African press review 10 November 2017

Robert Mugabe's vendetta against his former deputy offers Zimbabweans a golden chance to reclaim their country.

We begin in Zimbabwe, where the papers look at the duel to death between President Robert Mugabe and his sacked former deputy, Emmerson Mnangagwa.

The state-owned Herald reports that Mugabe on Thursday accused Mnangagwa of hiring hooligans who booed First Lady Grace Mugabe while she addressed a rally in Bulawayo on Saturday.

The paper quotes Mugabe as saying that the incidents in Bulawayo were pre-planned to embarrass him and his wife.

Bulawayo News 24 says Mnangagwa faces treason charges for a stinging statement he issued from his new base in South Africa warning Mugabe that he was coming for him and his family.

Meanwhile,NewsDay claims that with the elections a few months away,  with Zanu PF fractured, divided, weak and running out of steam, nothing can stop a well-organized opposition ending  Mugabe’s controversial 37 years in power.

In South Africa, Pretoria News says Mnangagwa, the second vice-president to be fired in three years, after Joice Mujuru, becomes one of many victims of the 92 year-old’s ruthless hold on power.

In Kenya, the National Super Alliance backing opposition leader Raila Odinga has reportedly called off protests earlier scheduled in Nairobi this Friday to push for electoral justice.

Daily Nation relays a statement from the NASA coalition asserting that they reached the decision to allow their supporters to take part in the ongoing debate on the establishment of a people’s assembly.

Meanwhile, Standard claims that Raila Odinga used a forum in the US to blast foreign diplomats based in Nairobi for allegedly favouring President Uhuru Kenyatta in the election crisis.

The paper says that the NASA candidate did not mention names, but claimed that instead of assisting Kenya to resolve the crisis caused by what he termed as “lack of free and fair elections”, they were part of the problem.

In Nigeria, Vanguard leads with the decision by Nigerian lawmakers to investigate the death of 26 young Nigerian girls, whose bodies were discovered in a Spanish warship, in the Italian port city of Cantabria.

The paper says indications are that the girls aged between 14 and 18 were trying to make their way to Italy through Libya.

The publication says its assumptions are based on the decision by the Committee on Foreign Relations in both the Upper and Lower Houses to extend the 4-week inquiry right into Libya.

Vanguard says Nigeria's Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu, who presided over Thursday's plenary warned young Nigerians putting their lives at risk with the hope of reaching Europe to stop the senseless exodus and join hands with others to build the country.

Punch marvels at the heavy purse a whistle blower is expected to receive for tipping the country's anti-graft agency about banks notes worth 39 million euros hidden in a Lagos apartment.

The paper quotes the head of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission as saying that man, whose identity is being withheld, will receive 2.5 percent of the amount, under the Federal Government’s whistle-blower policy. That represents about 784,000 euros, according to Punch’s calculations.

The EFCC’s boss Ibrahim Magu reportedly told the press they had started counselling the young Nigerian, who he claimed had never seen million Naira in his life.

In South Africa, Times leads with a video that has gone viral on social media showing an inmate counting money inside his prison cell.

According to the newspaper, in the video posted the publication's website the inmate can be heard saying in his native Sotho language that the bank notes amounted to R2‚700, bragging that he makes money and doesn’t play games.”

Times reports that South Africa's Department of Correctional Services has removed the inmate from the communal dormitory to a single cell while they investigate the security breach.

The says the prison video is the latest money flaunting stunt to hit the internet, after images of traffic officials and two actresses pretending to be eating a stack of money went viral.