Day: September 17, 2021

OME— Togo moto-taxi driver Kossigan Fandji was twice barred from entering his local town hall to try to access his documents because he failed to present a COVID-19 vaccine card.

Fandji joined the rush of Togolese getting the jab after his small West African nation on Friday became the latest to ban access to certain public places for people with no Covid-19 vaccination.

The measure was the latest by Togo’s government in an attempt to curb growing Covid cases and increase innoculation rates against the virus.

“Finally! With my vaccination card, I can get a legalized copy of my birth certificate,” said Fandji after receiving a shot in Togo’s capital Lome.

The passes, which are already in place in several European countries, will be difficult to establish in the country of eight million people that has so far received around 1.6 million doses of vaccines.

On Wednesday afternoon, a long queue was seen outside a clinic in Doumassesse, a popular neighborhood of Lome.

“We are really overwhelmed, since Saturday. We’re vaccinating at least 600 people a day, while before we were vaccinating between 150 and 200,” a hospital staffer said.

Honore Yao, a 21-year-old student, said he came to get his shot “mostly to get the card”.

“I am applying for a passport and I won’t be able to enter the passport office without this document,” he said.

But for 25-year-old Eric Tivo, who works in a supermarket, getting the shot was a burden.

“I didn’t want to do it, because I’m a bit worried. But I was obligated to get the shot.”

Outside several public buildings in the capital, police officers and members of an anti-Covid brigade conduct checks.

On Tuesday, the government extended the state of a health emergency, allowing it broader powers to tackle outbreaks.

Places of worship, bars, and nightclubs are closed, and cultural, political, and sporting events are banned.

Some critics of the government have spoken out against the new measures. “The regime only knows force. It’s unthinkable to impose a pass to access public buildings. It’s anti-constitutional,” said opposition member Nathaniel Olympio.

Togo has so far recorded 23,947 coronavirus cases and 208 deaths, but numbers are estimated to be higher because of a lack of testing.

The new restrictions follow a surge in cases in recent weeks.

“The number of deaths keeps increasing” Didier Koumavi Ekouevi, president of the country’s scientific council, said last week.

“In June, we had four deaths, on July, 22, and on August, 33. We are recording four times more patients.”

At least 450,000 people have received at least one dose of the vaccine and the government hopes to start inoculating 10,000 people a day in order to reach one million vaccinated people by December.

In neighboring Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, some states are also launching Covid-19 vaccine passes.

Edo state, in the south, said it was banning access to public buildings starting on Wednesday, for any state employee who cannot show proof of vaccination.

The country of more than 200 million people has received fewer than 10 million doses of vaccines so far, and just over four million have taken at least one shot, according to official figures.

Source: NAM NEWS NETWORK

Somalia’s government has condemned what it calls the unlawful detention of President Mohamed Abdullahi Farmajo’s national security adviser.

Somali government spokesman Abdirashid Hashi in a tweet Friday said Fahad Yasin was detained at Djibouti airport.

Yasin was flying from Turkey to Mogadishu with a stop in Djibouti.

Government spokesman Hashi tweeted such acts will not help to strengthen ties between Somalia and Djibouti.

Djibouti’s Minister of Economy and Finance Ilyas Dawaleh tweeted a response to the communication director’s accusation.

Dawaleh asked him to “refrain from any inappropriate and baseless statements.”

Djibouti’s Foreign Minister Mohamed Yusuf added, “There are fake news released in social media trying to create confusion and drag Djibouti into Somalia internal challenges and crisis. We will continue to stand by our brothers and sisters in Somalia but never interfere in their internal affairs.”

Yasin, who is the former head of Somalia’s National Intelligence and Security Agency, is at the center of a power struggle between Somalia’s president and prime minister.

Prime Minister Mohamed Hussein Roble suspended Yasin over the disappearance of a female cybersecurity spy, who the agency says was killed by al-Shabab militants.

Her family believes Somalia’s spy agency was responsible for her disappearance.

Yasin was due to attend a national security meeting on Saturday to discuss the controversial case.

The case has Farmajo and Roble in a stand-off that threatens the country’s elections and security gains.

Farmajo on Thursday issued a suspension of Roble’s executive powers, which the prime minister promptly rejected.

Source: Voice of America

Former Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, who fought for independence from France, reconciled his conflict-ravaged nation and was then ousted amid pro-democracy protests in 2019 after two decades in power, has died at age 84.

A statement from the office of current President Abdelmadjid Tebboune, did not provide the cause of death or information about funeral arrangements.

Bouteflika had suffered a stroke in 2013 that badly weakened him. Concerns about his state of health, kept secret from the Algerian public, helped feed public frustration with his 20-year, corruption-tarnished rule. Mass public protests by the Hirak movement led to his departure.

An astute political chameleon, Bouteflika had been known as a wily survivor ever since he fought for independence from colonial ruler France in the 1950s and 1960s.

He stood up to Henry Kissinger as Algeria’s long-serving foreign minister, successfully negotiated with the terrorist known as Carlos the Jackal to free oil ministers taken hostage in a 1975 attack on OPEC headquarters, and helped reconcile Algerian citizens with each other after a decade of civil war between radical Muslim militants and Algeria’s security forces.

“I’m a non-conformist politician. I’m a revolutionary,” Bouteflika told The Associated Press on the eve of his first presidential victory in 1999, after a campaign tarnished by fraud charges that drove his six rivals to pull out of the vote.

Upon taking office, Bouteflika promised “to definitively turn the somber pages of our history to work for a new era.”

Born March 2, 1937, to Algerian parents in the border town of Oujda, Morocco, Bouteflika was among Algeria’s most enduring politicians.

In 1956, Bouteflika entered the National Liberation Army, formed to fight Algeria’s bloody independence war. He commanded the southern Mali front and slipped into France clandestinely.

After the war’s end, Bouteflika became foreign minister at just 25, at a time when Algeria was a model of doctrinaire socialism tethered to the Soviet Union. Its capital, Algiers, was nicknamed “Moscow on the Med.”

He kept that post for 16 years, helping to raise Algeria’s influence and define the country as a leader of the Third World and the Non-Aligned Movements. He was active in the United Nations and presided over the U.N. General Assembly in 1974.

In 1978, he slipped from sight for nearly two decades, spending more than six years in exile to escape corruption charges that were later dropped.

Algeria’s army held the reins of power throughout that time. The National Liberation Army had been transformed into a single party that ruled until 1989, when a multiparty system was introduced.

But as the Islamic Salvation Front party, or FIS, rapidly gained support, the army canceled Algeria’s first multi-party legislative elections in 1992 to thwart a likely victory by the Muslim fundamentalists. An insurgency erupted that left an estimated 200,000 dead over the ensuing years.

Bouteflika took office in 1999, Algeria’s first civilian leader in more than three decades. He managed to bring stability to a country nearly brought to its knees by the violence, unveiling a bold program in 2005 to reconcile the fractured nation by persuading Muslim radicals to lay down their arms.

Bouteflika and the armed forces neutralized Algeria’s insurgency, but then watched it metastasize into a Saharan-wide movement linked to smuggling and kidnapping — and to al-Qaida.

Bouteflika stood with the United States in the fight against terrorism after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, particularly on intelligence-sharing and military cooperation. It marked a turnaround from the militantly anti-American, Soviet-armed Algeria of years past when figures like Black Panther leader Eldridge Cleaver took refuge there.

Bouteflika’s powerful political machine had the constitution changed to cancel the presidency’s two-term limit. He was then reelected in 2009 and 2013, amid charges of fraud and a lack of powerful challengers.

His firebrand past dissolved as age and illness took its toll on the once-charismatic figure. Corruption scandals over infrastructure and hydrocarbon projects dogged him for years and tarnished many of his closest associates. His brother, two former prime ministers and other top officials are now in prison over corruption.

Bouteflika balked at the region-wide calls for change embodied by the 2011 Arab Spring revolutions that overthrew three dictators to his east. Bouteflika tamped down unrest through salary and subsidy increases, a vigilant security force and a lack of unity in the country’s opposition. He also failed to restore civic trust or create an economy that could offer the jobs needed for Algeria’s growing youth population despite the nation’s vast oil and gas wealth.

Bouteflika was increasingly absent from view during his third and fourth presidential terms after suffering a stroke. The extent to which Bouteflika was controlled by the army remained unclear. He once told the AP that he turned down the job of president in 1994 because he was unable to accept conditions set by the military.

Algeria’s Hirak protests erupted after he announced plans to run for a fifth term in 2019, and it was the then-army chief who sealed Bouteflika’s fate by siding with the demonstrators. Bouteflika had no choice but to step down.

Despite new elections and some gestures toward the protesters, Algeria’s leadership remains opaque and has recently cracked down on dissent, notably among Berber populations.

The secrecy surrounding Algeria’s leaders is such that it’s unclear whether Bouteflika ever married or had any survivors.

Source: Voice of America