African press review 7 September 2017

Controversial appointments land Kenya's elections body creates crisis days to the Presidential runoff election while Nigeria's political drivers clash over the end of economic recession.

We begin in Kenya, where the electoral commission was on Wednesday headed for a fresh crisis. This was after the appointment of a team to manage the repeat presidential elections provoked internal divisions within the agency and rejection by the major political players.

Daily Nation reports that on Wednesday, some members of the commission expressed disapproval at the manner in which their chairman, Wafula Chebukati, went about naming the seven-member team under his supervision to manage the repeat poll.

According to the paper Chebukati on the other hand, stated pointedly that he had appointed the team in his capacity as the constitutionally mandated Returning Officer for the presidential election.

Daily Nation also holds that the changes, done by Wafula Chebukati without any consultations with the rest of the commissioners, would be open court action.

The Standard also leads with the storm rocking the Independent Elections and Boundaries Commission. The paper says the seven commissioners will resume talks today even as Jubilee rejected two of the officials appointed.

Standard reports that they include the project coordinator in a list of nine IEBC employees Jubilee claims are partisan.

The publication says it is able to report that on Wednesday evening, the IEBC Chairman told off Jubilee over its claims insisting that the Elections commission is independent. Chebukati also termed insinuations on the nine officials as unacceptable, according to the Standard.

In Nigeria, the Nation looks at a row that has broken out between the ruling All Progressive Congress and the opposition Peoples Democratic Party over the announcement by the country's Statistics agency that Nigeria was out of a 25 year-long recession.

The paper reports that on Wednesday, the PDP National Chairman Ahmed Makarfi hinted that the news was nothing to celebrate cautioning the government against politicizing the issue.

But according to the Nation, the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) defended the government’s economic policies which led to the country’s exit from recession with the Information, Budget and Planning Ministers applauding the policies that reportedly made this possible and promised to deepen them.

The APC has always stressed the fact that the PDP plunged the economy into trouble by not saving for the rainy day when oil prices rose beyond $100 a barrel, embarking on unprecedented profligacy and swimming in corruption.

In South Africa, Mail and Guardian stands up for a group of primary school children at a West Pretoria school who voted to incorporate skinny pants into their school uniform but whose parents voted against any amendment to the school’s dress code.

According to the paper, while the parents reiterated that uniforms are made to instil discipline and allow pupils to concentrate on schoolwork, some of the pupils insist that schools should move with the times.

“They need to incorporate the style of dressing that we identify with because we are in the 21st century said one pupil interviewed by Mail and Guardian, who explained how depressing it can be at this moment to continue wearing the old, boring grey trousers; the parents had on many decades back.