Friday, October 27, 2023

Supreme Court of Nigeria affirms President Tinubu's election win

ABUJA, Oct 26 (Reuters) - Nigeria's Supreme Court on Thursday upheld President Bola Tinubu's election win, bringing to an end a legal challenge brought by his two main rivals, who argued that his victory was marred by irregularities.

The ruling will give 71-year-old Tinubu a clear mandate to govern Africa's most populous nation, which is grappling with double-digit inflation, foreign currency shortages, a weakening naira, widespread insecurity and crude oil theft.

The biggest opposition, People's Democratic Party (PDP), said it was "alarmed and disappointed" by the ruling, but Tinubu welcomed the judgment.

"We are all members of one household, and this moment demands that we continue to work and build our country together," Tinubu said in a statement.

Nigeria returned to democracy in 1999 after three decades of almost uninterrupted military rule, but accusations of ballot-rigging and fraud have followed its electoral cycles.

The judgment by seven Supreme Court judges, which is final, follows a pattern seen in previous presidential elections that have been challenged in court. None of the attempts to overturn results through the courts has been successful.

"This judgment by the Supreme Court has evidently shaken the confidence of Nigerians in the judiciary, especially the Supreme Court as the last hope of the common man," the PDP said.

Atiku Abubakar of the PDP and Peter Obi of the Labour Party came second and third respectively in the February vote, but rejected the result and called for Tinubu's win to be annulled.

The two opposition leaders had appealed a Sept. 6 tribunal judgment that endorsed Tinubu's victory.

In the appeal, they argued that the electoral commission failed to electronically transmit results from polling stations to an online portal, which undermined their authenticity.


They also said Tinubu had won less than 25% of the vote in the federal capital Abuja so he did not meet the legal threshold to become president.

The judges dismissed all their arguments.

By Camillus Eboh, Reuters

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Thursday, October 26, 2023

Top court in Nigeria to rule on presidential election challenge

Nigeria's Supreme Court will rule on Thursday whether to uphold President Bola Tinubu's disputed election victory, a court notice showed on Wednesday, after two of his main contenders challenged the decision of a lower court last month.

Atiku Abubakar of the People's Democratic Party and Peter Obi of the Labour Party, who came second and third respectively in the February vote, allege that the election was marred by irregularities.

The Supreme Court is the highest court in Africa's most populous nation, and its decision will be final.

No legal challenge to the outcome of a presidential election has succeeded in Nigeria, which returned to democracy in 1999 after three decades of almost uninterrupted military rule and has a history of electoral irregularities.

Abubakar and Obi on Monday asked the Supreme Court to quash a Sept. 6 tribunal decision upholding Tinubu's win, in a last bid to overturn a result widely accepted by the international community.

The Supreme Court has 60 days to pass judgment on the tribunal ruling.

Lawyers for Atiku and Obi told the Supreme Court the tribunal erred when it declared that it was not mandatory for the electoral agency to electronically transmit results from polling stations even though it had promised to do this.

They also argued that Tinubu did not score 25% of the vote in the federal capital Abuja, which meant he did not meet the legal threshold to be declared winner.

Under Nigeria's electoral law, a presidential candidate is deemed to have won if he or she gets no less than a quarter of the votes cast in at least two-thirds of all the 36 states and Abuja.

The provision has been interpreted differently by the opposition and Tinubu's lawyers.

The opposition says a successful candidate should get 25% of the vote in three quarters of the states and the same in Abuja, while Tinubu argued that the 25% refers to the states and Abuja combined.

By Macdonald Dzirutwe, Reuters

Related stories: No evidence president of Nigeria forged college record

Opposition claims president Tinubu forged diploma

Peter Obi challenges Nigeria's presidential election result in court

Wednesday, October 25, 2023

Video - Nigeria hosts festival to reconnect African diaspora to their roots



A three-day festival, commemorating the shipment of people captured from West Africa hundreds of years ago and forced to work as slaves in America and the Caribbean, came to a close in Nigeria over the weekend. The fourth edition of the Door of Return festival is a symbolic event that reconnects people of African descent living overseas to their roots in Africa.

CGTN

76 people arrested in Nigeria for attending suspected gay party

On Saturday, October 21, 76 people, including 59 men and 17 women, were arrested in northern Nigeria for attending an alleged LGBTQ+ birthday party where organisers were suspected of planning to host a same-sex wedding.

Buhari Saad, a spokesperson for the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC), said, “We apprehended 76 suspected homosexuals at a birthday party organised by one of them who was due to marry his fiancĂ© at the event.”

The arrests took place in Gombe State, a paramilitary organisation under the government where Islamic Sharia law can be applied alongside the federal and state judicial systems. Under Sharia law, homosexual relations can be punishable by death.

The NSCDC spokesperson refused to say under which law the suspects will be charged, but death penalties passed in Sharia courts must be approved by the state governor, and this punishment has never been enforced.

Those arrested were the latest targets of Nigeria’s 2014 Same-Sex Marriage (Prohibition) Act which bans gay marriage, same-sex relationships and membership of gay rights groups.

According to this legislation, people in same-sex relationships can face of up to 14 years in prison. In recent years, security forces have intimidated LGBTQ+ people in Nigeria and carried out numerous raids on gatherings where they suspect same-sex weddings are taking place.

In August, Nigerian police arrested dozens of people after raiding a gay wedding in the southern city of Warri. Those arrested were paraded before spectators and journalists before being released.

Similarly, last December, police arrested 19 young people for attending an alleged gay wedding in the centre of Kano, the largest city in northern Nigeria. The couple narrowly escaped and were able to flee the area before the arrests began. Those arrested were not charged and instead asked to “change their lifestyle” through “counselling.”

Amnesty International has condemned these raids saying: “In a society where corruption is endemic, the law prohibiting same-sex relationships is increasingly being used for harassment, extortion and blackmail by law enforcement officials and other members of the public.”

Nicole Lee, Yahoo News 

Related stories: Dozens arrested at gay wedding in Nigeria

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Video - Nigeria's anti-gay law denounced

Tuesday, October 24, 2023

State negligence leads to exodus of Nigerian doctors

Lagos, Nigeria — At about 7pm on August 1, when Vwaere Daiso exited her room on the ninth floor of the 10-storey residence for doctors at the Lagos hospital where she worked to retrieve a parcel from the ground floor, she had no idea it was the last time she would do so.

Moments later, she crashed to the floor together with the lift which had become unhinged.

No help came until after 40 minutes of frantic calls for a rescue team by the facility manager and Daiso’s roommate, who sprinted several flights of stairs to call him. The machines in the emergency section were not working either when she was taken there, so she was pronounced dead just as resuscitation began at about 8:59pm.

The 26-year-old’s death and the state of the facilities in the state-run establishment have angered many of her peers, including Joy Aifuobhokhan, one of the first responders at the scene.

“With all due respect, I feel like that [the late treatment] was medicine after death,” Aifuobhokhan, who was stuck in the same lift last year for hours, told Al Jazeera. “Imagine all of that was in place when Vwaere was first brought in within the first five minutes.”

The struggles of Nigeria’s healthcare system are well-documented and have affected the quality and number of doctors available locally, for decades.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), at least 2,000 Nigerian doctors emigrate yearly to hotspots like the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada. Since 2019, Nigerian newspapers have been reporting about recruitment exercises conducted by Saudi officials in Lagos and Abuja.

The average salary for a Nigerian doctor in the employ of the federal government, is 240,000 naira ($312.92) monthly, a fraction of the 2,448 ($2,967.20) average remuneration for their peers in the UK. Those employed by the state governments earn even less.

And that has been a key factor in their migration.

But doctors say fleeing Nigeria is also a matter of life and death even for them due to deplorable working conditions and poor equipment as they work round the clock.

On September 17, a doctor at the Lagos State Teaching Hospital died after working nonstop for 72 hours.
 

‘A vicious cycle’

After Daiso’s death, the Lagos state government fired the hospital facility manager and suspended the head of the agency responsible for maintaining the lift. The police also arrested three people.

The incident highlights the state of the health system, according to Dr Fejiro Chinye-Nwoko, general manager at the Nigerian Solidarity Support Fund, a Lagos-based NGO fundraising for medical interventions.

“A strong health system needs to be able to forecast, plan, and respond adequately to health emergencies,” she said.

Only about 72,000 doctors are registered with the Nigerian Medical Association even though approximately 3,000 doctors graduate from Nigeria’s medical schools yearly.

Worse still, only about 35,000 practise in Nigeria, a country of 200 million people, a ratio of one doctor to 10,000 people. This is far below the WHO’s recommended doctor-to-patient ratio of one doctor to 500 people.

This is compounded by a steady decline in the number of nurses, 75,000 of whom have left the country in the last five years.

Routine strikes for better wages and working conditions by available medical personnel have also led to patients now waiting long hours in hospitals to see a doctor. Some have died waiting, especially in areas of conflict in the country’s north.

Doctors often have to innovate on the go, sometimes using cartons as makeshift incubators or conducting critical surgeries by candlelight.

According to Dr Orji Innocent, president of the National Association of Resident Doctors (NARD), doctors now die on a weekly basis due to increased stress and unfavourable working conditions. The association is compiling data on deaths to release soon as a report, NARD told Al Jazeera.

“We have entered a vicious cycle because the few doctors that are left are overworked. Many of them feel that they cannot cope and they will pack their bags and leave the system,” he said. “We believe that with what we are seeing, it will be a matter of weeks before there will be a total collapse of the healthcare system in this country.”

“When you check the surgery booking note, you see people are already booked till July next year. And these are cases that shouldn’t take more than a month for the patient to go under surgery,” Innocent added.
Waning interest

Besides going to practise abroad, many medical personnel are now leaving their jobs in pursuit of less strenuous work elsewhere.

Ayomide Ogunrinde, a trained doctor, told Al Jazeera that she endured sexual harassment from superiors while working at a government hospital and then depression from seeing people die “avoidable deaths”.

“The way the hospitals work is that you have to buy the things you need down to the littlest things like cotton wool and that makes work very ineffective. No one would assume that in a public hospital, patients wouldn’t have to be buying plaster,” the 25-year-old said.

Ogunrinde said she sometimes worked 72-hour shifts, attending to patients despite being tired and running the risk of making costly mistakes. Last year, she quit her job and now works as an administrator at a Lagos-based hospitality firm.

Experts say doctors need to be in optimum physical, mental, and psychological state to be able to save lives, but an increased workload and lack of an enabling environment have made that difficult.

“Nigeria has never had an adequate number of doctors, and the recent challenge of brain drain has further worsened the situation,” said Professor Tanimola Akande, a consultant community health physician at the University of Ilorin Teaching Hospital. “This will certainly worsen our already bad health indices. Patients’ patronage of quacks and other unreliable places has increased.”

To discourage doctors from fleeing the country, a member of parliament recently proposed that newly inducted doctors practise for a mandatory period of five years in Nigeria to get a licence.

Critics of the government say this will be ineffectual. Instead, they want to see more political will from the government, to ameliorate the situation.

An upgrade of existing facilities and introduction of competitive benefits will boost job satisfaction for medical personnel, said Chinye-Nwoko.

“Prioritising safety by maintaining equipment, and implementing safety protocols is vital to prevent accidents and promote a safer work environment. By taking these steps, the government can help keep doctors in the country … and improve healthcare for all citizens, especially those who are most vulnerable,” she said.

In Lagos, Aifuobhokhan joined other doctors to observe a candle procession in honour of their colleague, days after her passing. She too is leaving her job, to avoid deja vu.

“Now I know for sure I do not want to practise,” she told Al Jazeera. “I don’t want to be in the four walls of any hospital saving lives and then dying where I am saving lives.”

Al Jazeera

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