Mali shocked African champions Nigeria 2-1 in the sides' opening Group A match at the African Nations Championship in Cape Town Stadium on Saturday.
Goals from Abdoulaye Sissoko and Adama Traore (pictured) gave Mali a stunning start to the competition.
Mali took the lead in the 17th minute with a ferocious drive from Sissoko after breaking free on the right flank after Mali had cut open the Nigeria defence.
They then missed two chances in quick succession - on 20 and 21 minutes - to double their lead as they dominated the Super Eagles, and just after half-time Nigeria cleared off the line after a corner.
On 50 minutes the Eagles got reward for their pressure when Traore made it 2-0 with another vicious shot which went through the legs of Nigeria keeper Chigozie Agbim.
Although Nigeria hit back four minutes later with a glancing header from substitute Fuad Salami, it was not enough to prevent defeat for the tournament favourites.
Earlier on Saturday, a stunning goal from Hlompho Kekana helped hosts South Africa to a 3-1 victory over Mozambique in the opening match of the competition.
With the tie delicately poised at 1-1, the Mamelodi Sundowns midfielder powered home a 40-yard shot that left goalkeeper Soarito a bemused spectator.
And the goal changed the complexion of the Group A clash in Cape Town.
Bernard Parker, who had earlier cancelled out Diogo's deflected shot, grabbed his second to seal the win.
Mozambique went into the match on the back of an intensive two-month training camp.
And they took the lead after just 11 minutes when South Africa goalkeeper and captain Itumeleng Khune was fooled by Diogo's deflected shot.
But the hosts equalised on the half-hour mark when Parker scored from the penalty spot.
And they could and should have gone to the break 2-1 up but for a horror miss from Katlego Mashego.
Siphiwe Tshabalala flighted a delightful cross into the area but Mashego fluffed his lines from just four yards when it appeared easier to score.
Bafana Bafana would not be denied, though, and after Kekana's stunning strike, Parker put the result beyond doubt when he netted from close range in the dying minutes.
BBC
Monday, January 13, 2014
Friday, January 10, 2014
Nigeria signs prisoner exchange deal with the UK
The UK and Nigeria have signed an agreement to allow the transfer of prisoners between the two countries.
It means citizens of one who commit crimes in the other will serve sentences in their homeland.
The UK government said it meant inmates could be "properly prepared for release into the community in which they will live following their release".
Both countries already have prisoner-transfer treaties in place with several other states.
The UK-Nigeria agreement was one of the objectives outlined by UK Prime Minister David Cameron and Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan following a meeting in 2011.
It is expected the first prisoner transfers will take place before the end of this year.
UK Justice Minister Jeremy Wright said: "Removing foreign national offenders is a key priority for the British government and the prisoner transfer agreement I signed this morning with the Nigerian attorney-general plays a significant role in supporting this.
"Both the United Kingdom and Nigeria have prisoner transfer arrangements with other countries and it is right that our two countries, which have such strong ties and shared interests, should develop our own arrangements.
"I strongly believe that this agreement will have significant benefits for both our countries."
BBC
It means citizens of one who commit crimes in the other will serve sentences in their homeland.
The UK government said it meant inmates could be "properly prepared for release into the community in which they will live following their release".
Both countries already have prisoner-transfer treaties in place with several other states.
The UK-Nigeria agreement was one of the objectives outlined by UK Prime Minister David Cameron and Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan following a meeting in 2011.
It is expected the first prisoner transfers will take place before the end of this year.
UK Justice Minister Jeremy Wright said: "Removing foreign national offenders is a key priority for the British government and the prisoner transfer agreement I signed this morning with the Nigerian attorney-general plays a significant role in supporting this.
"Both the United Kingdom and Nigeria have prisoner transfer arrangements with other countries and it is right that our two countries, which have such strong ties and shared interests, should develop our own arrangements.
"I strongly believe that this agreement will have significant benefits for both our countries."
BBC
President Goodluck Jonathan asks bank chief Sanusi to resign
But Mr Sanusi refused, telling Goodluck Jonathan that others could have leaked his memo about the state oil firm's failure to account for $50bn (£30bn).
Ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo referred to this in a letter criticising Mr Jonathan's leadership last month.
President Jonathan was angered by the criticism, denying government fraud.
In a rebuttal letter before Christmas, the president said that Mr Obasanjo, who is also a member of the governing People's Democratic Party, was threatening "national security" by whipping up opposition to his administration.
He dismissed allegations of "high corruption" in government and said that Mr Sanusi's allegations - made in a letter dated 25 September - were "spurious".
A respected banker, Mr Sanusi has spearheaded reforms in Nigeria's troubled banking sector since his appointment in 2009.
'Heated exchange'
According to Nigeria's This Day newspaper, President Jonathan demanded the bank chief's resignation over the phone, asking him to leave by 31 December 2013.
But in a heated exchange, Mr Sanusi refused to leave his post before his term ends later this year, a source confirmed to the BBC.
Mr Sanusi said that about $10bn (£6bn) was still unaccounted for by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and expressed surprise that those responsible were not being asked to resign instead.
Mr Jonathan accused the Central Bank governor of leaking the letter to Mr Obasanjo after which the full letter was published in the Nigerian media.
Mr Sanusi said the leak could have come from the presidency or ministry of finance and the blame could not lie with him.
Nigeria has recently been listed among countries that could become the next set of economic giants in years to come - known as the "Mint" nations.
Correspondent says deep divisions have engulfed the PDP over the last year amid fears that it could lose the election under Mr Jonathan's leadership.
BBC
Thursday, January 9, 2014
Can Lagos save Nigeria?
Nigeria is arguably the worst run of the world’s seven most populated countries. Despite earning hundreds of billions of dollars in oil revenue over the past decade, it is expected by 2015, by some calculations, to have the second-most destitute people in the world after India. But its largest city, Lagos, which until recently was known as one of the world’s most difficult cities to govern, seems to have turned a corner.
Even though it remains a slum-ridden and largely impoverished metropolis, with an exploding population estimated at 21 million (of Nigeria’s 170 million people), it has seen steady improvement in its governance for over a decade. The government has enhanced public transportation, cleaned up streets, upgraded the business environment and bettered the lives of its inhabitants.
So Nigeria, of all places, may be pointing the way to a strategy by which fragile states might begin to succeed: Devolve more power to cities from their corrupt and overcentralized national governments. At least in democracies, the cities have promise because their elected politicians face pressure to deliver specific services to their constituents. In the central governments, which are more remote, there is too much power and wealth to be grabbed by dysfunctional politicians and their cronies, and too little direct accountability.
The emergence of fragile states is one of the world’s most pressing problems. Such states, which include Nigeria, Iraq and Yemen, contain a rising number of the world’s poor (half of the world’s people who live on less than $1.25 a day will be in fragile states by 2015, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) and contribute disproportionately to the world’s instability and terrorism. They have become a major focus of international aid efforts, but it has proved very difficult to improve governance there.
The turnaround in Lagos can be traced to 1999, when Nigeria returned to democracy and the city began holding regular elections. For the first time since independence, Lagos was able to re-elect its own leaders, or turn them out of office. And while national elections became a mud fight between elites to control the state’s enormous oil wealth, local contests forced candidates to show pragmatism and competence.
Citizens in densely populated cities find it easier to organize themselves. And in an ethnically and religiously diverse metropolis like Lagos, politicians could not afford to pit ethnic and religious groups against one another, a problem that has long bedeviled Nigeria. Simple geography also helped the city administration. The powerful and wealthy classes are more likely to insist on better governance when their own neighborhoods are affected.
And unlike national politicians, local leaders know that the better they perform, the more money their city nets. The better its roads, schools and business environment, the more likely companies will pay taxes, and individuals will buy goods and services, which also contribute to the tax base. At the national level, by contrast, the great majority of the central government’s income has little to do with government’s performance, since about 75 percent of the national budget comes from the $50 billion a year that Nigeria collects in oil revenue.
Can Lagos really save Nigeria? Alone, it’s unlikely — one factor is that the country’s population is expected to continue mushrooming to 400 million by mid-century — but Lagos can now be the model for transferring more authority to other cities, such as Ibadan, Kano and Benin City. And they, in turn, could help to shift the polarized national politics that produce the same cadre of unaccountable elites year after year.
For example, if local politicians were better able to raise and regulate local taxes, they would find themselves more accountable to the population. And they would presumably establish a more welcoming local environment for business to flourish, and perhaps start a nationwide chain reaction unleashing the country’s famous entrepreneurialism. If income levels rose, education and a rising middle class might follow. Greater affluence and aspiration, in turn, tend to act as a useful brake on population growth.
Elsewhere, other cities offer a similar lesson. In Medellín, Colombia, the city government outshone the national government in the late 1990s by setting up a network of publicly funded business support centers, investing strategically in transportation and security, and introducing its own program of cash grants to help the poor. Cities such as Chennai and Hyderabad in India have similarly outperformed India’s national government in promoting growth, educating children and reducing crime and poverty.
Can this model hold out hope for other fragile states? Countries such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, Pakistan and Kenya all suffer from weak and dysfunctional governments, but have cities that could be the basis for a similar model of development. Regular local elections could spur significant changes in Kinshasa, Karachi and Nairobi, respectively, if the cities were granted more autonomy and the tax base was broadened to make government more dependent on local citizens and companies.
Almost half of the developing world’s population now lives in cities, and rapid urbanization is expected to increase this proportion to two-thirds within a few decades, according to the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs. The city is now the main driver of growth and stability across Africa, the Middle East and South Asia. And the example of Lagos shows that countries can begin to work better when their cities are well governed and thriving.
In other words, cities can help save countries.
Written by Seth D. Kaplan
NY TIMES
Even though it remains a slum-ridden and largely impoverished metropolis, with an exploding population estimated at 21 million (of Nigeria’s 170 million people), it has seen steady improvement in its governance for over a decade. The government has enhanced public transportation, cleaned up streets, upgraded the business environment and bettered the lives of its inhabitants.
So Nigeria, of all places, may be pointing the way to a strategy by which fragile states might begin to succeed: Devolve more power to cities from their corrupt and overcentralized national governments. At least in democracies, the cities have promise because their elected politicians face pressure to deliver specific services to their constituents. In the central governments, which are more remote, there is too much power and wealth to be grabbed by dysfunctional politicians and their cronies, and too little direct accountability.
The emergence of fragile states is one of the world’s most pressing problems. Such states, which include Nigeria, Iraq and Yemen, contain a rising number of the world’s poor (half of the world’s people who live on less than $1.25 a day will be in fragile states by 2015, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) and contribute disproportionately to the world’s instability and terrorism. They have become a major focus of international aid efforts, but it has proved very difficult to improve governance there.
The turnaround in Lagos can be traced to 1999, when Nigeria returned to democracy and the city began holding regular elections. For the first time since independence, Lagos was able to re-elect its own leaders, or turn them out of office. And while national elections became a mud fight between elites to control the state’s enormous oil wealth, local contests forced candidates to show pragmatism and competence.
Citizens in densely populated cities find it easier to organize themselves. And in an ethnically and religiously diverse metropolis like Lagos, politicians could not afford to pit ethnic and religious groups against one another, a problem that has long bedeviled Nigeria. Simple geography also helped the city administration. The powerful and wealthy classes are more likely to insist on better governance when their own neighborhoods are affected.
And unlike national politicians, local leaders know that the better they perform, the more money their city nets. The better its roads, schools and business environment, the more likely companies will pay taxes, and individuals will buy goods and services, which also contribute to the tax base. At the national level, by contrast, the great majority of the central government’s income has little to do with government’s performance, since about 75 percent of the national budget comes from the $50 billion a year that Nigeria collects in oil revenue.
Can Lagos really save Nigeria? Alone, it’s unlikely — one factor is that the country’s population is expected to continue mushrooming to 400 million by mid-century — but Lagos can now be the model for transferring more authority to other cities, such as Ibadan, Kano and Benin City. And they, in turn, could help to shift the polarized national politics that produce the same cadre of unaccountable elites year after year.
For example, if local politicians were better able to raise and regulate local taxes, they would find themselves more accountable to the population. And they would presumably establish a more welcoming local environment for business to flourish, and perhaps start a nationwide chain reaction unleashing the country’s famous entrepreneurialism. If income levels rose, education and a rising middle class might follow. Greater affluence and aspiration, in turn, tend to act as a useful brake on population growth.
Elsewhere, other cities offer a similar lesson. In Medellín, Colombia, the city government outshone the national government in the late 1990s by setting up a network of publicly funded business support centers, investing strategically in transportation and security, and introducing its own program of cash grants to help the poor. Cities such as Chennai and Hyderabad in India have similarly outperformed India’s national government in promoting growth, educating children and reducing crime and poverty.
Can this model hold out hope for other fragile states? Countries such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, Pakistan and Kenya all suffer from weak and dysfunctional governments, but have cities that could be the basis for a similar model of development. Regular local elections could spur significant changes in Kinshasa, Karachi and Nairobi, respectively, if the cities were granted more autonomy and the tax base was broadened to make government more dependent on local citizens and companies.
Almost half of the developing world’s population now lives in cities, and rapid urbanization is expected to increase this proportion to two-thirds within a few decades, according to the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs. The city is now the main driver of growth and stability across Africa, the Middle East and South Asia. And the example of Lagos shows that countries can begin to work better when their cities are well governed and thriving.
In other words, cities can help save countries.
Written by Seth D. Kaplan
NY TIMES
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