Niger’s President Mahamadou Issoufou has been announced the 2020 winner of the $5m (N1.905 billion) Ibrahim prize for African leadership. Issoufou has served two five-year terms as president from 2011 to 2020. He is set to be succeeded by former interior minister, Mohamed Bazoum, who won the presidential election last month. Aisha Buhari breaks silence, […]
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Mon Mar 08 2021
The announcement of Nigerien President Mahamadou Issoufou as the 2020 winner of the $5m (N1.905 billion) Ibrahim prize for African leadership is prompting a look back at why he won it.
Issoufou is the sixth recipient of the Ibrahim Prize of excellence in African leadership.
Here are five top reasons that got him the win.
1 – President Issoufou had provided exceptional leadership to his country by fostering economic growth, after inheriting one of the world’s poorest economies that faced seemingly insurmountable challenges.
Under his administration, the number of Nigeriens living below the poverty line has fallen to 40%, from 48% a decade ago.
In the December 1999 election, Mozambique’s ruling Frelimo was in the fight of its political life against the opposition Renamo. Many accounts have it losing, but stealing, that election.
Although President Joaquim Chissano was officially re-elected with 52.3% of the vote, and Frelimo secured 133 of 250 parliamentary seats, opposition MDM MP Lutero Simango believes that things were skewed in the government’s favour. “Counting did not take place in Nacala [province]. No one knows those results till today. It is believed that if these votes had been counted that Frelimo would not have won.”
Simango and his brother Daviz, the mayor of Mozambique’s second city Beira, are both scions of Frelimo, sons of Uria Simango, a Presbyterian minister who was a founder member of the liberation movement back in 1962.
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On Thursday, February 4, 2021, the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, Netherlands, in a landmark ruling, found Dominic Ongwen guilty on 61 of the 70 charges against him.
For most Ghanaians, this made no news, as Ongwen is not known here.
For me, however, the name and the ruling by the ICC brought back memories of one of my most difficult experiences.
Dominic Ongwen was an abducted child-soldier who became one of the top commanders of a guerilla group called the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), led by Joseph Kony.
Among other offences, Ongwen was found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity.