African press review 3 February 2018

Ugandan Police face grave questions of intergrity; Are out-of -school children Nigeria's "monumental disgrace"; and Kenyans await King Solomon's verdict over a disputed child.

We start with a question popped in today's issue of the Ugandan Daily Monitor. “Are things falling apart in the Ugandan police force”? The editorial is substantiated with the findings of a survey it carried out last month indicating that more than 50 police officers and senior personnel within the force have either been arrested or implicated in theft and robbery in less than six months.

According to the Monitor, the country's police force has not worked hard enough to erase the damaging scandal discovered in October last year, when nine people, including five senior police officers, were charged before the court martial for allegedly kidnapping a Rwandan refugee in Kampala and sending him to his tormenters back in Kigali.

Daily Monitor urges President Yuweri Museveni to get interested in what is happening in the arm that is lawfully mandated to keep law and order to reassure citizens that the law enforcers are up to the task.

In Nigeria the Guardian comments about the disturbing number of children still out of school in the country. There are 8.5 million in all, down from 10.5 million in 2015.

The paper underlines that Education Minister Mallam Adamu Adamu credits the effort to President Muhammadu Buhari's school feeding program. But as the Guardian points out, even if the figures are down, the situation of Nigeria remains a "monumentally disgraceful", as children in remote areas, children living with disabilities, children in IDP camps and ethno-linguistic minorities continue to be left out of the system.

In Kenya, two women are making headlines after being embroiled in a furious legal battle over a two-year-old baby. Daily Nation says Ursillah Jeptoo who has been living with the baby was arrested by Eldoret police last week on allegations of having stolen Lucy Jepkoech's baby. The complainant alleges the baby was stolen from her at Kapsabet County Referral Hospital where she had given birth on April 24, 2015.

In the suit, Chepkoech says she had asked a woman in the hospital to look after her baby as she sorted out an urgent matter only to return and find her missing with the baby.

But Jeptoo, also reportedly claims to have given birth to the baby on the same day but at a different hospital 40 kms away. Daily Nation says she has attached copies of birth certificate and post-natal clinic records in her defence. According to the paper the authorities have handed the baby to a child rescue center, and DNA samples have been requested from the two women to establish its parenthood.

You should never underestimate the power of social media is a comment trending in the South African Times, after an engineering student at Vaal University of Technology got four anonymous good Samaritans to pay his outstanding school fees after an appeal for help on twitter.

" I managed to raise R1,010 and was R940.00 short", Chris Ngoveni told Times Live, adding that in total‚ they gave him R1,700. One of those who answered Ngoveni's call wrote on his wall, it was payday for him. "I’ve got a little left over this month‚ and Chris must finish his year‚ get a job‚ buy a house & car‚ etc”, he wrote, noting that the universe aligned nicely today."