent. They were Information & Communication (26.4 percent), Fishing (12.2 percent) and Health & Social Work (11.0 percent). Growth in the second quarter was driven by the mining, agriculture, health, transport, and information technology sectors. The construction sub-sector contracted by 11.7 percent, the biggest drop in five years. The statistics agency also said producer inflation slowed to 28.3 percent in annual terms in August.

South Africa will host a US-Africa trade summit in November despite an earlier call by US lawmakers for the event to be moved over what they said was the country’s deepening military relationship with Russia. South Africa’s economic hub, Johannesburg, will host the US-sub-Saharan Africa Trade and Economic Cooperation Forum from 2-4 November. The meeting will discuss the future of the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), Washington’s flagship trade programme for the continent, which grants tariff-free access to the US market and is due to expire on 30 September 2025. Ebrahim Patel, South Africa’s trade minister, called for AGOA to be extended.