Skip to main content

African press review 16 June 2017

Kenya's General Elections in jeopardy as President Kenyatta's fzamily is dragged into row over lucrative ballot-printing contract. And Nigeria parades billionnaire kidnapper "Evans" after seven years of high profile abductions.

Advertising

We start in Kenya where Daily Nation takes up a "vicious tenders' war" over the printing of ballot papers for General Election scheduled in August.

The paper claims it is "afoot and sucking in wheeler-dealers", including members of the First Family and most recently, the country's main opposition leader Raila Odinga.

According to the Nation, the ruling Jubilee coalition on Thursday denied an allegation that President Uhuru Kenyatta and members of his family were involved in the procurement of ballots for the August 8 elections.

This after accusations by the NASA group of parties backing opposition leader Raila Odinga that Muhoho Kenyatta the President's powerful younger brother was the local agent of the Dubai-based Al Ghurair Printing Press contracted by the Elections body to print material for the polls.

The Nation says it had received a statement from Al Ghurair Printing denying any contacts with Muhoho.

The paper also reports counter charges by Jubilee that Odinga's movement is fronting for Paarl Media of South Africa who allegedly have met Odinga on various occasions to lobby for printing contracts.

According to the Nation, in a country where lucrative ballot printing has become a vicious commercial war, the current row has not surprised observers.

South Africa, Times publishes a new study showing that fewer youth in 2017 are upbeat about the future and their career prospects than five years ago.

According to the newspaper, the survey, carried out by the Gordon Institute of Business Science found out that only 53 percent of respondents planned to build a future in the country, down from 74 percent of pupils who five years ago felt South Africa was a good place to have a successful career.

But the newspaper says it was encouraging to learn that 64% of the young South Africans polled believed they were able to influence the future of the country‚ a statistic it claims highlights the youth’s strong desire to make a difference.

From Nigeria, we have  the incredible life of kidnap kingpin, Chukwudi Onuamadike aka Evans, arrested by police on Saturday in one of his two mansions in Lagos, after seven years of high-profile abductions across the country.

Punch Metro says it learnt from investigators that the billionaire kidnapper had in his possession three phones costing more than 7,000 euros each with anti-tracking features and 126 registered SIM cards which he used to contact the families of his victims.

According to the newspaper Evans, who was paraded at the Lagos Sate Police Command’s headquarters in Ikeja had bought three houses in Accra, Ghana and wristwatches worth thousands of dollars from the proceeds of the crimes.

Punch says the Junior Secondary School 2 drop out had confessed collecting more than one million dollars of ransom from the families of his victims.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Daily newsletterReceive essential international news every morning

Keep up to date with international news by downloading the RFI app

Share :
Page not found

The content you requested does not exist or is not available anymore.