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Sunday, 10 January 2016

Furor In Anambra APC As Dismissed Senator Ekwunife Seeks Party's Nomination

The Anambra State chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC) is gripped by grumbling after former Senator Uche Ekwunife ditched her political party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), defected to the APC, and blanketed the state with her campaign posters seeking nomination to represent the APC in a forthcoming senatorial race.

Former Anambra State Senator Uche Ekwunife The News Chronicle

Ms. Ekwunife contested the 2015 senatorial election on the ticket of the PDP, and was declared the winner by the Independent National Electoral Commission. However, on December 7, 2015, a panel of the Court of Appeal in Enugu nullified her election, ruling that her selection as the PDP’s senatorial candidate was irregular. The appellate court ordered INEC to conduct fresh electionswithin 90 days.

In a dramatic move yesterday, Ms. Ekwunife announced her resignation from the PDP. Her campaign then unveiled campaign posters depicting her as seeking nomination to represent the APC in the forthcoming rerun.

“The manner in which Chief Mrs. Uche Ekwunife is trying to buy the APC nomination is a recipe for disaster for the party,” one APC official told SaharaReporters. He described Ms. Ekwunife as “an unprincipled politician who is using everything at her disposal to contest the [senatorial] election as the APC flag bearer now that it is clear that Dr. [Chris] Ngige will not run.”

Another APC member complained that the rusticated senator was using her ties to some APC top shots in Abuja to bulldoze her way to a nomination. “How can she resign from PDP yesterday and by today her [campaign] posters as a so-called APC member are all over the place?” He accused Ms. Ekwunife of spreading false rumors that President Muhammadu Buhari was backing her ambition to be the party’s candidate in the senatorial contest. “Her minions have been claiming that her move to APC has been approved by President Buhari. And that her election will be funded by Governors Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi and Tambuwal [of Enugu and Sokoto states respectively],” he stated.

A top APC official in Anambra State however allayed the fears of party members who have expressed disenchantment over what he called Ms. Ekwunife’s “political antics.” “I can assure party members and all APC members that President Buhari has nothing to do with this political cesspool of corruption and immorality,” said the official. According to him, “the time for substitution of candidates has since closed under the Electoral Act. So if she’s seeking the ticket of the APC or any other party, she is just wasting her time and money.”

Another party member, a lawyer, echoed the sentiment. He stated that both the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court had long decided that a fresh election was only for persons who were qualified to contest the nullified election, and under the same political parties they had contested.

“The courts have held on several occasions that there is no room for substitution of new candidates or introduction of more political parties,” said the lawyer.

A PDP member in Anambra State described Ms. Ekwunife’s defection to the APC as good riddance. “Just a few months ago, this desperado used [former First Lady] Patience Jonathan to hijack the PDP senatorial ticket. She used the influence of Dame Jonathan and Prince Arthur Eze to rig her way to the Senate where she was until the court sacked her. Now, she has gone to fool the APC by dressing like an Alhaja,” he said.

PDP Leading In Bayelsa Gubernatorial Race Despite Reports Of APC Sponsored Violence

According to unofficial results collated so far, the PDP had a strong showing at polling units and wards in Amasoma, Otuan, Ogbia, Nembe Ogbolomabiri, Ekpetiama and some other communities. The decision by the Independent National Election Commission (INEC) to decentralize the distribution of election materials to LGAs across the State facilitated the early arrival of materials in some communities.

Despite this development, and the presence of 5,000 deployed police to the State, there were cases of violence and hijacked election materials.

SaharaReporters has learned of multiple reports of violence sponsored by the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Bayelsa State, with other reports saying that some violence was assisted by security operatives. In particular SaharaReporters has learned that Ekeremor, Famgbe and Nembe communities have been affected by violence.

Election materials meant for Lobia, 1, 2, 3 and Peremabiri were hijacked by militants wielding AK-47 machine guns and other dangerous weapons. A PDP leader, James Jephtah, had a property belonging to him destroyed by thugs working for the APC, according to reports.

SaharaReporters has also learned of violence in Ekeremor where at least five people have been reportedly killed, however details and confirmation were not immediately available at the time of publication. In addition to this violence, a lodge belonging to Governor Seriake Dickson was vandalized in Ekeremor.

This violence comes days after the Speaker of the Bayelsa State House of Assembly, Boyelayefa Debekeme, and three other PDP officials, were attacked with machetes by thugs believed to be working for the Minister of State for Agriculture, Senator Heineken Lokpobiri.

Arab foreign ministers accuse Iran of undermining regional security

Arab foreign ministers on Sunday accused Iran of interfering in the affairs of other Middle East states and undermining regional security, as officials met at an emergency Arab League session to discuss escalating tensions in the region.

The crisis between the Sunni Muslim kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Shi'ite Muslim power Iran, both major oil exporters, started when Saudi authorities executed Shi'ite cleric Nimr al-Nimr on Jan. 2, triggering outrage among Shi'ites across the Middle East.

In response, Iranian protesters stormed the Saudi embassy in Tehran, prompting Riyadh to sever relations. Tehran then cut all commercial ties with Riyadh, and banned pilgrims from traveling to Mecca.

Opening the emergency Arab League session in Cairo, United Arab Emirates Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed al-Nahyan said the meeting "comes in light of a dangerous escalation".
Saudi Arabia said on Saturday after an extraordinary Gulf Cooperation Council meeting that it would take "additional measures" against Iran, but did not elaborate further.

"We strongly condemn the attacks on diplomatic missions by Iran and absolutely reject the Iranian policy of interference in the affairs of the kingdom and any other Arab state," Nahyan said.

"Iran does not hesitate to exploit sectarianism as a way to gain control of the region," he added.
"These attacks clearly reflect the approach that the Iranian policy is taking in our Arab region specifically ... with its interference in the affairs of the (region's) states and instigation of sectarian strife and shaking its security and stability," said Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir.

As foreign crises pile up, Obama seen taking few risks in final year

As Barack Obama prepares to deliver his final State of the Union address on Tuesday night, the U.S. president and his aides have insisted he will not be content simply to run out the clock on foreign policy and is acting decisively to tackle crises piling up around the globe.
But former U.S. officials and experts familiar with the White House’s thinking say he appears locked into policies aimed more at containing such threats and avoiding deeper U.S. military engagement in the last year of his presidency.

This, they say, all but guarantees that the toughest geopolitical challenges will be inherited by Obama’s successor. That will likely give fuel to Republican presidential candidates who are eager to use Obama's foreign policy woes to attack, by extension, Democratic front runner Hillary Clinton, who served as his first-term Secretary of State.

Islamic State has extended its deadly reach across the Middle East and beyond, with recent attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, California, carried out or inspired by the jihadist group. North Korea stunned the world last week with its fourth rogue nuclear test. Taliban insurgents are gaining ground in Afghanistan. Beijing continues to flex its muscle with its neighbors.

Russia remains undeterred in Ukraine’s separatist conflict and has challenged U.S. influence in the Middle East with its military intervention in Syria’s civil war, a conflict that Obama’s critics have seized on as evidence of a rudderless foreign policy.

Most outside analysts agree with administration officials’ insistence that much of the global tumult is driven by forces beyond Obama’s control.

But experts also give credence to criticism that Obama’s crisis response has often been hesitant and that policy missteps have either fueled conflict – or done little to curb it - in places like Syria, Iraq and Ukraine.
“This is a risk-averse president who sets red lines he doesn’t enforce,” said Aaron David Miller, a former Middle East adviser to Republican and Democratic administrations. “There’s not a lot of inclination for heroic initiatives in what’s left.”

Obama took office in 2009 hailed by his supporters as a transformational leader and pledging to bring U.S. troops home from the long, unpopular wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In his first inaugural speech, he promised to help usher in a “new era of peace,” including outreach to Muslims alienated by the perceived excesses of his predecessor George W. Bush’s global “war on terror.”
After popular revolts began to convulse the Arab world, Obama used his 2011 State of the Union speech to trumpet support for the “democratic aspirations of all people.” But the “Arab Spring” has since taken an ugly turn, leaving Obama facing a Middle East region that is more unstable yet no more democratic than before.

FORMIDABLE OBSTACLES
Recent polls show that more than half of Americans disapprove of the way Obama is handling foreign policy and two-thirds are displeased with his response to Islamic State and the terrorist threat.

The Obama administration strongly denies that it has now resigned itself to merely containing the seemingly intractable conflicts. As evidence of success, it can point to its landmark nuclear deal with Iran, the historic diplomatic opening to Cuba and a sweeping international climate change deal - all of which a senior administration official said will likely be touted in Tuesday’s speech. He has also forged a major Asia-Pacific trade pact but faces an uphill fight to get it through Congress.

For the coming year, Obama has left the door open to using executive powers to fulfill his early pledge to close the Guantanamo military prison, and could also act on his own to further loosen the half-century-old economic embargo on Cuba.

“The president will be focused on finishing strong on his foreign policy agenda,” the senior administration official told Reuters. “In no lexicon I’m aware of is this a strategy of containment.”

Obama insists his aim is to destroy Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, but there are strong doubts that his combination of relying on U.S.-armed local partners, targeted American special forces raids, coalition air strikes and financial sanctions will be enough.

The quest for a diplomatic solution to Syria’s civil war also faces formidable obstacles, and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who Obama said back in 2011 “must go,” looks all but certain to outlast him in office.
“This all adds up to attempted containment - getting through 2016 until it becomes someone else's problem,” said Frederic Hof, a former State Department adviser on Syria during Obama’s first term and now at the Atlantic Council think tank.

Obama has recently reinserted about 3,500 U.S. military personnel into Iraq, slowed the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and authorized small numbers of special operations forces in Syria – though he adamantly rejects any large-scale military deployment.

His reluctance to get pulled into new conflicts remains at the heart of his foreign policy, and critics say other world powers are taking advantage of that.

China has shown growing assertiveness in the South China Sea, where it has defied U.S. criticism of its island-building and felt no apparent consequences.

U.S. ally Saudi Arabia has shown its willingness to buck Obama by going ahead with the execution of a prominent Shi’ite cleric, provoking a feud with Iran that Washington appears powerless to quell.

North Korea’s announcement last week that it had exploded its fourth nuclear device since 2006 raised new questions about the Obama administration’s “strategic patience” doctrine that essentially has sought to contain Pyongyang without provoking it.

“I doubt that the president will put in any political capital to this,” said Bonnie Glaser, senior Asia adviser at the CSIS think tank in Washington. “What can the president do in his last year?”

Bombs laid by Islamic State hamper Iraqi troops in Ramadi after victory

Islamic State militants left Ramadi's streets and buildings boobytrapped with bombs, hampering efforts to rebuild the city two weeks after Iraq's elite counter-terrorism forces claimed victory against the militant group there, officials said.

Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province, was touted as the first major success for Iraq's army since it collapsed in the face of Islamic State's lightning advance across the country's north and west 18 months ago.
The militants have been pushed to Ramadi's eastern suburbs, but almost all of the city, which was battered by U.S.-led air strikes against Islamic State, remains off-limits to its nearly half a million displaced residents, most of whom fled before the army advance.

"Most areas are now under the security forces' control," Anbar governor Sohaib al-Rawi said on Saturday at a temporary government complex southeast of the city.

"Most of the streets in Ramadi are mined with explosives so it requires large efforts and expertise," he said.
Specialized bomb disposal teams from the police and civil defense force would begin work "soon", he said.
The counter-terrorism forces which spearheaded the city's recapture are securing only main streets and tactically important buildings, security sources said.

They have built up earth banks at the entrance of central neighborhoods deemed clear of militants but still laden with explosives, and marked buildings' exteriors as "mined", the sources added.

Snipers have also slowed progress. Iraqi forces clear them by calling in devastating air strikes - more than 55 in the past two weeks, according to the coalition.

On Saturday they routed militants from the Mal'ab neighborhood, adding the last major district in Ramadi's city center to their control, said commander Lieutenant General Abdul Ghani al-Assadi.

Iraqi forces withdrew from Ramadi in May last year, allowing Islamic State to take control, the group's biggest gain since sweeping across the Syrian border a year earlier and declaring it was establishing a caliphate.

Islamic State fighters are still holed up in a roughly 10 kilometer (6 mile) stretch east towards Husaiba al-Sharqiya using agricultural lands to evade detection, security sources said. It could take at least 10 days to clear those areas.

PATH OF DESTRUCTION
Hundreds of air strikes since July, combined with Islamic State sabotage, have reduced much of Ramadi to rubble.

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) is still waiting for the green light from the Iraqi government to enter the city and start work to rebuild it, the deputy head of its Iraq program, Lise Grande said.

UNDP has prepared 100 generators and mobile electrical grids to provide a temporary power grid as soon as that happens. An assessment of the damage to the rest of Ramadi's infrastructure will dictate other areas of focus.
The city will require around $20 million immediately for emergency humanitarian response and billions more for long-term reconstruction, said Grande.

"Restoring infrastructure is hugely important, but the decisive factor in getting people to return is when they think security is in place," she said.

After Ramadi, there remains the bigger challenge of Mosul, 400 km (250 miles) north of Baghdad. As many as 3,200 Islamic State fighters are there, more than three times the number that held Ramadi, according to the coalition.

It is also more densely populated. Most of Mosul's pre-2014 population of about two million have not left.
The destruction in Ramadi has sparked criticism including from powerful Iranian-backed Shi'ite militias, which were kept out of the battle for fear of stirring sectarian tensions in Anbar's Sunni heartland.

Despite accusations of human rights abuses, groups like Asaib Ahl al-Haq claim they have could have retaken Ramadi more "neatly".

Woman raped by five men in New York City park, police say

Five men took turns raping a woman in a Brooklyn park after forcing her father at gunpoint to flee the scene, New York City police said.

The 18-year-old woman was with her father in a park just after 9 p.m. on Thursday night when five men approached them, police said. One pointed a gun at the father and told him to leave.

After the father left, the men each assaulted the woman, police said. They fled when her father returned a short while later to the park, accompanied by two officers.

The woman, whose name was not made public, was treated at a local hospital and released, police said.
Police released surveillance video taken in a nearby bodega that they said showed the five suspects prior to the attack. The video depicts a group of black men in jackets and sweatshirts talking and laughing inside the store.

Police have asked for the public's help in identifying the suspects.
(Reporting by Joseph Ax; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)

Reuters

U.S. flies B-52 over South Korea after North's nuclear test

SEOUL - The United States deployed a B-52 bomber on a low-level flight over its ally South Korea on Sunday, a show of force following North Korea's nuclear test last week.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un maintained that Wednesday's test was of a hydrogen bomb and said it was a self-defensive step against a U.S. threat of nuclear war.

North Korea's fourth nuclear test angered both China, its main ally, and the United States, although the U.S. government and weapons experts doubt the North's claim that the device was a hydrogen bomb.

The massive B-52, based in Guam and capable of carrying nuclear weapons, could be seen in a low flight over Osan Air Base at around noon (0300 GMT). It was flanked by two fighter planes, a U.S. F-16 and a South Korean F-15, before returning to Guam, the U.S. military said in a statement.

Osan is south of Seoul and 77 km (48 miles) from the Demilitarised Zone that separates the two Koreas. The flight was "in response to recent provocative action by North Korea", the U.S. military said.

In Washington, White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonald said on Sunday the flight underscored to South Korea "the deep and enduring alliance that we have with them."

"Last night was a step toward reassurance in that regard and that was important," McDonough said on CNN's "State of the Union."

He said the United States would continue to work with China and Russia, as well as allies Japan and South Korea, to isolate the North until it lives up to its commitments to get rid of its nuclear weapons.

"Until they do it they'll remain where they are, which is an outcast unable to provide for their own people," he said.

After the North's last test, in 2013, the United States sent a pair of nuclear-capable B-2 stealth bombers over South Korea. At the time, the North responded by threatening a nuclear attack on the United States.
The United States is also considering sending a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier to waters off the Korean peninsula next month to join a naval exercise with Seoul, South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported without identifying a source. However, U.S. Forces Korea officials said they had no knowledge of the plan.
The two Koreas remain in a technical state of war after their 1950-53 conflict ended in a truce, not a peace treaty, and the United States has about 28,500 troops based in South Korea.

An editorial in the North's Rodong Sinmun newspaper on Sunday called for a peace treaty with the United States, which is the North's long-standing position. "Only when a peace treaty is concluded between the DPRK (North Korea) and the U.S. can genuine peace settle in the Korean Peninsula," state news agency KCNA quoted it as saying.

The United States and China have both dangled the prospect of better relations, including the lifting of sanctions, if North Korea gives up its nuclear weapons.

Earlier on Sunday, KCNA quoted Kim as saying no one had the right to criticize the North's nuclear tests.
"The DPRK's H-bomb test ... is a self-defensive step for reliably defending the peace on the Korean Peninsula and the regional security from the danger of nuclear war caused by the U.S.-led imperialists," it quoted Kim as saying.

The North's official name is the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

"It is the legitimate right of a sovereign state and a fair action that nobody can criticize," he said.

TIMING OF TEST
Kim's comments were in line with the North's official rhetoric blaming the United States for deploying nuclear weapons on the Korean peninsula to justify its nuclear program but were the first by its leader since Wednesday's blast.

The United States has said it has no nuclear weapons stationed in South Korea.
Kim noted the test was being held ahead of a rare congress of its ruling Workers' Party later this year, "which will be a historic turning point in accomplishing the revolutionary cause of Juche," according to KCNA.
Juche is the North's home-grown state ideology that combines Marxism and extreme nationalism established by the state founder and the current leader's grandfather, Kim Il Sung.

KCNA said Kim made the comments on a visit to the country's Ministry of the People's Armed Forces.
South Korea continued to conduct high-decibel propaganda broadcasts across the border into the North on Sunday.

The broadcasts, which include "K-pop" music and statements critical of the Kim regime, began on Friday and are considered an insult by Pyongyang. A top North Korean official told a rally on Friday that the broadcasts had pushed the rival Koreas to the "brink of war."

Daily life was mostly as normal on the South Korean side of the border on Sunday. A popular ice fishing festival near the border attracted an estimated 121,300 people on Saturday and another 100,000 on Sunday, Yonhap reported.

Reuters