Nigerian teachers take part in a protest rally against the killing of 173 of their colleagues by the Islamist Boko Haram group. (Pic: AFP)
One hundred and seventy-six teachers have been killed and 900 schools destroyed in Nigeria’s Borno state since Boko Haram militants intensified their violent attacks in 2011, officials said on Thursday.
The governor of the northeastern state Kashim Shettima revealed the horrifying statistics in a statement to a committee attempting to make the country’s schools safer.
The Safe Schools Initiative has been backed by former British prime minister Gordon Brown, who is the representative of the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.
Brown pledged $10 million to the scheme during last May’s World Economic Forum, while Nigeria’s private sector is expected to put in 1.6 billion-naira ($9.8-million).
Although the scheme covers the whole of Africa’s most populous nation, it is scheduled to start off in Borno and neighbouring Yobe and Adamawa, the three states under emergency rule since May last year, and the hardest hit by Boko Haram’s five-year-old insurgency.
Boko Haram abducted 276 girls from their school in Chibok in Borno on April 14. Fifty-seven of the girls have escaped while the remaining 219 are thought to be still held hostage.
The group has attacked many schools and killed hundreds of students in the northeast of the country since it began its violence.
Shettima briefed the committee on the current state of education following the insurgency, while security and counter-terrorism experts from donor agencies formally presented a road-map for school safety, the statement said.
Nigeria’s literary icon Wole Soyinka turned 80 on Sunday, with friends and foes alike paying tribute to the first African to win the Nobel literature prize.
Dozens of literary and artistic events have been staged across the country over 80 days leading up to the birthday of the poet, novelist, playwright and social activist, whose works often satirised Nigeria’s society and harshly criticised corrupt and inept leaders.
But such is Soyinka’s popularity and stature that many of the targets of his criticism put aside past differences to honour the man who, with his trademark white afro and matching bushy goatee, is a beloved figure in Africa’s most populous nation.
Wole Soyinka. (Pic: AFP)
President Goodluck Jonathan praised his ardent critic in a statement on Saturday, hailing Soyinka’s “life-long dedication and indefatigable commitment to using his acclaimed genius and talents, not only in the service of the arts, but also for the promotion of democracy, good governance and respect for human rights in Nigeria, Africa and beyond”.
Former dictator General Yakubu Gowon, who jailed Soyinka for some two years during Nigeria’s 1967-1970 civil war, paid respect by attending a lecture in Soyinka’s hometown of Abeokuta on Friday.
Soyinka, who looks several decades younger than his age, sprang to his feet and warmly embraced his former jailer as soon as he entered the lecture hall, sparking applause from the audience.
“I have come to Abeokuta for the sake of this particular man, to honour him,” said Gowon, who imprisoned the writer on suspicion of support for his rival in the 1967 standoff that eventually led Nigeria to a 30-month civil war in which an estimated one million people died, mostly of disease and starvation.
The birthday events honouring Soyinka are due to culminate on Monday with a visit to his secluded forest residence in Abeokuta, the capital of southwestern Ogun State, and a presentation of one of his plays.
Born into an Anglican family on July 13, 1934, in Abeokuta, Soyinka cut his literary teeth in the 1950s at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria’s premier university, where he studied English literature.
He also studied literature at the University of Leeds.
Darling of the critics The poet, novelist and playwright has around 30 published works to his name, most of which satirise Nigerian society and which have made him a darling of the critics.
“Soyinka, a literary giant, is God’s gift to Nigeria in particular, Africa and the world at large. His style is inimitable,” Dare Ademola, a literary critic, told AFP.
Chima Anyadike, head of the English department at the Obafemi Awolowo University where Soyinka last taught in Nigeria, said: “Soyinka is a great writer of his time.”
In announcing his Nobel in 1986, the Swedish Academy praised Soyinka for “your versatile writings (in which) you have been able to synthesise a very rich heritage from your own country, ancient myths and old traditions, with literary legacies and traditions of European culture”.
It also hailed him for “your own genuine and impressive creativity as an artist, a master of language, and your commitment as a dramatist and writer of poetry and prose to problems of general and deep significance for man, modern or ancient”.
A harsh critic of military, corrupt or inept governments, Soyinka fled Nigeria during the regime of General Sani Abacha in the 1990s when the government hounded critics including journalists and academics.
A hunter, connoisseur of wines and notoriously private, Soyinka hasn’t let his advanced age dull his social activism. In January 2012, he joined activists in street protests against President Jonathan after the government hiked the pump price of fuel.
What do you do when you need to deliver several hundred pounds of potatoes, 150 stalks of sugar cane, 30 eucalyptus saplings and eight sacks of coal, without motorised transport?
For residents of Goma, in the war-scarred east of the Democratic Republic of Congo, the answer to this, and many other problems, is the tshukudu.
A local but highly efficient tradition, the man-powered wooden scooters are everywhere on the paved highways and dusty sidestreets of Goma, holding their own with the motorcycle taxis.
A man with his tshukudu in Goma on June 19 2014. (Pic: AFP)
They’re operated by a group of 1 500 proud, often burly men who not only have their own union but saw a giant, gold-coloured statue erected in their honour a few years ago in this capital of North Kivu province, on the border with Rwanda.
“The tshukudu is our whole life,” said driver Damas Sibomana.
Their vehicles, pronounced “chookoodoo”, measure about two metres long, have wide handlebars and a raised front wheel. They balance improbably large loads, as the tshukudeurs – as the drivers are known – push their vehicles along almost as much as they “drive” them.
Many drivers live outside the city and their day begins by transporting agricultural products grown in the verdant hills to the north, which feed the city’s markets. The good news? It’s downhill.
Once in the city centre the drivers await further orders for deliveries or return, again fully loaded, back to their starting point.
Men transport goods on tshukudus, wooden push-bikes, in Goma on June 18 2014. (Pic: AFP)
Jean-Marie Firiki gets up at 4am but his descent stops in Kibumba, 30 kilometres to the north of Goma, which boasts of being the tshukudu’s birthplace. The 35-year-old works as a tshukudeur at dawn and builds the machines during the day.
“A decent tshukudu costs $50 (36 euros),” Firiki said, “but the cost of a beautiful one can be $80-100” – quite a sum in DR Congo, where the majority of people live in extreme poverty.
But the boon is no fuel costs, and driver Sibomana says they can earn $10 on a good day.
There are no machines in the workshop that Fikiri shares with other craftsmen. Like most of the country Kibumba has no electricity supply. The men work the wood – here it’s eucalyptus – with a handsaw, a chisel, a plane and some sandpaper. It takes two days for a craftsman to make one scooter.
Invented in 1973 Paulin Barasiza works next to Fikiri. The 52-year-old traces the invention of the tshukudu back to about 1973.
Our fathers would sell potatoes and tobacco at a Rwandan market several kilometres away, he said. “They used wheelbarrows but these where inefficient. This is where the design came from” – inspired by bicycles.
The first tshukudus were made entirely of wood and the wheels were greased with palm oil several times a day to keep their gears from seizing up.
Sales began to pick up in the late 1980s but the decades that followed have been marred by inter-ethnic violence and regional conflicts that would ravage Kivu and still mark the province today.
It was paradoxically during this dark period that the tshukudu experienced significant upgrades: old tires glued on to protect the wheels, metal hubs and bearings and the addition of springs to aid steering.
Today, tshukudus cover vast distances and can carry up to half a tonne. Some models have a brake that works by applying friction to the rear wheel.
When a big load needs transporting to Goma, Sibomana employs two our three extra drivers for the day. Solidarity is strong, and thanks to help from other tshukudeurs, he was able to buy a field and a plot of land where he is building a house.
In early evening after a hard day’s work the scooter takes on another role: courting. The roads are full of young drivers taking their girlfriends out for a ride, both standing on the tshukudu as the man, in back, scoots it along.
The profession is held in high esteem. To have a daughter marry a tshukudeur means she “will not die of hunger”, said local historian Dany Kayeye.
In a Congolese cemetery overrun with weeds and rubbish strewn among the graves and banana trees, the living have moved in with the dead – some of them years ago.
For want of money and space, families have built houses out of earth, brick or sheet metal alongside tombs – some of prominent figures like the father of the current first lady – in the Kinsuka cemetery in Kinshasa, the Democratic Republic of Congo’s capital.
As they attempt to lead normal lives in this unlikely setting, the cemetery dwellers, who number at least several hundred, are not only living on the land illegally but also face dangerous sanitary conditions.
“You’re afraid you’re going to dig up a bone,” said 19-year-old Emile as he worked on the foundation for his older brother’s new house just steps away from a well-tended grave.
Should he, or the others, degrade a tombstone they face up to six months in prison, while living without a proper land title could mean a year in jail under the country’s penal code.
A woman and a child stand next to a pit at the Kinsuka cemetery on June 10 2014. (Pic: AFP)
Neighbour Bibiche (23) has lived in the cemetery for two years but says it is still an unsettling experience.
“You feel afraid sleeping amidst the graves, but we had no home,” she said. “The cemetery isn’t good, we have no electricity.”
Yet other cemetery residents say they not only have electricity but pay a “bill” to the national power company, SNEL.
Poverty Despite its vast mineral wealth, two-thirds of the DR Congo’s 68 million people are mired in poverty, exacerbated by back-to-back wars that ravaged the country from 1996 to 2003 and left a complex web of rebel groups still terrorising the eastern provinces.
Finding housing is a constant struggle for many, and large numbers of civilians – and even police and soldiers – have taken to the country’s cemeteries to find a place to call home.
But life among the gravestones is no free ride, explained Therese, a five-year resident of Kinsuka cemetery. The 57-year-old widow paid a local chief to buy four plots of land with her children’s help.
“They cost between $2 500 to $4 000 each,” said Therese, who like all the cemetery residents only gave her first name for fear of reprisal.
Inside her two-room house, the bedroom has a mosquito net but no bed.
“In November, the police came to destroy the houses. They took my things,” she said.
“I had to rebuild my house, but I don’t have the courage to rebuild on my other plots that I wanted to rent out.”
Yet scenes typical of village life can still be found in Kinsuka. The dirt paths are lined with wooden stalls selling food and basic supplies, and children in traditional blue and white kits play football at a Protestant school built inside the graveyard three years ago.
“Today it has about 150 students. Parents pay 78 000 Congolese francs per year, against $300 to $400 dollars elsewhere,” said the school’s director.
In some parts of cemetery the construction of homes has made it harder to locate remaining burial plots. The graveyard was founded in 1978 and is the final resting place of several well-known figures, such as engineer Sita Barnabe Kinsumbu, the father of the DRC’s first lady Olive Lembe Kabila, according to a local burial tax collector.
Public health hazard Government officials say the homes in Kinsuka and other cemeteries across the country constitute a public health hazard, noting that it takes as long as 50 years after a site’s last burial to ensure the ground is fully decontaminated.
“Sometimes people find a source of water but when you sniff it, it smells like a corpse,” said Dr Benjamin Mavard Kwengani, director of hygiene at Kinshasa’s health ministry.
“We haven’t done a study, but there have been abnormal cases in the (cemetery) communities – diarrhoea and abnormalities that we can’t explain,” he said.
According to Pius Ngoie, an advisor to the urban planning ministry, cemetery villages only continue to exist due to negligence and corruption within the civil service.
“Some of the state’s civil servants … are completely irresponsible” and “fraudulently” sell tracts of land in the cemetery, he said.
The cemetery dwellers are under no illusions that their homes could be razed at any moment.
“One day, a [state] tractor is going to come and knock down the houses and they will lose everything,” said Peter, whose father and grandfather are buried in Kinsuka.
His words turned out to be prophetic. Just a few days later, soldiers arrived to destroy some of the homes built on the remains of this final resting place.
Ghana’s players warm up during a training session in Brasilia. (Pic: AFP)
The Ghana government on Wednesday airlifted more than three million dollars in cash to Brazil to stop protests by players ahead of their crunch game against Portugal.
Speaking after a player meeting Wednesday, midfielder Christian Atsu said there was no question of any fallout from the financial dispute on Thursday’s game which Ghana must win to maintain any chance of qualifying for the second round.
The team ended their protests after President John Dramani Mahama personally assured them that he would send a chartered plane with the promised amount, more than $3 million, Atsu said.
“We love our country and we will play,” said Atsu, who with team-mates boycotted Monday’s training session.
Ghana coach Kwesi Appiah, whose side must beat Portugal and hope either the United States or Germany inflict a heavy defeat on the other so they go through on goal difference, said he was relieved the government had intervened.
“The president has intervened. That is a good thing, the government took matters in hand,” Appiah told a pre-match press conference.
“The money should arrive in a few hours as the plane took off some time ago,” he added.
Because of the bonus row, the team only arrived in Brasilia late on Wednesday and missed training.
Appiah, who has been coach since 2012, explained the bonuses should have been paid before the finals where the Black Stars had been hoping to repeat their 2010 exploit in reaching the quarter-finals.
“Our habit is to pay the players in cash because not all the players have bank accounts in Ghana.
“I am not saying that is the best way to do things but one has to understand in Africa things are done differently to Europe,” said Appiah.
“FIFA pays the federations only when they arrive. The players have to wait to be paid and the country must find the money before they arrive and that is where the problem lies.”
However, Appiah said he sympathised with the players. “From the moment one agrees the size of the bonus it is important the players receive it.”
Bonuses also caused a furore in the Cameroon camp with the players delaying their flight to Brazil until cash promises were made.
