Exactly one year after Al Shabaab militants attacked the Kenya Defence Forces (KDF) camp in El Adde killing over 100 soldiers, the militants have this morning attacked the KDF Kulbiyow camp.
The attack was confirmed by Military Spokesperson Col Njoroge and media sources indicate the number of casualties remains unconfirmed.
“We are under massive attack and there is a massive exchange of fire,” Col. Njoroge was quoted as saying.
Long-serving National Resistance Movement (NRM) cadre Dr. Crispus Kiyonga has been named Uganda’s new Ambassador to Beijing, China, replacing Charles Wagidoso.
Since 1986 when the NRM came to power Dr. Kiyonga has held several top government jobs, the last appointment being Minister for Defence.
In 1980 Dr. Kiyonga, who hails from Kasese, was the only Member of Parliament elected on the ticket of the Uganda Patriotic Movement (UPM), a party founded by current NRM Chairman Yoweri Museveni. During those elections Mr Museveni contested in Mbarara on the UPM ticket but lost to Democratic Party’s Sam Kahamba Kutesa, the current Minister of Foreign Affairs and also an in-law to President Museveni.
Another notable appointment is that of Democratic Party National Chairman and former Mayor of Jinja Muhammad Kezaala, who has been named Deputy Ambassador.
Last night the EagleOnline broke the story of the appointment of Busoga King William Wilberforce Gabula as Ambassador Special Duties Office of the President.
FULL LIST:
DEPUTY AMBASSODORS:
The office of South Sudan President Salva Kiir has said that former Chief of General Staff of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) has finally decided to join the armed opposition.
Presidential spokesperson, Ateny Wek Ateny, said General Oyai Deng Ajak had rebelled, and wondered what could have prompted him after he had the opportunity to hold top positions.
“Only greed and exceeding thirst for power, can the one time respected Commander of Operation Jungle Storm (OJS), in the one-time powerful and united SPLM/A duration and after the war of liberation, the former Chief of General Staff, briefly under the former leader John Garang and under Gen, Salva Kiir’s leadership of the then autonomous Southern Sudan, a Minister for Investment briefly at independence, a Minister of National Security in the Office of the President, again becomes the Chief of General Staff of ill-conceived rebels movement- what a world of greed? It is a laughing stock, if not absolute idiocy. God save South Sudan,” said Ateny on Thursday.
The presidential spokesperson did not provide the source of this information, and also no official statement was released by General Oyai, or any group to which he is reportedly linked.
It is also not possible to know which group Ajak has joined since there are several rebel factions operating in either inside or outside the country.
Some observers associate Oyai with the National Democratic Movement of Lam Akol Ajawin, the former agriculture minister who resigned from his position in protest of lack of implementation of the peace agreement.
Ajak had being detained with Pagan Amum and other leading former members in the South Sudanese government in December 2013.
During his trial on April 9, 2014, he was accused of rebellion and treason, after allegations that he and the other political detainees had attempted to overthrow the government of President Kiir.
However, the court ordered their release on April 24, 2014 ‘in order to promote peace and reconciliation among our people’.
President Yoweri Museveni has appointed the Busoga King William Wilberforce Gabula IV as the ambassador special duties.
His majesty Gabula was raised by his maternal grandmother in Jinja. He started his Primary Education at Victoria Nile then Lohana Academy from 1995 until 2001. In 2002, he entered Busoga College Mwiri for his O-Level studies until 2005. He continued with his A-Level education, at Kyambogo College School, graduating in 2007.
He was admitted to Kyambogo University, graduating in 2011, with the degree of Bachelor of Arts in Economics. At the time of his coronation, he was employed as an Economist in the Uganda Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources. He then went for further studies in the United Kingdom and graduated in 2015 with a First Class master’s degree in Business Administration (Management) at Coventry University.
William Wilberforce Kadhumbula Gabula Nadiope IV is the reigning Kyabazinga of Busoga, a constitutional kingdom in modern-day Uganda. He is the fourth Kyabazinga of Busoga.
It is a rather surprising move by the president who has appointed a culture leader as an ambassador for the first time.
The Gambia’s new president Adama Barrow will return to the capital Banjul later today, and his first job is to deal with an internal crisis after it emerged his choice of vice president, Fatoumata Jallow-Tambajang, may be too old, constitutionally, for the role.
Barrow’s return comes days after long-standing ruler Yahya Jammeh, who initially disputed the election results, was forced into exile.
Barrow had to be inaugurated in neighbouring Senegal as regional powers threw their weight behind the new leader and threatened military intervention if Jammeh refused to stepped down after 22 years in power.
Barrow aide Amie Bojang said yesterday the priority would be ‘putting into place the pillars of reform and human rights’.
Barrow will be staying at his own home until further notice while State House, Jammeh’s former seat of power, is assessed for potential risks.
Residents in the capital said Barrow’s arrival would mark the beginning of the healing process after divisions created by Jammeh’s regime.
Jammeh, a former military officer, finally stepped down on Saturday and went into exile in Equatorial Guinea under diplomatic pressure and after troops from the Economic Community of West African States, or ECOWAS, crossed into The Gambia.
Jammeh’s government gained a reputation for the torture and killing of perceived opponents and many Gambians are furious that he will not face trial at home for those abuses.
About 4,000 West African troops remain in The Gambia charged with ensuring safety, as it is believed rogue pro-Jammeh elements remain in the security forces that were once under his personal control.
Barrow must also deal with latent ethnic tensions between Jammeh’s minority Jola people and the majority Mandinkas, to whom Barrow belongs.
Marcel Alain De Souza, the head of ECOWAS, told a briefing in Nigeria on Tuesday that the troops were working to secure Banjul and the surrounding area for Barrow’s return.
Jammeh pitched The Gambia into turmoil in December when he refused to accept his loss in an election to Barrow and demanded another vote.
Barrow has assured Jammeh that he will have all the rights legally ensured to an ex-president, which under Gambian law include immunity from prosecution, barring a vote by two-thirds of the national assembly.
The new government has also confirmed that Jammeh will be permitted to keep a fleet of luxury cars, while authorities have accused the former strongman of plundering state coffers before heading into exile, making off with $11m.
In New York, the UN envoy for West Africa, Mohamed Ibn Chambas, briefed the Security Council on The Gambia during a closed session and stressed that the United Nations was working to bolster stability.
Chambas is due to accompany Barrow when he returns to Banjul later today.
President Yoweri Museveni has lashed out at government employees who spend most of the time on planes, saying they need to be ‘controlled’.
The President’s remarks made today at the celebrations to mark the 31st anniversary of the National Resistance Movement/Army (NRM/A) government which came to power on January 26, 1986, come in the wake of estimates that Uganda spends over US$400 million on foreign travel for government employees annually.
“Government officials should stop going abroad. What are you always going to do there?”Mr Museveni said, adding: “When I go abroad I suffer a lot. But government officials like traveling. These people should be controlled.”
In his speech that focused on several facets Mr Museveni thanked Ugandans for the support rendered to the NRM/A and urged them to focus on producing for export.
“This year, we are going to be more of an exporting country than importing,” he said, adding: “Let’s be a producing country, if we are to buy, let’s buy powerful things like airplanes and long range machine-guns.”
Speaking about oil, Mr Museveni noted that government had agreed with the oil prospecting companies on a number of issues among them the refinery and pipeline, and how much oil to be recovered from the ground.
“We’re emphasizing pumping our oil from the ground. These oil companies have been playing games with us but we’ve finally agreed,” he said.
The president also called for the promotion of small-scale manufacturing, saying it would help ‘stop exalting the dollar’.
“We are going to start producing clothes, furniture, shoes, cars and these hair extensions you go to buy in China … so that expenditure rates and exalting the dollar is stopped,” he said.
He also gave an example of furniture local manufacturers, who he said, should be helped.
“What is being done for Nsambya should be done for people at Kubbiri and Kireka. These people are manufacturers and they must be assisted; those people at Nsambya can make whatever furniture you want. I recently gave them some good machines,” he said at the celebrations in Masindi held under the theme: ‘Uganda’s Success Story Under NRM Is A Shared Victory’.
The ceremony was attended by several high-ranking officials including among others the Speaker of Parliament Rebecca Kadaga, Chief Justice Bart Magunda Katureebe, Prime Minister Dr Ruhakana Rugunda and the Minister for the Presidency Esther Mbayo.
Somalia will hold its presidential election on February 8, after months of delays in a tortuous process for the conflict-torn country, its electoral commission said.
Candidates will have until January 29 to register, the commission said in a statement.
President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, a 61-year-old former academic and activist from the Hawiye clan, is seeking re-election.
The vote will come six months after it was originally set for August, following delays in the election of lawmakers because of clan disputes, fraud accusations and organisational challenges.
Despite significant flaws in the election — riddled with claims of vote buying and corruption — it is still widely considered the most democratic voting process to take place in nearly five decades.
The original promise of a one-person, one-vote national poll had to be abandoned because of insecurity, political infighting and a lack of basic requirements such as an electoral roll.
An electoral college system was instituted instead, whereby 135 clan elders chose 14,025 delegates who then voted for each of the 275 seats in the lower house of parliament, distributed according to clan.
Upper house seats were distributed by region, and were increased from 54 to 72 after complaints of insufficient representation by some clans.
Somalia has not had an effective central government since the 1991 overthrow of President Siad Barre’s military regime, which ushered in more than two decades of lawlessness and conflict in a country deeply divided along clan lines.
Kenya’s leading opposition figure Raila Amollo Odinga has accused his country’s spy agency, the National Intelligence Services (NIS) of registering Ugandans to participate in elections in his country, scheduled for August.
In a statement issued Januray 24, Mr Odinga said the NIS is bringing Biometric Voter Registration (BVR) kits into Uganda and also assisting Ugandan citizens to acquire Kenyan identification documents then helping them cross into Kenya and register as voters.
By press time efforts to get comment from Uganda’s foreign ministry were futile.
ODINGA’S FULL STATEMENT.
PRESS STATEMENT BY RT. HON RAILA ODINGA:
ON NIS INTERFERENCE IN VOTER REGISTRATION ACTIVITIES:
We have credible information that the National Intelligence Service (NIS) is once again heavily involved in the on-going voter registration with the aim of influencing results in August in the same way it did in 2007 and 2013.
NIS interference in the current voter registration involves taking BVR kits across our borders into Uganda and Ethiopia and assisting citizens of the two countries to register in a Kenyan election process. The agency is also assisting citizens of these neighbouring countries to acquire Kenyan identification documents then helping them cross into Kenya and register as voters.
The NIS is also interfering with the voter registration process by having youths whose data were collected through the dubious National Youth Service exercise over the last few years and registering them as voters, without their knowledge. This NIS-driven process is responsible for the multiple registrations, shared identity cards and many cases of people who are captured as registered when indeed they had never done so.
In the 2013 elections, NIS had its officers absorbed into the ranks of the IEBC as polling clerks and other strategic positions with the sole aim of helping Jubilee attain a dubious victory. In 2007, NIS was deeply involved in ballot stuffing among other irregularities to help the PNU win.
NIS must let the IEBC do its work as an independent institution. The intelligence agency must equally operate as a politically non-partisan and independent institution whose duty it is to safeguard the integrity of the electoral process and not interfere with it.
It is a disgrace and a betrayal of public trust when an institution that is supposed to safeguard the interests of the nation take the lead in undermining those very interests. Interfering with the process through which our country determines its leadership is one of the most serious crimes a public institution and more so an intelligence agency can be involved in.
We wish to make it clear to the Director-General of the NIS Major-General Philip Wachira Kameru and the entire leadership of the agency that this country will never accept another NIS-led electoral theft. NIS will break down this nation and send it to the dogs, if it continues on this path of seeking to influence election results by way of fraud.
We challenge the NIS to come clean on this matter and assure the country that it is abandoning its disgraceful involvement in the voter registration. It must do this with the full awareness that there will be no country if it does not abandon course it is currently pursuing. Kenyans are not prepared to have the NIS choose for them their next leader again.
RT HON RAILA ODINGA
JANUARY 24, 2017
Usain Bolt’s famed triple-triple—three gold medals in three Olympic Games—has vanished, through no fault of his own. One of Bolt’s teammates in the 4×100 relay in the Beijing Olympics has been found guilty of doping.
The International Olympic Committee re-tested a sample of Nesta Carter from the Beijing Games and found the presence of the prohibited substance methylhexaneamine. As a result, Carter was disqualified, and took his entire team’s performance down with him.
“The Jamaica Olympic Association shall notably secure the return to the IOC, as soon as possible, of the medals, the medallist pins and the diplomas awarded in connection with the men’s 4x100m relay event to the athlete and his teammates,” the IOC said in rendering its decision.
Methylhexaneamine, a stimulant, is banned by the World Anti-Doping Agency, and numerous athletes in various sports have been disqualified for its use. Initially marketed as a nasal decongestant, it was removed from shelves in 1983.
The IOC has stepped up testing of athlete samples from prior Olympic Games following revelations of widespread doping among many athlete delegations, most notably Russia. The IOC can retain samples for as long as 10 years, allowing for more sophisticated sampling techniques to detect violations which went unpunished at the time of the event.
Nigerian government says it is investigating why the reality TV series Big Brother Nigeria, which was re-launched on Sunday as Big Brother Naija, is being shot in Johannesburg, South Africa.
The National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) is to investigate why the event could not hold on Nigerian soil.
The Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, asked the NBC to determine whether Multi-Choice has breached the Nigerian Broadcasting Code in any way, by shooting the show in South Africa, as well as the issue of possible deceit, since the viewing public was never told that the event would be staged outside Nigeria.
“As a country of laws, only the outcome of the investigation will determine our next line of action,” the statement signed by Mohammed’s spokesperson, Segun Adeyemi, said on Tuesday.
Nigerians have condemned the decision by South African company, Multichoice, the organisers, the move the show elsewhere.
Multichoice, organisers of the Big Brother Naija Reality TV show, said hosting the show in South Africa would enable it achieve high production and meet timelines.
A statement issued by Caroline Oghuma on behalf of the company explained that the shooting of the show in South Africa would enable it use its fully equipped house.
“We have a fully equipped house in South Africa, which is used for the Big Brother shows.
“This means that we are able to achieve high production values whilst meeting tight timelines and ensuring the show comes to our viewers on time as planned, and with the same globally renowned quality.
“The house has played host to other Big Brother countries including; the general Big Brother Africa, Mozambique, Angola and now Nigeria,” the statement quoted Oghuma as saying.
Big Brother Naija debuted in 2006.
After a 10-year break, Big Brother Nigeria, a reality TV show in which 12 contestants called housemates lived in an isolated house and competed for a large cash prize, made its way to the screens again as Big Brother Nigeria.
NAN reports that the Big Brother Naija is a special Nigerian version of the continental show Big Brother Africa.
It was specially coined to suit the viewing interest of the Nigerian viewers who largely expressed displeasure over the controversial “Shower Hour” and nudity.
John Ugbe, the Managing Director, MultiChoice Nigeria, told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos on Wednesday that the return of the reality show was based on popular demand by people who wanted it back.
He said “the show has been well developed following the successes of past seasons of Big Brother Africa.
